1 Why Transdisciplinarity and Art?

While there is now more than enough scientific knowledge to make changes towards sustainability, responsible business and a just society, we are failing to change individual, collective and entrepreneurial mindsets. In other words, the dominant ways we organize our world, think and act, obtain knowledge and learn, are still based on rational-technical thinking that is promoting industrialized processes and a myth of everlasting growth and effectiveness.

In order to enhance our individual and collective minds and skills to adopt open mindsets for sustainability and social responsibility, we need to activate the economic, political, sociological and psychological drivers. Change and social transformation cannot be achieved only on the basis of rational choice and planning. In complex systems, there is always a need for transdisciplinary approaches. In particular, art-based approaches to sustainable transformation may have the power not only to combine the four drivers into a truly transdisciplinary and transformative methodology, but also to add the ‘tacit dimension’ of change to a traditional model of knowledge production. Approaches that take into account the ‘tacit dimension’ (Polanyi, 1966) and its built-in patterns of implicit knowing (Neuweg, 2004) have been used in science and are frequently used to create art in many ways; this ‘tacit dimension’ is needed to co-create in innovative organizations and entrepreneurial communities. ‘Implicit wisdom’ (Dewey, 1938) based on ‘intuition’ or experience-based ‘deep smarts’ (Leonard & Swap, 2005), is known to be crucial for successful change, especially in unpredictable and ambiguous settings.

A truly transdisciplinary and ‘transformative’ science therefore needs to integrate natural science, social science and the arts (music, dance, theatre, visual arts) in order to affect individual and collective mindsets and ways of thinking for current and future leaders, decision makers and entrepreneurs. An experience-based and creative ‘knowledge and action base’ will be needed to reveal and teach the tacit knowing patterns we need to develop, in order to take the next steps towards social sustainability. The example of JR (see Box 16.1) may be inspiring in this sense—as a unique approach to both understanding and transforming communities. He and his team go beyond analysing and documenting situations. They highlight hidden patterns, and by enlarging particular aspects of those patterns, they change—albeit only temporarily—people´s mindsets, their behaviour and their relationships. They give power and voice back to communities in ‘fuzzy’ situations.

Box 16.1: JR—A case study in transformative research using the arts and street wisdom

Being raised in ‘Les Bosquets’, the ‘ghetto’ of Clichy-Montfermeil, one of the typical banlieus in metropolitan Paris, JR started out as a notorious street artist and sprayer. He evolved into a transformative researcher using art and artistic thinking, doing transformative research in 2004, when he started the ‘Portrait of a Generation’. He photographed its young inhabitants and pasted enlarged photocopies to the walls.

JR is eager to enlarge both situations of groups and communities all over the world, and the experiential street wisdom which you will find unexpectedly in prisons, slums, among the elderly and children, in border-like segregation (such as Israeli and Palestinian people, or migrants and security policy at the Mexican border).

‘Enlarging’ for JR is meant in the original sense of the word. After photographing and recording stories of individuals and groups, his main act is to paste giant pictures of individuals on city walls, containers, water reservoirs, border walls—you name it.

JR’s unique artistic process creates more than temporary art: his innovative way of doing street-art worldwide (‘I have the largest gallery in the world’) with different vulnerable groups (elderly people, women, children, prison inmates, slum dwellers) also works as a transformative community building process. Street Art and community building in JR’s sense emerge to a transformative process, researching scenarios of conflict and strength in local and global communities.

Of many single projects, the ‘Inside Out’ project emerged to integrate community members all over the globe into a piece of common art, which JR has called ‘Infiltrating art’. During his collage activities, local communities take part in the act of artistic creation, with no stage separating actors from spectators. Now, artistic creation and community building based on ‘Inside Out’ are taking place in close to 2,500 community projects in 148 countries.

See for examples https://www.insideoutproject.net/en/explore

Thomas Kuhn (1962)—more than 60 years ago—highlighted the need for transdisciplinary approaches to real-world problems at the individual, group or structural level in his seminal work, The structure of scientific revolutions. This early insight has since been adopted by many disciplines (e.g. Kahnemann, 2011; Scharmer, 2009; Wahl, 2016; Wilber, 2000). Nevertheless, my own discipline—psychology—is structured in disciplines and lives in scientific silos, like many other sciences in scientific institutions (see also Chapter 2; this volume). This fragmentation slows down collaboration urgently needed to cope collectively with ‘wicked problems’ (Schuler et al., 2020). Therefore, our common challenge is to unleash disciplinary boundaries in order not only to promote human well-being, but to create a planetary sense of community (Francescato, 2020). Successful solutions to social challenges manage to link the scientific results ‘of the few’ with the tacit knowledge ‘of the many’ and to cooperate between various disciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge domains. Although disciplinary approaches are important in deepening our understanding of the world, only transformative and transdisciplinary approaches are able to promote human well-being. Thus each scientific discipline needs to have both: sound disciplinary-based ‘deep knowledge’ and ‘linking’ sub- or meta-disciplines to detect, set up, design and evaluate helpful links to transform and solve real-world problems.

