A World In Transition by 5×15
Join 5×15, Takram and Hitachi R&D for this special online event A World In Transition
About this event
Climate catastrophe is looming, but the future is still ours for the shaping. So what needs to change and how do we change it?
These are the questions that global tech giant Hitachi and innovation design studio Takram set out to answer with Three Transitions for a Human-Nature Recovery. An interactive digital experience designed to outline and explore the systemic shifts necessary to ensure positive futures for the planet’s climate, biodiversity and human life, Three Transitions is the result of a year-long research programme into how we as a society make the industrial, economic and ecological transformations needed to restore the broken human-nature relationship in our time. In November 2021, Hitachi presented the project to an audience of world leaders and the wider public at COP26 in Glasgow.
On 27 January 2022, A World In Transition will bring the Hitachi-Takram team together with leading thinkers and activists in the field of sustainability. During the online event, we’ll discuss diverse perspectives on climate emergency, explore new ways of thinking about transition, and map out the pathways that will lead to better futures for all.
A World In Transition will be held online, free to attend and BSL signed.
Speakers
Lucy Siegle (Chair) is a writer and broadcaster on nature and climate with a particular focus on the global fashion industry. She spent 14 years as an ethical living columnist for the Observer; has written three books on sustainability issues; reports for BBC1’s the One Show and cohosts the climate podcast So Hot Right Now.
Aja Barber is a writer, stylist and consultant whose work deals with the intersections of sustainability and the fashion landscape. Her first book, Consumed, explores the endemic injustices in our consumer industries and confronts the uncomfortable truth behind why we consume the way we do.
Mikaela Loach is a climate-justice activist, co-host of the Yikes Podcast, writer, and fifth-year medical student. She is one of three claimants who took the UK Government to court to challenge the Oil & Gas Association’s policy in the North Sea and the subsidies and tax breaks the industry is given. Her organising work and Instagram activity focus on highlighting the harm caused by the fossil-fuel industry, and the intersections of the climate crisis with oppressive systems such as white supremacy and migrant injustices.
Koji Sasaki, PhD is Chief Researcher at Hitachi and Senior Researcher at Keio University. An anthropologist based in Tokyo, he has played key roles in lading projects in migration, urbanism, technology, sustainability and design with academic institutions and creative studios in Japan. For Hitachi, he has provided visions for various anthropologically-informed projects, including Transitions for Sustainable Futures, Three Transitions for a Human-Nature Recovery, and Transition Scenarios for Japan’s Carbon Neutrality. He is the author of The Immigrants and Virtues: Historical Ethnography of the Japanese-Brazilian Intellectuals (Nagoya University Press, in Japanese).
Sir Tim Smit is the co-founder and executive vice-chair of the Eden Project, which saw a decommissioned quarry transformed into a cradle of life and a powerful exploration of human dependence on – and part within – the systems of the natural world. Sir Tim is also a director of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which he ‘discovered’ and restored with John Nelson in 1990, and executive co-chair for Eden Project International, which creates Eden Projects with partners on every inhabited continent.
Yosuke Ushigome is director and creative technologist at Takram – the design innovation studio with bases in Tokyo, London, New York and Shanghai. Winner of the 2018 Swarovski Designers of the Future Award, he is an advocate of transition design – designing for the process of change as well as its outcome – and writes and speaks on the intersection of tech, design and society.
Farhana Yamin is an internationally recognised environmental lawyer, climate change and development policy expert. She has advised leaders and ministers on climate negotiations for 30 years, representing small islands and developing countries and attending nearly every major climate summit since 1991. In addition to founding Track 0, she is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, a Director of Impatience Earth, Senior Advisor to SYSTEMIQ, an FRSA and Visiting Professor, University of the Arts, London.
This event is organised in collaboration with:
Driven by the desire to build a better world, Zetteler is a communications agency that works with select clients of all sizes across the global creative sector – in design, art, architecture, craft and beyond. Dedicated to supporting individuals, brands, institutions and causes working to achieve a more sustainable, more equitable world, Zetteler believes that bringing people together is the most effective way to initiate real, meaningful and lasting change.
5×15 is one of the UK’s leading producers of public-facing spoken-word events, bringing world leading figures to speak to audiences to spark ideas and inspiration. Over 1,200 world-class speakers have graced 5×15’s stage since 2008, reaching a global audience of millions through live events and the 5×15 podcast and Youtube channel. In 2020, in response to the pandemic, 5×15 went virtual with a model of inclusive and free access, distributing over 60,000 tickets to our committed audience and global community of subscribers.
Based in Tokyo, London and New York, Takram is an innovation design agency that works with brands and organisations on everything from brand design to future-mapping. Much of the studio’s thinking is concerned with transition design – the growing cross-disciplinary approach aimed at addressing problems confronting 21st-century societies. Never tying itself to a single industry or output, Takram collaborates with government organisations, businesses and individuals to plot probable and preferable futures, and to design the products, services and brands best suited to thrive in them.
Founded in Japan, 1910 Hitachi is a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo. It currently comprises 871 consolidated subsidiaries, employing approximately 350,000 people worldwide, with business interests including electronics, automotive systems, construction, defence energy, finance, IT, social infrastructure, digital media and more. As a principal partner of COP26, Hitachi aims to play a leading role in realising a fully decarbonised society and to be an innovator in the area of climate change. Its goal is to achieve full carbon neutrality by 2030 and to secure an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions across its value chain by 2050.