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Leisure is used as a pre-eminently point of departure - or fertile breeding ground - for the social innovation approach of this minor. This is the most distinctive starting point from all other minors. Leisure involves core concepts like freedom, development, sensemaking, happiness, relaxation. It creates a positive vibe, and it easily makes connections with other sectors with core qualities such as social, volunteer, intrinsic, creative, playful, curious, storytelling, united, experience, meaningful. These qualities are used to tackle complex social issues together with many parties involved. HAVE FUN!

You cannot solve problems through the systems that cause them. You must think differently and that is what you will learn in this minor. Based on self-chosen and self-found projects in the first three weeks of the minor, you will creatively co-create value-based alternatives for societal challenges.

We strongly believe in the power of working on a self-chosen project. When you do so, the fire starts burning and the engine starts running. You deepen your knowledge, engage in collaborations, and learn to make space for alternative possibilities through personal reflection, practice, theory in projects, and most of all by doing and experimenting.

Besides, you will work in a learning community where you work collaboratively with students from other disciplines and students with other projects. Together with them, alumni, and experts you will find answers to your questions.

To help you master the above, we play with the following areas of knowledge:

• Process design This is about ‘Crafting meaningful conversations’, about designing and facilitating conversations that lead to new ideas, co-creations, and movements.
• Community Design This is about creating value by bringing stakeholders together and facilitating the process of co-creation to solve complex societal problems in an innovative way.
• Experience Design This is about designing meaningful experiences that generate an ongoing story which enables and inspires people to act in co-evolution with their environment, to make the whole system evolve towards a desired future.

This knowledge is offered to you in the form of theme days, consisting of guest lectures, study trips, case studies, creative sessions, and so on.

All sectors have challenges that require our attention, whether we are talking about tourism, healthcare, events, politics, leisure, etc., and you are free to choose one of your preferences with a group of four students. Some examples:

• Bring change in the local food system by addressing food waste in restaurants.
• Develop ecologically diverse urban spaces where doing sports is an integral activity.
• Improve people’s health by interacting differently with your direct living environment.
• Develop new forms of tourism which support the local economy and have a decreased carbon footprint.
• Work on the loneliness amongst elderly by setting up a community.
• Create more involvement of youngsters in decision making processes of a local community by contributing to a youth council.

Ideally, you continue your contribution to the real-life project in the graduation phase or in your work after graduation.

You can:

• design and execute a project aiming for real societal change.
• co-create with other students and multiple stakeholders in society.
• reflect on values related to performing in an innovative way.
• gather information using all kinds of creative research methods, e.g., design research and participatory action research.

Propaedeutic certificate obtained

To be decided

Agreements are made with each group on how their project will be assessed.
There is not one fixed final product, but a tailor-made assessment path appropriate to the assignment, the client, the situation and personal preferences of each group (+/- 4 students).

Guiding principles applicable to this:

• A shareable (based on inputs developed throughout the minor, such as creative portfolio, paper, blogs, scrapbook, performance book);
• Portfolio with all the various project documents;
• Interim and final reflections together with the client;
• A group interview of 1 hour;

All points will be integrated into one final mark.

Competencies
Upon successful completion of the minor, you will be capable of:

• creating experiences in which diverse stakeholders learn to relate in new ways.
• designing and facilitating the process engaging diverse stakeholders by crafting meaningful conversations.
• creating and suggesting possibilities for new relationships between diverse stakeholders strengthening the power of their community.

Topics
It is about Impact, Process Design, Community Design and Experience Design.

Impact

• (transformative) social innovations & sustainable development
• plural economics, including non-monetary value creation

Process Design

• group dynamics
• facilitating dialogue

Community Design

• stakeholder mapping, stakeholder engagement and networking
• Assets Based Community Development

Experience Design

• ABCDEF-model (Analysing, Brooding, Creation, Design, Engagement, Follow-up)
• Experience instruments/creative techniques

Structure of the minor
The structure of the minor is built around a self-selected project.The programme is constructed as a coherent whole, it consists of the following components:

• Working for 20 weeks on a self-chosen real-life project (first three weeks of the minor are used for finding a project yourself)
• LAB sessions concerning project progress collaboratively.
• 6 to 8 theme meetings addressing topics. The themes include forms such as guest lectures, fieldtrips, case-studies, etc., and students are challenged to contribute to the themes.
• Expedition: regular group meetings addressing your personal/professional development
• Assessment is tailor-made for each group built on guiding principles.

Teaching method(s):

Collaborative learning in a learning community
The details will be decided upon through interaction between students and lecturers. You will be a co-producer of the minor. We expect students to contribute actively, based on their intrinsic motivation and their drive to contribute to a self-chosen project. Learning is triggered through active engagement with one another, the context and studying available literature. As lecturers we will focus on guiding the learning process.

You will:

• work on a self-chosen real-life project in groups of 4 students;
• (co)design contributions to content-focused TOPIC meetings;
• develop your project in interactive LAB sessions with students, lecturers and experts

All design decisions will be based on the students joining the minor (background, if possible interests, number).

International context
We think globally and act locally.Based on global societal challenges (e.g., inequality, injustice, climate change, biodiversity loss) and related to international socio-economic initiatives, we will focus on the similarities and differences between local contexts.Together we will explore whether there is an international aspect to the project.

Costs
Non-fixed costs. NB: travel expenses are not reimbursed