This requires being able to ‘connect head, hand and heart’, says Otto Scharmer’s Theory U (2009, 2019). Rational knowledge, experiential knowing, and creativity in doing and thinking need to be mingled in innovative ways. A sound systems approach that nurtures agile relationships between different actors, worldviews and disciplines, the creativity and intuition of artistic thinking and doing, and the art of improvising are basic elements of a transformative science. Following my own transdisciplinary research experiences, working together with artists in fields like ‘Improvisation Research’, this chapter will go on a journey in which I will explore the how and why of (1) ‘crossing borders’ between the arts and science, and (2) unchaining research from a purely cognitive exercise by linking ‘head, heart and hands’ in the research and learning process.

This may lead us towards a land of ‘transformative science’, where research is all about being able to ‘explore, wonder, and transform ourselves in context’. It will be worth starting a joint discourse about the forms of ‘Transformative Literacy’ (Künkel & Ragnarsdottir, 2022; Scharmer, 2019) and the types of research and teaching we will need to shape our common future.

2 Beyond Bounded Rationality

People in social systems, such as scientific communities, economies or societies, can act and create new solutions either by analysis and planning, by intuition or by improvisation. For most of the last century and until today, science is based on a rational cognitive mode: rational planning based on analysis and measurement focused on accountability. This approach has been adopted by society at large and professional communities alike and has ‘infected’ and limited our everyday way of thinking (Sandel, 2021). Rational thinking is based on one overall assumption: all technical and social challenges can be solved by an objective step-by-step rational approach. This particular way of thinking and organizing also created our world bound with disciplinary specializing. We pretend to know and give answers based on specialized knowledge; we tend to forget to ask questions to open up our mind in unpredictable settings (Berger, 2014).

Yet, most social challenges and scientific settings are governed by unknown situations, subjective personal creativity and implicit knowing and intuition. Although many social scientists, as well as many practitioners, agree that a rational approach captures only a small part of the processes and dynamics existing in both social systems and organizations, it seems to work well for traditional organizations (both profit and non-profit) that are based on the hierarchical model of top-down decision making and planning. However, the more complex a situation and settings become, the more planning and rationality are losing ground. To deal with complexity we need to learn how to use emergent and creative processes based on the tacit knowing of the arts. Modern, network-type social systems need to encourage system-oriented factors like relation-building and open-minded cultures in order to survive in their complex and constantly changing social environment.

The concept of ‘Bounded Rationality’ (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2002) has already challenged rationality in decision making based on experimental models. The concept proved that rational choice is only one part of human choice; non-rational factors are highly influential in everyday decisions. Nevertheless, the majority of professionals pretend to make rational choices, although relying heavily on ‘intuition’. The reason? Complex social systems, such as modern companies, universities and research institutions, but also non-profits, political and informal communities, are very often not determined by clearly defined goals and strategies. Innovative processes in research are based—in addition to rigorous research principles—on the idea of serendipity. That is, they use opportunities that emerge from non-planned networking. Gradually, we (re)discover that many settings in which we live and work are governed by unknown situations and ill-defined factors. The ability to be creative, to design innovative environments and to improvise in an ostensibly rational and structured situation may be key for our survival in a world that is in reality unpredictable and subject to serendipity.

Indeed, the dynamic process of organizing (Weick, 1995)—although still bound to a culture of numbers, results and rationality—displays a complex network of relations and ‘tacit knowledge’, which is neither seen nor addressed, since practice and perception are both oriented towards attaining goals, maintaining control and setting strategies. More problematically, scientists, entrepreneurs, decision makers and managers—in both traditional and sustainability-driven organizations—typically lack a language to describe their ‘tacit knowledge’ (Polanyi, 1966) in this land of uncertainty.

2.1 Generating Patterns Towards ‘A Performative Pattern Language’

Research and organizational cultures are both performative and dynamic, and will develop through action and establishing relationships, not only by setting rules and structures (Kuhn, 1962). Paul Bate (1995)—one of the most prolific researchers on cultural change—compares organizational culture in social systems to a river bed; habits and dynamic patterns of employees as individuals and (formal an informal) groups, and structural patterns of the organization try to find a viable path, which then (temporarily) becomes the riverbed. The basis here is the principle of ‘viability’ (Glasersfeld, 2002), which is also crucial for the theory of self-organization and entrepreneurship.

Cultural patterns in social systems therefore can be detected, analysed and documented in a sector-, type- or situation-specific manner. The basis for the analysis of cultural patterns is real-life participant observation and interviews; in some cases also document analyses (expressed values and artefacts) or other forms of data collection like digital pattern recognition (Bishop, 2006).Footnote 1 Organizational patterns, used in scientific processes and research, can reveal parts of the collective tacit knowledge base in organizations and scientific institutions: patterns will be discovered and documented as part of a shared learning process that incorporates the perspectives of different actors regarding a specific challenge and their viable approaches. In doing so, they also will create open spaces of conducive and successful actions that can be applied differently in diverse situations.

