Leyla Acaroglu
on Disruptive Design and being a Sustainability Provocateur
“If we designed ourselves into a waste-based hyper-consumption dependent system, then we can design ourselves right back out. Design is everywhere! Everything we humans have created is by design. Unsustainability is a byproduct of us creating goods and services that are intended to exclusively meet human needs, often at the expense of all other species on the planet.”
Leyla Acaroglu strongly believes we need positive disruption to change the dominant systems that reinforce this “unsustainability”.
When she started out her career in sustainable design, there were still a lot of misconceptions and barriers to embracing change, so she gave herself the title “Sustainability Provocateur”. Her goal was to push the boundaries and challenge the status quo around what sustainability is seen as, the value it has to offer and the kinds of people who feel that they can engage with it as an opportunity.
Today, Leyla wears many hats: award-winning designer, TED speaker, United Nations “Champion of the Earth”, sociologist, and entrepreneur. Through her Disruptive Design Method, she creates cerebrally activating experiences, gamified toolkits, and unique educational experiences that help people make the status quo obsolete. Her learning platforms for advancing the global transition to a circular and sustainable economy, The UnSchool of Disruptive Design and Swivel Skills, gather change-makers, creative rebels, pioneers, designers, thinkers, doers, activators, engineers, entrepreneurs, and everyone who has a deep-seated passion to make a positive impact. A community-centred approach, as Leyla believes communities shift and shape our worldview and can act as informal education, as places where collaborative learning happens: “Community is built through collaboration. It’s about invitation rather than dictation and busting through old models that don’t work for us anymore, like race or gender-based hierarchies.”
In order to change something, you have to deeply understand it first, and Leyla is a promoter of systems thinking. By adopting a systems mindset anyone can change their own perception and go from the linear system we are conditioned into seeing all the complexity and beauty around us. At the end of the day, we are all social beings: “We need others to survive and to build entirely new solutions to the problems that were made by decisions of the past. Collaboration can happen in many different ways, but the key is connection, and to do that well we need to be open and willing to hear the ideas and perspectives of others.”
Read Leyla Acaroglu’s answers for Inspirators and don’t be afraid to call out unsustainability, whenever and wherever!
Thank you, Leyla, for being a Sustainability Provocateur!
#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE
Name: Leyla Acaroglu
Company / Institution: UnSchool of Disruptive Design & Swivel Skills
Title: Founder, CEO
Website: https://www.unschools.co/ & https://www.swivelskills.com/
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leylaacaroglu/
Country of origin: Australia
Country you currently live in: Australia
Your personal definition of Regeneration: To give back more than we take.
Regeneration is a full systems perspective whereby we give back more than we take. It’s built on the wisdom and worldview of First Nations and Indigenous knowledge systems. To regenerate is to understand the system you are working within.
Main business challenge you face: Getting at-scale sustainability training mainstreamed across major companies so that there is a common literacy and the foundations for capacity building. We know that a lot of people want to have green skills training so that they can adapt their existing role to addressing climate change, the circular economy and sustainability. This is the reason why we built Swivel Skills as a way of supporting this transition.
Main driver that keeps you going: The passion for change. Knowing that it’s happening and being able to contribute to it in some way. I am also very driven by creativity and my own knowledge gaps; I can't help but find obscure ways of filling them! I even spent four years restoring a farm in rural Portugal as a way of teaching myself how nature worked (coproject.co).
The trait you are most proud of in yourself: I have boundless energy for sustainability and positive change!
The trait you most value in others: Tenacity and initiative!
Passions & little things that bring you joy: Hanging out with non-human animals, seeing the curve of the Earth on a very starry night and discovering things about nature that blow my mind (which happens quite frequently!)
The #inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path: I’m a big fan of Buckminster Fuller and Donella Meadows.
A hint or starting point for companies or professionals that are taking the first steps in the regeneration journey: The key thing to getting started is taking action. This is a process of transformation that takes time and will involve unlearning as well as investing in capacity building and creativity. Change requires a collaborative and creative process. Depending on what industry you are in, you will need different skills, but the foundations are the same.
This is why we created Swivel Skills: to provide the base training so that people could easily establish the specific knowledge that they need to progress to more significant action. I believe everyone needs systems thinking, life cycle thinking, and to be able to identify impacts in order to get started on their sustainability, circularity and regeneration journey.
Most used and abused clichés in sustainability that bother you: That sustainability is just about recycling or hugging trees… Something that only some people need to worry about...
An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope: The future is defined by our actions today.
Books that had a great impact on you:
The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture by Victor Papanek
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows
Must-reads for any regenerative professional: I think it’s vital that First Nations and Indigenous Knowledge Systems are centered in the regenerative movement. This requires an expansion of our current set of reading and “experts”, so start with learning about the First Nations wisdom of where you live.
Trends in Regeneration we should keep an eye on: The expansion beyond a Euro-centric approach and inclusion of true diversity, and embedded in the respectful engagement of First Nations knowledge systems and Indigenous wisdom.
Sustainable Development or Regeneration courses, trainings, or certifications that really teach us how to have an impact: We have a lot of courses and free resources at the UnSchools.co and SwivelSkills.com! I highly recommend our new Circular Business ReDesign Toolkit which is free to download and use. I also have 3 LinkedIn learning courses you can take.
Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: Decolonised approaches, compassion and creativity.
The #inspirator you are endorsing for a future edition of the newsletter is: Tyson Yunkaporta (His new book Right Story Wrong Story)
The quote that inspires you:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” (Buckminster Fuller)
Your own quote that will inspire us:
