Travel Transitions: a Shared Dialogue on Sustainable Mobility

AIM OF SESSION 

Whether commuting to campus, exploring our home countries, or venturing abroad, most of us engage with various forms of travel regularly. This universal experience makes the topic immediately accessible and relevant as a focus for dialogue, transcending disciplinary boundaries. 

This learning activity uses an easily accessible and relevant topic relating to sustainability transitions – in this case ‘travel’ – as a platform to explore and practice transformative skills (including self-awareness, developing an inner compass, communication, appreciation and empathy) as essential capacities for driving sustainability transitions. By creating space for students to connect the topic of travel directly with their own experiences and values, the focus shifts away from discussing potential technical solutions to the social challenges of travel and mobility around human behaviour and personal/collective responsibility.  

Based on a world café format, participants are invited to reflect on and share their perspectives on different themes relating to the topic of travel. The themes and questions posed can be chosen with relevance to the context of the particular place in which the workshop is set. Through dialogues in small groups, students are encouraged to question assumptions, connect with the complexity of the topic at hand and deepen their awareness of their own values, the impact of their choices and possible interpretations of the term mobility justice.  

BACKGROUND 

Transport accounts for around one-quarter of global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In some countries, often richer countries with populations that travel often, transport can be one of the largest segments of an individual’s carbon footprint1. At Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas), travel - a combination of staff commuting, business travel, and student field trips - accounts for over one third (37%) of our total carbon footprint. This makes travel not only a key contributor to global warming but also one which is highly relevant to us as individuals as it is an activity over which we (oftentimes) have considerable agency.  

Simultaneously, however, travel's environmental costs coexist with significant benefits - cultural exchange, social connection, and internationalisation, for example – all of which education especially values. These inherent tensions make the topic of travel particularly fertile ground for classroom inquiry when it comes to sustainability transitions. 

FACILITATION 

In this world café format, it is useful to designate someone per table as the facilitator to help guide the conversation, give further prompts where helpful and make sure everyone gets a fair turn to speak. The facilitators can be students, as long as they have been sufficiently prepared in advance.   

The facilitator’s role is to create a space where participants feel safe to share and to listen to one another with respect and attention. Facilitators should demonstrate openness by participating in the dialogue, yet remain mindful not to dominate or steer the conversation toward their own assumptions and beliefs. The aim is to find a balance between contributing and holding back, meaning - offering enough presence to make participants feel at ease, while carefully avoiding judgment or direction. Above all, facilitators are there to hold space for participants’ perspectives, and stories to emerge in their own way.