After last week’s readings on Transition Design and Terry Irwin’s work, we were graced by her presence as well as other folks from the Transition Design group at Carnegie Mellon. We learned about some of the workshops that take place with other groups earlier on, and this time had a chance to actually participate! We were split up into each of the three working groups we’ve been working on - Hopkins/ Institutional, Community, and Development. The two main activities that we worked on all centered around the wicked problem of “the injustice of waste in Baltimore”. Our first activity involved mapping out the intersecting social issues, environmental issues, economic/business issues, political/ legal issues, infrastructure/ science, and technology issues. It was really important to map out all those more specific relationships on each individual topic since there are different stakeholders and aspects that may connect and depend on the work we have been doing to support a compost facility in Baltimore.
The second activity we did was brainstorming and action planning: what were some of the old and established ways of thinking, behaviors, norms, etc. that create the wicked problem, and what are some of the emerging ideas we had to change those and support our vision? A lot of our ideas intersected across the group, but it set a great foundation of values and actions we could look back on as we continued to organize for these things.
Overall, I personally left the meeting feeling really energized and thinking about the wicked problem and it’s solutions in a different way. Also greatly appreciate Terry visiting and workshopping with us!