Core B—The Polycene
CfC’s Research Core B cultivates a post-tragic design sensibility to empower communities navigating the polycrisis with resilience, creativity, and hope for a just and sustainable world. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and participatory research, CfC develops innovative frameworks and strategies for designing in uncertainty. CfC brings together scholars, practitioners, and community partners to engage in collaborative worldbuilding, and to imagine regenerative, equitable futures. By advancing a post-tragic approach, CfC equips designers to navigate the Polycene’s complexities and contribute to building a more just and resilient world.
The Cascade Institute defines the polycrisis as a situation where crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. Unlike systemic risks, which often focus on single sectors or issues, a polycrisis operates on a global scale, affecting a wide range of systems—from financial and environmental to social and political. This networked nature of crises necessitates a rethinking of our traditional approaches to problem-solving and crisis management.
Using new language is an integral aspect that shapes our work and collaborations. In opposition to the “Anthropocene” that centers dialogue and engagement around humankind, we are using “Polycene” to evoke an epoch that captures our aspirations for what could be, as we negotiate our way through the polycrisis. Within this frame, our research agenda positions CfC to catalyze transformative change toward a more inclusive, sustainable future where all can thrive. CfC’s work underscores the vital role of art and design in shaping a society of shared prosperity and wellbeing.
Working with the Polycene, we are constantly reminded that there are no silos or boundaries to our collective challenges. As we explore regenerative structures of flourishing symbiosis, the hopeful futures work we facilitate is entangled in the realities of climate, global security, failing healthcare systems, restructuring institutions of governance, and many other overlaying facets of the life we have built. That is why this work requires transdisciplinary collaboration, restructuring epistemologies, questioning “time-tested” protocols, and engaging with planetary scale challenges with equal parts audacity and humility.
