Background

Reflections and ideas on Societal Transformation have started already before the pandemics. Now, during a global crisis we never experienced before, many of us start wondering on “What is waiting to be changed once we go back from a feeling of emergency towards a ‘new normality’? What kind of life could we imagine after the pandemics, based on co-creation, values and the common good?”

Beyond anxiety, economic and social stress, people also value new experiences: a new sense of family, surprising calmness in urban spaces, the value of nature and social belonging, slowing down one´s own life. These are experiences they did not have for a long time or some never had before. Even more people told and tell stories about surprising experiences and creative solutions for local and regional challenges. Young and old people, haves and have nots, business and civil society, urban and rural settings are cooperating in a new and often surprising way we cannot allow ourselves to forget.

We are concerned about what we should remember and keep as community building blocks for our society and our ‘brave new world’ – once we survived the global crisis as a global society. We believe that remembering our new sense of community – be it surprising little moments of awareness, creative ideas or surprising solutions) and collecting what we have valued as common treasures can help not only to recover from a global crisis as a society, but also to re-design and co-create our new post-pandemic world.