‘Pattern theory’, as a systems approach (Leitner, 2015), emphasizes both the importance of experiential knowledge and cooperation, and importance of relationships between different parts of a system. The ‘performance of patterns’, i.e. the dynamics of relationships between patterns of a system, is crucial for the success of the whole social system (Stark et al., 2018). According to Pattern Theory, a number of patterns related to each other create ‘a pattern language’Footnote 2 (Alexander et al., 1977) to understand the hidden knowledge or wisdom of social systems. Therefore, to identify and recognize successful patterns in organizations, social systems and eco-systems is highly relevant for common challenges such as sustainability, quality, innovation and learning ability. The role of patterns in transdisciplinary research helps to manage open structures, ambiguity, processes that are difficult to plan and knowledge transfer (Stark et al., 2017).

Patterns may help to address challenges of everyday work within open processes:

  • Which patterns of action or design can be successfully combined?

  • How can different participants communicate with each other about this?

  • Which combinations are viable, which need to be changed?

  • How is experiential knowledge made transparent and usable for all participants?

If the basic structures of the patterns are known, their dynamic application in practice can be developed—as in jazz improvisation and similar to ecology (Hutchinson, 1953) or modern quantum physics (Alexander, 2016). Central to this creative process is the triad of challenge, context and solution with the forces acting between them (Keidel, 1995). By revealing the underlying principles in the tension between these forces, not only is the procedure itself conveyed, but also the insight behind it. Following Borchers (2001), each pattern can be represented like a functional equation:

$$p = \left( {nc,f^{1} ...f^{i} ,set,t,sol,e^{1} ....e^{i} ,con} \right)$$

Each pattern (p) is the function of a typical challenge (nc = challenge), different forces acting here in context (f = forces), temporal dynamics (t = time) and spatial circumstances (set = setting), one or more solution variants (sol = solution), different application examples (e = example) and possible consequences (con = consequences). This describes a typical, situation-specific system of relationships in organizations or communities. Documenting patterns in this form helps to reflect and describe their principles, and to extract invariable elements and apply them to different situations.

If one develops a system of patterns for social systems, they will describe the current state of culture formation in organizations and/or communities in a condensed fashion. A system of relationships (comparable to a grammar) between single patterns (Keidel, 1995) makes it possible to combine related and complementary patterns into a ‘pattern language’ (Alexander et al., 1977; Leitner, 2015; Stark, 2014). A ‘pattern language’ represents essential elements of the co-creation process to deal with certain challenges in different subjects or disciplines. Pattern languages, although situation-specific and unique, represent general procedures proven to be viable in a certain field of application. The principle of the ‘pattern language’ is therefore applicable in all social systems; the goal is to discover one’s own—often hidden and underused—patterns of success (viable patterns), especially for application in ambiguous situations that are difficult to plan. Patterns provide access to a ‘deep understanding’, to the ‘unnamed’ of social systems. Since patterns and pattern languages will open potentials of becoming agile rather than static, they need to initiate creative processes of inventing rather than just finding (Dell, 2002), and should relate to each other in the sense of a ‘living (pattern) language’.

Patterns and corresponding pattern languages for a transdisciplinary approach towards a transformative science may be central components of a dynamic data-bank of knowledge, fed by pattern-generating interviews, document analyses, participant observation and the notation of organizational scores (Vossebrecher, 2017). The approach of a pattern language for tacit knowledge in social systems breaks new transdisciplinary ground in this context. Similarly, it develops a language for (1) a scientific (evidence based), (2) a tacit (experience based) and (3) a creative, artistic dimension of our world. That, again, opens up new ways how to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity and to develop a new approach towards collective resilience (Stark, 2021).

2.1.1 Tacit Knowing and the Improvisational Field

The culture of societies and its organizational research systems unfold in a texture of co-creation of diverse models of partnership. Co-Creation may be found in different formats:

  1. (a)

    the small cooperative cell (the informal group, team) within a scientific community, organization or social system;

  2. (b)

    the socio-dynamic design of a company or non-profit organization as a distinct entity in itself with explicit structures and tacit knowledge;

  3. (c)

    the strategic alliances between different types of groups, organizations and stakeholders.

In contrast to most organizational and scientific settings, in which processes are determined by ‘rational planning’ that does not grasp the hidden power and potentials of tacit knowing, there is a common challenge shared by all stakeholders; they are driven inherently by implicit and ‘tacit’ knowing, and, quite often, emotionally based decision making and processes. This is what we call the ‘improvisational field’, which appears as a layer beneath planning and acting. It is built upon tacit knowing and experiential wisdom.

