We focus on the importance of culture, science, business and civil society all together to deepen and accelerate sustainable development. The design principles provide a guide for individual and group action, and is our foundation for sustainable development.

Today’s society connects humans and nature all over the world. This global dynamic that humans and nature have created requires that we think about the planet as a whole when dealing with global challenges, the UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

When we talk about global, it is important to appreciate that everything local contributes to global dynamics and connections. All humans are rooted locally and contribute to the global relationship we have with the planet, and nothing we consider global can exist without affecting the local.

Making the Agenda 2030 a reality will require bold transformative steps, alongside a desire to shine light onto the myriad of positive things already being done to reach the sustainable development goals. When different perspectives meet, it’s possible for new structures, mindsets and practices to emerge.

We need to change the way we change, and search for new direction. This transformation requires confidence and creativity and can be an anxious and uncertain process. It is important to encourage new kinds of leadership, where there are opportunities for new thoughts and ideas to arise, to help us build the knowledge and trust in our capacity to change, as individuals and as a society

Culture has always played a pivotal role in deep societal change. Sustainable development is the big change and challenge of our time.

Culture is a collective, intellectual and expressive process that engages and provokes, yet also provides us with a sense of evolving, but rooted identity, that we can build and express our ambitions through. We need more spaces where this can happen. Culture is the kitchen where we bring together culture, science, politics and business.

Sustainable development requires from us the skill to take in and handle global challenges. We need to learn new things and accept that many of the mental maps and basic assumptions that were used when creating the structures of today’s society are outdated.

The confidence to handle uncertainty comes from understanding deep-rooted connection to things that matter most, while daring to meet new and other perspectives. By realising that friction between perspectives is necessary for learning, we develop the ability to challenge, listen to and respect each other.

Global challenges and dynamics are creating a great turbulence in the world, but collective human capacity is more than capable of understanding what we need to do next. To find a sustainable pathway that meets the goals of Agenda 2030, we have to take care of and build spaces where we can listen to signals of change. We need spaces where we can build up trust to meet the unknown, and spaces where we can apply long-term thinking.

We also need spaces that bring out compassion and moral courage, where we can contemplate, establish our common connection to nature, and formulate what is important to us. We need spaces where we can listen to important stories about our capacity to handle change in a human way.

Nobody, and no one society, knows how to do this – we are all learning. The sense that some countries are developed and can provide the answers to the rest is no longer an adequate framework.

The issues we are dealing with are complex and have not existed together in this particular form before – there is no one right answer, no simple pathways to follow. We need to learn from each other and together, because while nobody knows what exactly needs to be done, many have important knowledge, experience and competence. We need to include every perspective, from each part of the world.

Space for play is important because it brings out our capacity to create, imagine, cooperate and act. Narrow, learned or conditioned forms of behavior, sense-making and interaction hold people and organisations back from imagining and building new approaches and perspectives about the future. It is important to make play and action possible for all, whatever their age or context, and whoever they are.

Playfulness is one of the beautiful human values that makes us resilient and able to transform. Helping people move beyond existing assumptions and toward transformational change involves drawing out our natural capacity for play and joyfulness – processes and feelings we are all familiar with, particularly through childhood. Action-based learning and testing helps because it provides possibilities to play as we experience and use all our senses, and reflect, test and develop new skills.

Making it easy to share knowledge and experience between different dimensions of society is essential for sustainable development. Vuja De Agency aims to help those who can influence change reinterpret their roles and organisations to support collective co-creation and problem solving.

We welcome everyone who aligns with our design principles, and will acknowledge all as co-creators. The intention of our work is to contribute to local and cosmopolitan learning by creating possibilities to shape, and take people through, a diverse range of spaces and experiences. We will use just enough technology to share knowledge and communicate broadly in ways that help others learn and develop ideas for how others can catalyze sustainable development and the Agenda 2030.

The resources that today underpin unsustainable structures need to be attracted to sustainable ones. By drawing people, finance and better feedback loops from nature into the definition of new models of a sustainable society, we open up this capacity and motivation.

We can create a modern society that, through understanding our relation to sustainability, can strive for and create elegant and resourceful lives that are rooted in a harmony with the natural environment. The opportunity exists right now to channel resources into new ideas and new kinds of cooperation, that aim to create long-lasting value and investments that help us build pathways toward the Agenda 2030. This includes possibilities for meaningful and sustainable jobs, work tasks and new kinds of roles beyond what has existed to date.

We are designing around a core – to which it is possible to add or take away parts. This principle, of modularity, is a key way to manage complex systems, of which every project is. We has this built-in-modularity in order to be able to handle changing needs, possibilities and available resources. We seek to create structures that support people and organisations to take bold, transformative steps, not merely to cope or adapt to the global challenges we face today.

Every project needs to be a space where we get the chance to create and experience structures and practices that are better suited to handle sustainable development, that help us move toward the Agenda 2030. By bringing all dimensions together we will bring out emergent properties – but while we know this will happen, we do not know what these emergent properties will be. Every part needs to operate in systems, including financial ones, that are not sustainable, while at the same time being part of creating new ones that are, which help society move through a transformation, to establish new structures, mindsets and practices.

This is a visualization of the state of the planet to deepen the understanding of how and why we have entered the Anthropocene:

A summary of Vuja De Agencies The Design principles

1. Let’s look at the world as a whole

   We accept that each of us has a relationship with the planet.

2. Open new pathways

   We create a time and place where people can explore new perspectives and narratives.

3. Bring together all dimensions of society

   Knowledge and experience from culture, science, politics and business combined to create new, sustainable societies that are attractive to many.

4. Dare to handle uncertainty

   The past gives lessons, but the future is an unknown place we’ll create together.

5. Safe spaces for everyone

   We must create spaces where we connect to nature, ourselves and each other.

6. We are all developing countries

   The agenda for global action isn’t about catch-up, it’s about defining and creating a new world.

7. Playful, action-based learning

   Turning constraints into play has made humans come up with fantastic things.

8. Everyone is a co-creator

   We accelerate sustainable development by working and standing together and being generous and open with our ideas.

9. Attract resources to sustainable development

   It is important to develop new economic models that help people organize and mobilize toward the Agenda 2030.

10. Scalability

    The Agency is a living organism, whose resilience depends on basic structures that can scale up or down, so it is possible to handle change and uncertainty more easily.