This project has so many different participants, I was curious about what made each of them join! To get a peek into their different motivations, I talked with one of our students, a company partner and a researcher.
What struck me hearing their answers was the passion sparking from their words. But also, the overlap in their ambitions. Though these three have such different backgrounds, what seems to bring them to Active8-Planet is a common goal; Change. To achieve this, they share their ideas and experiences.
Active8 Motiv8ion
The benefits of joining a multidisciplinary team
As you know, the Active8-Planet project works with multidisciplinary teams. This means that each 7+1 team consists of students, academic teachers, supervisors and company partners from different disciplines and fields of expertise. This concept is constructed with the ambition of creating more value by exchanging ideas between disciplines and sectors. Learning from each other as much as from books. This is what our panel said on this topic:
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“The team being formed by a combination of students from different departments and industry professionals might give us a glimpse of our later professional life. When you sit together to brainstorm with people from very different backgrounds, so many more ideas come up. Other team members bring things to the table that I would never think of myself. That is very inspiring, because that way you automatically start thinking further too, they help you think in different directions.” |
| Louise Labus – Student at UHasselt | |
| “Active8 Planet asks people to observe the world to identify potential challenges, and then teaches people of different ages, professions, and experience to work together, listen to each other, and find a common language. All this not to be more productive or thorough, but to come up with ideas and proposals that will improve our ecological, social, cultural or economic environment. One of the many wonders that ethnographic fieldwork can do is to provide comprehensive insights into daily life, a non-fictional scenario of how people approach and cope with chosen challenges, how they envision the future, and how they think about their future situation. This human element is essential to a sustainable future because the future is shaped by our agencies. I hope that I can somehow balance the engaged, activist stance with the ethnographic perspective, and that I can humbly take advantage of the opportunity I have been given to navigate this transdisciplinary learning process.” |
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| Veronika Zavratnik – Anthropology Researcher at IRI UL | |
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“The issue is far too complex to do it on our own. Instead of doing it our versus their way, in Active8-Planet we do it together.” |
| Ana Tisov – Project Leader and Researcher at Huygen Engineers and Consultants |
Searching for more skills and knowledge
Each 7+1 team not only strives to tackle a challenge, they also strive to grow. As a teacher, as a student, as a professional or expert. Joining Active8-Planet is not something you do because you have to. Each member has personal goals they wish to tackle or overcome in this project.
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“To open myself up more to dare to speak in a group is also something I want to work on. Building the confidence to express your opinion clearly is important for a future industrial engineer.” |
| Louise Labus – Student at UHasselt | |
| “This project asks for individual and collective reflection and deep inquiry. Willingness to step into the unknown. ” | |
| Ana Tisov – Project Leader and Researcher at Huygen Engineers and Consultants | |
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“I took on the role of servant leader a little later than other servant leaders and learning about the role and influence of servant leadership has definitely been the biggest ‘Aha!’ moment for me so far. I like the way servant leaders transform leadership to provide a safe and stimulating environment for their team members and ensure they grow as people and as co-workers, and how broader community engagement can be integrated into work and research processes. After all, we should (all) be putting people and the planet at the centre of our work.” |
| Veronika Zavratnik – Anthropology Researcher at IRI UL |
Sustainable impact within reach?
Clearly one of the “hot topics” in the interviews with the Active8-planet team members was sustainable impact. Sustainability is one of the project’s key concerns, so it stands to reason it is also a salient motivational factor. What struck me was hearing how impact was also important to them. What are their questions, aspirations and expectations?
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“Yes! We are finally going from people to planet centricity, from ego to eco. We need to realize that a healthy human and a healthy planet are just two sides of the same coin. We talk about industries and sectors being responsible for emissions, but all those industries and sectors are made up of individuals and all decisions are made by individuals within those sectors. There is immense power at the individual level to influence the systematic change and the institutional change that is necessary. We are putting too much emphasis on technology. As someone said: ‘’Technology is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.’’ “The BIG question is which way do we go?” |
| Ana Tisov – Project Leader and Researcher at Huygen Engineers and Consultants | |
| “When I read the name of the project, Active8 Planet, I was not quite sure I knew exactly what the project was about. What are we supposed to do – activate the whole planet in just three years? I have often been told how overly optimistic and – in that sense – naive I am, but even to me it all seemed too idealistic. Engaging people, yes, that sounded like a good plan. However, times were busy with global epidemic and two different realities overlapped our global reality: in the first, any kind of “activation” did not seem to belong in the era of quarantines and lockdowns, but in the second, it seemed that the world was entering a time of change and when, if not now, is a good time to do things differently? Is it even possible to bring about “real change” without real political power, and is it possible to make the world more sustainable? And what does living sustainability actually mean? And to achieve this, do we need a reformation or a revolution? I hope that the local/national projects carried out in the framework of Active8 Planet will demonstrate the importance of establishing multifocal “lines of communication” and the importance to see the same things from different perspectives, firstly to understand local challenges and secondly to propose meaningful and sustainable responses to these challenges.” | |
| Veronika Zavratnik – Anthropology Researcher at IRI UL | |
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“For our specific challenge at UHasselt we are developing a circular facade panel and it’s amazing to discover how much positive impact a facade can potentially generate, with for instance integrating vertical farming, water purification, generating solar energy, etc.” |
| Veronika Zavratnik – Anthropology Researcher at IRI UL |
