Practising engagement for transition design

Abstract

The present study focuses on stakeholder engagement within Transition Design, examining the consumer perspective on textile provenance, with particular attention to participants’ knowledge and skills related to textiles. Building on the work of Stefano Boeri, the study investigates how participatory, embodied mapping can elicit distributed and individual perspectives on provenance, while also analysing how the act of map-making may serve as a phenomenological basis for experiencing emerging, incomplete, or absent knowledge and skills more deeply. The paper draws on a series of pilot workshops entitled Co-creating an Eclectic Atlas of Cloth, conducted across different geographical and community contexts as part of a larger doctoral research project. In these workshops, participants contributed personal textile items and were invited to trace their provenance, prompting reflection on supply chains, cultural histories, and personal attachment. This process revealed how consumer behaviour, purchasing patterns, and cultural values shape sustainability narratives and supported the articulation of radical visions for future textile practices through facilitated discussion. While the wider doctoral research explores Transition Design across multiple geographical focal points and textile-practising communities, the research presented here specifically investigates participatory engagement methods as tools for stakeholder involvement. Working with Transition Design approaches such as systems thinking and co-design, the study positions designers as facilitators of systemic change in response to complex, “wicked” problems. The outcomes contribute practical insights into how embodied, participatory methods can be designed and situated to support systems-level transformation within the textile industry.