To uncover the language of tacit knowing, it is useful to experiment with new sensorial channels; if we could ‘sense’ the dynamic processes of social systems, the communicative sensorium in the workplace could be expanded to a new and deeper level which would allow us to access both aesthetic and emotional dimensions of processes. Performing arts, such as music, dance and theatre, as well as modern, performative ways of painting, can be helpful in detecting the potentials of tacit knowledge beyond rational planning (Forsythe, 2003). It can be one key to the ‘…deep level of organizing and innovative processes’ (Stark & Dell, 2013, p. 252), which can be used as a reflective tool for both managers and employees but also for people in communities to start a dynamic and creative process of learning for social systems and individuals.

Improvisation and its performative patterns do not replace the rational, cognitive mode; just as the muscle system in the body is needed for a skeleton to move, to balance and to be alert, the improvisational field and performative patterns are needed to balance structures and rules, as well as ambiguities in each situation new to routine and to be alert to innovations and creative opportunities.

In this chapter, I particularly focus on ‘music and sound’, and use this form of performing art to ‘imagine processes in social systems (communities, organizations) as a piece of music’ (Stark & Dell, 2013, p. 251). I argue that this will open up social and organizational systems, which are often stuck in strategic plans and workflows, and help them to creatively redesign the system. To detect the dynamics of this hidden (implicit and tacit) system within a visible and well-documented system, a special form of musical production is helpful in order to foster learning processes in complex and constantly changing settings, which call for the ability for continuous sense-making and serendipity (Weick & Westley, 1996). The technology of improvisation has already inspired organizational theory as an analogy (Barrett, 2012; Hatch, 1999; Weick, 1995). Improvisational, performative patterns will be even more important for social systems, if we look at music not only as something that can be received or interpreted, but also as a tool for sense-making. Then, improvisation and ‘musical thinking’ (Zürn, 2022) will open up the ability not only to cope with unknown potentials and uncertain processes, but also to redesign patterns and minimal structures in a creative way (Dell, 2012; Stark, 2014).

Adaptive organizational cultures work with improvisational processes (Cunha & Cunha, 2006), well known from jazz or contemporary music (Dell, 2002); that is why they need highly qualified employees with a large degree of freedom to recognize innovation potential and to act flexibly, but they do not require complex structures. Patterns of improvisation in innovative, transformative settings, according to Cunha (2005), are intended but unplanned deviations from routines. It is through these deviations that unexpected problem solutions and development opportunities can be identified and exploited. By breaking existing rules, a new ‘figure’ is achieved. This is a dynamic which we call the ‘improvisational field’—useful, if not necessary, for unplanned and ambiguous settings.

Coping with unpredictable processes also is an everyday challenge in contemporary society, in organizations and communities. In addition to codified rational procedures, members of social systems will usually develop a set of tacit procedures which prove to be viable (Glasersfeld, 1992). Similar to improvisation in jazz music, where musicians interact on the basis of well-known explicit and implicit ‘jazz patterns’ (Coker et al., 1990), this kind of process can be viewed as continuously redesigning and re-arranging implicit and explicit procedural patterns based on experiential (implicit) knowledge; they interact based on already known patterns, and they also refer to other, already existing or traditional patterns, and by redesigning and re-arranging they also create a constant flow of new patterns, which are added to their body of experiential knowledge (Barrett, 2012).

2.1.2 The Art of Listening

Researchers and consultants in social systems are often like deaf observers who enter a room in which someone is playing the violin. In addition to seeing someone using the violin as an instrument, they may measure vibrations with calibrated instruments, and sometimes they can even draw conclusions about the pitch and form of the music. However, being deaf, they will never experience the sensory and emotional perception of the sound. They will never learn from what music offers or triggers in terms of experience as heard (Hayek, 2006), because they are oriented to the usual and rather narrow modes of rationality cognition/language and measurability. Social research by and large focuses on the rational part of a given field by referring primarily to directly identifiable parameters and to countable measures. In contrast, organizational cultures ‘made audible’, sonically or understood musically, will expand the language of visibility and ‘(ac)countability’ in a senso-emotional way. Deep dimensions of social systems, of social structures and organizations, and of transforming innovation processes will be experienced through the channel of music and can be used for understanding and reflection. Since music is complex, it can reflect complex systems, as well as temporal and performative aspects that are lacking in static models. Music can give feedback, both at a structural level and on an emotional level, beyond language codes. Musical feedback stimulates learning and development processes of the organization, especially related to elements such as social interaction, emotion and values (Zürn, 2022).

Self-reflection skills are crucial for innovation, success and sustainable survival. Patterns of innovative processes can be experienced at a new level of reflection. (Self-)Reflection skills are based on basic competences we will need to re-detect in order to develop a transdisciplinary and transformative science. Otto Scharmer (2009), in his seminal Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, highlights how significant the ‘art of listening’ may be to allow transdisciplinary and transformative processes. Listening may slow down processes in a (self)-reflective mode, if you are able to identify the four ‘Levels of Listening’ (see Fig. 16.1):

Fig. 16.1
A chart presents Theory U, levels of listening. Listening 1, from habits, downloading. Listening 2, from outside, factual listening. Learning 3, from within, empathic listening. Listening 4, from outside, generative listening. Factual listening is open mind, empathic listening is open heart, and generative is open will.

