It’s been 10 years since I had a crazy idea to start an experimental knowledge lab for adults who wanted to help change the world, and what an incredible decade it has been!
The UnSchool was born of a need to share systems, sustainability and design as tools for making change. It started in New York City in 2014 and was built by hundreds of people who came to engage, learn, share and create as we ran experimental workshops, events and fellowships, first in New York and then around the world. The UnSchool began with no funding, a tiny team and a lot of passion. And today, at 10 years old, we have morphed and grown and adapted and evolved. We even set up a farm and a not-for-profit for a few years!
The UnSchool always wanted to be a provocative and positively disruptive force driving change to help address some of the world's most complex problems through using a systems approach to creative interventions. I created the Disruptive Design Method (DDM) to support creative people in activating their agency and effecting change within their sphere of influence. Everything we have done has been about advancing science-led sustainability in its full sense of the word, taking social, economic and environmental action to ensure an equitable, regenerative and nature-positive future.
Over the last ten years, we have done some very cool, creative and collaborative things, here are just some of the highlights:
We ran 10 fellowship programs in nine countries for over 300 people, with the last one taking place in Kuching. Watch the recap below!
2. We’ve made 10 free toolkits and have had thousands of people download and use them.
3. We have had 30,000+ people take our online courses.
4. We collaborated with the United Nations to make the Anatomy of Action.
5. We restored and ran an abandoned farm in rural Portugal into a brain spa and living learning lab and hosted summer camps, educator training, community open days, creative residencies and immersive sustainability workshops for hundreds of people workshops on the farm.
6. We have had our unique methods, such as the DDM, picked up and used by academic institutions around the world (positively disrupting the education system!).
7. We have seen our alumni grow their impact and capacity to make change all over the world.
8. We’ve given away more than $500,000 in scholarships.
9. We have always adopted an approach to sustainability and climate action that is future positive, solutions oriented and practically activating. We believe in the possibility of creating a future that works better for all of us, and we see the missing link being the number of dedicated people who have the knowledge and skills to contribute to the change we need, in whatever capacity and agency they have. Check out our alumni stories to learn more about this impact and watch the recap of our first very Fellowship in NYC to see how it all began!
10. We have tried and tested many things, failed first, then adapted and adjusted our processes and methods. We have experimented, laughed, cried, hugged and rejoiced. There have been all the highs and lows of an unfunded startup built on passion and grit, but most of all, there has been change.
So, what’s next for the unschool?
On our five-year birthday, I wrote this article saying I wanted The UnSchool to be obsolete at year 10 because I’d hoped that after a decade, we would have sufficiently inspired enough transformation around education, systems thinking, science-led sustainability and agency development.
I am confident that we have helped make this happen in many ways, but there is still a lot more work to be done, especially when it comes to transforming the design industry and the role that we each play as citizen designers in constructing the future we want to live in.
So, we are doing a big rejig of all our initiatives, building new tools, making more free stuff and listening to what people need to help them activate their agency to make change in their profession and part of the world. We will, for now, keep creating tools that help people make change. Most recently, we released a free Eco-Anxiety toolkit as we started to hear and see the impact that burnout and climate anxiety are having on change-makers and people bearing the brunt of a changing climate. We are working on a report that details the responses from our design transformation survey and are about to launch a detailed workshop on the new ISO standards for the circular economy (sign up here).
But we also want to hear from you — what do you need to help you make change?
To make it fun (and UnSchool it), we created a quiz that, of course, involves prizes! It's part treasure hunt, part personal experience reflection, part funny questionnaire. Your total score gets you credit for UnSchools online to get whatever courses or handbooks you want — up to $500 USD!
Please Note: The quiz is open for 10 days, so be sure to complete it by 11:59pm EST on 15 Sep 2024 to get your UnSchools Online credit.
I can’t tell you if the UnSchool will be around in 2, 5 or 10 more years. But I, for one, am committed to continuing to create things that evolve and adapt to the complex ecosystem we are all a part of — things that support agents within this system to be equipped to effect positive change, overcome inertia and contribute to crafting a world that works better for all of us.
“This is how we change the world. We connect the dots, do the work, love the problems at play, find the connections that breed the places to intervene. We collaborate and test, explore and fail productively. We find joy in the challenges, and we challenge ourselves to be contributors, not just extractors. This is how we change the world with the intent to make it work better for all of us.
Design systems change.”
