Transition Living Lab: International Collaborative Student Challenge

From January to May 2024, the Refugee Transition Network (RTN) developed an international collaborative brief for masters' students to engage with the main ideas of the project and to co-develop the Transition Living Lab model.

This model was co-funded by London College of Communication, UAL.

Participants included:

• Design School, London College of Communication,
• MA Design Leadership, Institute of Technology Bandung, Design Ethnography Lab,
• MA Applied Anthropology, University Gadjah Mada, Anthropology Department, Yogyakarta.

The brief invited postgraduate students to co-design sessions that, as building blocks, would form the Transition Living Lab programme. This followed the 'Envision the Transition' introductory session and covered a programme organised across the Systemic Design Framework (extended double diamond) and its four roles. The overall aim was to test the methodological model of the Transition Living Lab.

The RTN team supported all participating institutions and their students with a program of master classes, workshops, and critiques that studied and problematised the application of the Transition Design framework in the context of displaced populations in London, Bandung, and Yogyakarta.

The brief resulted in an innovative educational experience in which students collaborated with partner organisations - Revoke in London and Emplace in Indonesia - to co-design training sessions for the Transition Living Lab and test them with displaced youths in the three cities.

The projects will soon be exhibited online and physically in summer 2024 at the Barbican Centre Library in London and at De:Lab in Bandung.