Theory U: Levels of Listening (Scharmer, 2009)

Full size image
  1. 1.

    Downloading will re-confirm habitual judgements towards a person or a situation. You are interested in re-confirming your well-known judgements. Downloading may be typical for political debates, boardrooms or many group discussions. You are talking nicely and politely and re-enacting existing rules.

  2. 2.

    Factual Listening is looking for facts which may confirm or disconfirm your data. Switching off your inner judgement also means that you may be open to novel facts. Factual listening is the basic mode of traditional ‘good’ science: you ask questions and listen carefully to responses and data you may get. You are object-focused and maybe rule-revealing.

  3. 3.

    Empathic Listening means you are opening your heart beyond novel data, but to develop an empathic capacity for emotions or emotional results of a context or situation. In empathic listening you try to connect to another person or situation ‘from with-in’. You are reflecting rules and try to reach mutual adjustment. Empathic listening enables dialogue.

  4. 4.

    Generative Listening occurs when you realize that a ‘third space’—something new, not-yet known—may emerge. Generative Listening may be co-creating in its best sense; it will need a mutual open mind to co-create opportunities and novel potentials.

According to Zenk et al. (2023), a transdisciplinary way of doing research and practice will require ‘meta-competences’ beyond disciplinary boundaries and methodological technologies. They discovered a number of meta-competences learning from different disciplines and the art of improvisation, among others:

  • the capability to learn and act in real time;

  • to identify the set of action patterns at hand in different situations; and

  • pre-sensing potential links or future possibilities.

Meta-competences are connected to the art of asking questions rather than giving answers or delivering results is another basic competence for transdisciplinarity: To know how to ask open questions may feel like the flipside of the coin of the art of listening. Empathic and generative questioning means to join one others world view and ask ‘what if…’ (Berger, 2014).

3 Artistic Research and Thinking: Improvisation as an Art and Skill

Processes of research can be re-experienced through music in an indirect, non-representational way. In this type of transformative research, questions or results of process analyses and pattern discovery are made available in the form of musical feedback in order to open up spaces for reflection and action that stimulate the system’s learning potential. The recognition and representation of patterns serves as a methodological and content-related hinge between organization and music. Patterns are the context-related description of highly typical problem solutions that have proven to be successful (viable); they make implicit action-relevant knowledge explicit. As a form of communication, patterns map a cooperative learning process and convey values. Since patterns exist in improvised (and composed) music as well as in organizations, they have an interconnecting function.

Organizational Scores have been developed and used as a research method of ‘musical thinking about organizations’ (Vossebrecher, 2017; Zürn, 2022). In general, scores are forms of making sense of music; if we want to understand the structure of a Beethoven symphony, we use a musical score and read along while listening. The scores of New Music (starting in mid-twentieth century), however, no longer completely predict the exact course of the music; they are not representational, but ‘diagrammatic’. The performers do not just play or perform the notes, but have to develop their own forms of action from the score. This procedure is valuable for innovation in organizations, because here ‘fuzzy’ instructions should lead to ‘sharp’ results: an intended, but unplannable, use of degrees of freedom.

Thus, the medium of music opens up new levels of reflection for the analysis of social system contexts, processes and events. Organizational and musical patterns combine to form a pattern language of organizations that allows access to their deep dimension (Leonard & Swap, 2005). Furthermore, organizational pattern languages can be used to redesign procedures and processes (e.g. for crisis management). In this respect, scores are elements of an instrument portfolio that not only take music as an analogy, but also re-sounds the sensitivity for and enabling of improvisational processes in the sense of learning organizations.

Music, as a performing art (as well as other performing arts like dance or theatre [Fischer-Lichte, 2012; Forsythe, 2003; Johnstone, 1987]), can be a key to the ‘deep level of organizational and innovation processes’ that can be used as a reflective tool both in professional contexts and in everyday life for people in communities to initiate dynamic and creative learning processes (cf. Zürn, 2022). Imagining research processes and projects as a piece of music opens up social and organizational dynamics that are otherwise often stuck in strategic plans and workflows, helping them to creatively reframe the system.

Capabilities for continuous realignment and serendipity (Weick & Westley, 1996) require systematic procedures—a ‘technology’—of improvisation that inspires organizational theory as a metaphor (Barrett, 2012; Dell, 2017; Hatch, 1999; Weick, 1995). If we consider music not only as something that can be received or interpreted, but also as a tool for meaning-making and community building, we can enter and analyse another level of understanding and ‘world-making’ (Goodman, 1978). Francescato et al. (1992) were early to introduce the idea of multidimensional analysis of communities and social systems incorporating artistic thinking into community psychology. Improvisation as an art and skill (and artistic thinking in general) is now seen by numerous researchers and practitioners as a basic element in processes of community resilience and innovation (co-creation) (e.g. Barrett, 2012; Dell, 2012; Stark, 2014, 2017; Zenk et al., 2023).

