“The United Nations needs to be nimble, efficient, and effective. It must focus more on delivery and less on process; more on people and less on bureaucracy,” António Guterres,UN Secretary-General
In the face of current polycrises, the UN system is confronted with the need to shift towards a new version of an organization fit for 21st-century challenges and beyond. To continue to serve humanity, accelerate the achievement of the SDGs and long-term sustainability, safeguard the planet for future generations, and deliver relevant and system-wide solutions across the world, we must explore creative ways to strengthen UN capacities and change its modus operandi to more, agile, and future-forward practices.
What if conventional confines shaping the discussions on long-term sustainability no longer existed?
What if we build a more relational approach to drive social change?
What if we create alliances between sciences, arts, design and sustainability policy-making?
What if we design our way out of the triple planetary crisis?
The Beyond Lab aims to foster systems change by challenging the status quo and co-creating new norms, practices, and 'rules of the game' that go beyond current approaches to sustainable development. The Beyond Lab Residency is an embodiment of the UN Secretary-General commitment to a new UN system, as outlined in Our Common Agenda, which advocates for a forward-looking multilateralism that is more diverse, impactful and networked. The Beyond Lab is strengthening its creative thought-leadership capacity and its role as the chief sustainability and innovation advisory branch of the Director-General at UN Geneva. As part of this process, the Beyond Lab is launching Innovators-in-Residence, a pilot Residency programme designed for transdisciplinary co-creation and collaboration. Innovators-in-Residence will have the opportunity to investigate practical ways how sciences, arts and design can support and reshape sustainability frameworks and policies.
Inspired by the practice of artistic residencies, the Beyond Lab Residency is a tool to promote creative, challenge-based collaboration with experts and thought leaders to go beyond conventional approaches to sustainability to explore and craft long-term solutions. It embodies a new version of the UN system as outlined in the UN Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda, advocating for a forward-looking multilateralism that is more diverse, impactful and networked.
Participating 'Innovators-in-Residence' from atypical multidisciplinary backgrounds will have the opportunity to investigate practical ways to incorporate principles of intergenerational equity and regenerative development into policymaking, expand available pathways to sustainable development beyond the mainstream, and reinforce the use of cross-cultural, intergenerational processes and cognitive and affective science in the multilateral system.
Expanded awareness of sustainability perspectives fosters broader understanding and uptake of the new lenses to sustainability through intergenerational and transdisciplinary encounters and dialogues.
Members of different stakeholder groups involved in transforming and shaping the future agenda of long-term sustainable development.
Creative and transdisciplinary methodologies and solutions are co-created with different stakeholder groups involved.
Future-forward and long-term approaches and perspectives from transdisciplinary processes introduced to multilateral space.
Interested in finding out more? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via email.
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We are proud to welcome our first Innovator-in-Residence, Ms Nolita Mvunelo, a chemical engineer trained in South Africa, who now serves as a program manager at the Club of Rome.
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