In everyday life, we discover the art of improvisation in many sporting activities, such as modern soccer, sailing and skiing. Thus, we can assume that whenever human creativity and playfulness are triggered, the art of improvisation is one of the keys to community and collective self-awareness, in addition to developing skills to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty (Small & Schmutte, 2022). Improvisation then opens up the ability not only to deal with unknown potentials and uncertain processes, but also to creatively reshape patterns and ‘minimal structures’ (Dell, 2012; Stark, 2014). Thus, the inventive production of improvisation becomes a norm in itself: challenge and possibility.

3.1 Learning to Improvise: Navigating the Unexpected

The art of improvisation as a basic competence for transformative research develops practical tools for collaborative resilience and innovation processes in research communities and social systems. We can learn to navigate social systems characterized by abrupt change, uncertainty and insecurity. Research communities, especially those collaborating between disciplines, also may become transformative places choreographed by complex ‘rhythms of knowing’ in which we simultaneously navigate and act. Complex social systems—modern ‘fractal’ or ‘fluid’ organizations or networks (De Vet & Lowette, 2019)—take on the qualities of permanent improvisation. A lifestyle of transition and transformation becomes one of the most important features of daily life, especially in multiple global crises.

Improvisation teaches skills of ‘constant readiness’ (or, rather, alertness or mindfulness) and ability to act in the moment (‘act-in-an-instant’; Dell, 2002, 2012), which may be crucial to act in ambiguity and constantly changing situations and crises. To improvise in situations of ambiguity, vigilance and presence become key features of any organization or social system. Improvisation positions itself as a process that also takes into account commitment and trust, the self-confidence of the actors and their interdependence, and biographical characteristics of the individual in a group process. The knowledge of one’s own and organizational success patterns and the ability to combine them in a flexible and creative way opens up new potentials to (re)act on unplannable and unpredictable situations.

Donald Schön (1983) in his well-known description of the ‘reflective practitioner’ refers to the challenge of jazz musicians to use improvisation to create coherence in unpredictable situations. As musicians collectively attempt to develop a creative and inspiring new sound dynamic, they use metrical, melodic and harmonic patterns with which they are all familiar to shape the melody or sound. Musicians usually just intuitively grasp the idea of where the melody is going based on their performance; they will be able to pick up on the new meaning and direct their individual playing to the new goal. Not only are successful improvisations inspiring examples of ‘reflective practice’, according to Donald Schön, but collaborative improvisation can also be seen as the foundation of a new practice of organizing complex systems with an innovative character (Johnson, 2011).

Improvisation does not distinguish between thought and action, but intensifies the movement between the systems/components of the organization and the community in the moment. Improvisation therefore acts like a ‘regulator’ between inter-subjective openness and solipsistic moments of subjectivity. This is when intellectual cognition, social experience and practical-intuitive competence converge—as does the difference between the individual and the collective in social systems and the difference between past and future in time (Scharmer, 2009).

Improvisation works because it asks questions rather than providing answers. It contains difference, gaps, looseness and interstices that are available for the active interpretive work of the actors and thus contribute to the qualification of their experience (Hatch, 1999). In a process of improvisation, actors develop the sensors they need to directly grasp, interpret and harness the ambivalence of a situation. Cunha (2005) simplistically states: ‘In the improvisational mode, people act while they learn, and learn while they act’ (p. 133).

The art of improvisation thus enables the integration of ‘serendipity’ as a learning process and promotes proactive learning (‘deeper learning’) (Sliwka et al., 2022). Rational analysis is not excluded, on the contrary, but the performative aspect of learning and acting is brought into focus (Stark et al., 2017). Analysis in the context of improvisation focuses on the rearrangement and reinterpretation of material gathered in the improvisational process.

Box 16.2: A Transformative Workshop on Community Resilience

How ‘learning’ can transform from knowledge transfer to lively exchange with the inspiration of artistic approaches was demonstrated by a social experiment during the 9th International Conference on Community Psychology in Naples 2022. In a one-day workshop, we approached the topic of ‘Community Resilience’ from three angles: the artistic, the everyday experience and the social science perspective. The workshop has evolved like a dance choreography: different perspectives (represented by the participants) met, approached, moved away, presented themselves or retreated. The participants’ movement opened factually and metaphorically the space for ‘community resilience’. Three performances examined community resilience from various perspectives and viewpoints:

  • An artistic approach used inputs from music, painting and improvisational theatre. These were subsequently reflected upon in small groups with artistic, experiential and social science ‘eyes’.

  • In the experiential angle, the inputs consisted of ‘community stories’ representing personal and collective experiences during the pandemic. Again, small group reflection addressed questions like: what is the beauty or artistic value of the stories told; how did they change personal or shared experiences; what social science analyses can be connected to them?

  • The social science input (research, findings, concepts) was the most familiar to the participants in the third performance, but here it was already touched by the artistic and experiential perspectives.

A multidimensional new way of looking at ‘community resilience’ enriched and changed all participants in their respective cultural contexts.

People in social systems learn through analysis, intuition or improvisation, according to Mintzberg and Westley (2001). Analysis is a structured process that may or may not lead to surprising insights. The analytical mode assumes that an ontological basis is externalized from existing situations. The intuitive mode derives its learning outcomes from making connections not previously suggested. The improvisational mode is structured quite differently. Not only do people act to learn, but they also seek to incorporate analytical frameworks into the action, which then itself becomes a learning laboratory for the ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schön, 1983). Graebner (2004) has shown that an important source of value creation is a kind of sensitivity or sense of feeling (‘serendipity’) that comes from exposure to different practices. The mode of ‘serendipity’ (Eco, 2014) underlies improvisational processes. This mode aims to make use of surprise: to trigger a process that continually recomposes existing and identified patterns, thereby opening up new possibilities for solutions that offer different forms of surprise. This means that those who practise improvisation also practise recognizing patterns that others overlook, and using patterns pragmatically and subtly—as a level below rational patterns of planning and design.

3.2 A Performative Pattern Language

If we use patterns (and thus the experience and knowledge they embody) as foundational elements for dealing with complexity and ambiguity, we can develop a ‘Performative Pattern Language’ of performative patterns of action for community resilience in our social systems (Schümmer et al., 2014). The ability to deal creatively with one’s own patterns of experience and action and to practise the art of improvisation in a situation that is ‘only supposedly’ rational and structured can be a key factor for survival in a world of unpredictability and chance. Patterns of creative action must be able to interact with rational patterns in order to release their true potential when combined. Thus, identifying the creative use of patterns of tacit knowledge (performative or improvisational patterns) as they may occur in music is important for understanding and dealing with codified and documented procedures. This is what we call ‘improvisational fields’ in communities and social systems. It is a level of action where experience and intuition create new structures and movements that parallel rational thought. In scientific communities, performative patterns of action can be used to deal with as yet unknown challenges in creative ways and to find new solutions to given problems. Unlike instruction manuals and user guides, they define the principles of solutions that can be adapted to a variety of environments and situations.

Analysing performative patterns in professional and research context—based on Alexander’s (1977) concept of ‘pattern language’—develops a transformative use of patterns in social systems (Keidel, 1995; Manns & Rising, 2005; Schuler, 2008). According to this concept, patterns unfold and change within the values and principles of specific professional cultures as flexible forms of problem solving that prove viable and successful in practice. It has much in common with the concept of unfolding wholeness presented in Alexander’s more recent work (Alexander, 2004; Alexander et al., 2013).

Collaborative and performative patterns of action may be key to understand the principles of social systems and the deep levels—‘of the unknown’—of complex modern civil and organizational cultures. However, community action patterns today need to go beyond the status quo in a research community and promote flexibility in addition to stability. They create and discover new forms of relationships (‘serendipity’—Cunha, 2005) between well-known patterns of action, between people and things/spaces (Latour, 2005). They enable an interplay between ‘movement’ and ‘structures’: i.e. movements as creative unfoldings of strong centres triggered by perceived tensions and structures as integrative orders that connect the different movements into a coherent whole. The principles of patterns and pattern languages (the ‘patterns of patterns’) can then meet the dual challenge of providing both continuity and variability found in nonlinear systems (Brockman, 1995). On this basis, our approach can be linked to Arcidiacono’s concept of the community psychologist as a ‘collaborative-reflective plumber’—a second (meta) level specialist (Arcidiacono, 2017).

4 Transformative Literacy

At first sight, improvisation works in a disorderly fashion and seems to be either unprofitable or ineffective. But this first impression also shows that the process works, because it triggers those questions that it wants to trigger. In other words, improvisation works because it contains difference, gaps, looseness and intermediate spaces, which are available for the recipients’ active interpretative work, thus helping to qualify their experience (Hatch, 1999). Improvisation thus can be described as a technique which allows us to integrate serendipity as a learning process and involves proactive learning. Rational analysis is not excluded, rather the opposite; the performative aspect of learning is put into focus. Analysis in the context of improvisation concentrates on the rearrangement and reinterpretation of material that is gathered through the improvisational process in such a way that it is connectable to new processes in time. The analytical work then relies on qualified experience and the development of complexity sensors that should lead to a transformation of attitudes and thus enable ecological change. But in order to do this, the improviser needs to develop the abilities needed to recognize change, allow it and help design it.

Unlike an instruction manual or recipe, improvisational patterns describe principles of a solution that can be applied to a particular situation in a situation-specific way. Examples of such patterns include ‘develop trust’, ‘recognize, use and share different skills’ or ‘use unusual places’. When different patterns are combined in a systematic way, they form a situation-specific pattern language that can be used for problem solving and collaborative innovation. Patterns build on experiential knowledge—on strategies and practices that have stood the test of time.

The tacit knowledge in improvisational processes—collective, experiential and accumulated in social systems over time—is, so to speak, the ‘oil in the gears’ or the ‘muscle on the bones’ that gives professional and research processes its character and determines its own dynamics. Schwartz and Sharpe (2010) call it ‘practical wisdom’ (see also Schonbrun & Schwartz, 2020), which is often only apparent at second glance. It is rarely systematically cultivated, because individuals are usually unaware of a ‘collective culture’—as a self-evident part of their everyday lives. Collective improvisational patterns are often the ‘building material’ from which communities and mutual solidarity emerge and with which professional and research communities become stronger and resilient.

Although the ‘practical wisdom’ based on collective improvisational patterns often forms the core of innovative communities or teams, it is rarely documented and taken for granted even by experienced practitioners. Identifying experiential wisdom requires intensive conversations and discussions, because practical wisdom is usually ‘implicit’ and ‘tacit’, i.e. not directly conscious or ‘intuitive’ (…). Becoming aware of one’s own practical wisdom is an important prerequisite for the process of collaborative innovation and transformative research. Rather than conceptually or theoretically describing innovation processes and their associated tools as a whole, success factors and strategies are broken down into individual patterns of action. In contrast to a linear and rigid guideline, the ‘improvisational action patterns’ can be flexibly selected, combined and applied depending on the perspective and situation.

Improvisational action patterns function like practical guides, but are flexible in their application. They help to understand the dynamics of processes, and why some communities are innovative and successful while others are not. In most cases, tacit collective knowledge is passed on orally and informally (‘This is how we do it’, or ‘Do’s and don’ts’) and has an intuitive character (‘I have a feeling about this’, ‘I do this intuitively’). Sometimes, collective documents (minutes, informal newspapers, local history) reveal principles that shape actions. However, when they are used to formulate fixed (behavioural) rules, they often lose their creative and dynamic character. Improvisational patterns of action therefore contain experiential values and principles that can be used to flexibly manage most situations and are constantly evolving.

It is helpful to categorize patterns in a story-like manner (e.g. ‘How we work together and cooperate – Community actors and our ecosystem – The real best solution – Community sustainability and responsibility – Time and space’). The goal is to embed the viable improvisational patterns into a structure of different fields of action and their temporal dependency. By combining different patterns, categories and phases, a pattern language is created in which the potentials of the different approaches are condensed. A pattern language is constantly supplemented, developed and improved.

Successful patterns of collaborative action can—like the building blocks of a DNA—be reassembled again and again to trigger new ideas and innovation processes. The technical and methodological know-how, the extensive experience of community members as entrepreneurs, committed citizens, professionals with different backgrounds and their regional (and sometimes international) networks, will bring the success stories behind the patterns to life and hopefully give rise to many more new ones. In order to enhance these new types of transdisciplinary processes, we need to develop supportive infrastructures and ‘resonance spaces’.

5 Activating Resonance Spaces for Transformative Learning

Researching, teaching and learning have long ceased to be discipline-oriented inventing or the one-dimensional transmission of competencies (knowledge, attitudes and skills). Current and future social, ecological and technical challenges require continuous reflective experience, coordination and negotiation in direct exchange between different actors from art, science, policy, business and civil society.

Universities (and Higher Education in general) will play a central role in creating multidimensional ‘Resonance Spaces’ to develop formats of transformative and lifelong learning. Resonance Spaces will need to be established between research and learning, and civil society, policy and business. They will create an eco-system in which innovative ideas and improvisational patterns, identified in any of the three spheres, will not simply fade away, but will resonate and enable the necessary reflection for sustainable innovations for social challenges. In this way, socially relevant knowledge about change is generated and kept up to date, and transformative social processes are initiated and accompanied at the regional, supra-regional and global levels. In order to develop the mental attitudes and ways of thinking necessary for this, flexible and customized offers of transformative learning are required.

Future universities therefore may emerge as ‘Activating Resonance Spaces’ for our society (Rosa, 2016; Stark, 2021). To establish universities as resonance spaces, and to exchange and share implicit and explicit knowledge (Stark, 2017), patterns and skills, we will need to establish an expanded and transparent ‘communication and reference framework’ for social innovation and improvisational processes (Sailer et al., 2017). We will need to go beyond a mutual understanding of those acting within the academic system. A mutual and collaborative eco-system within the scientific community will still be central, but not sufficient. Rather, through its various formats (teaching, research, transfer) and institutions, universities need to recognize, understand and respond to the demands and challenges of society—in other words, ‘relate’ and ‘resonate’. At the same time, universities as ‘resonance spaces’ need to be heard and echoed in society, as active members of a social discourse on science-based discoveries, insights and innovations.

Teaching and learning in this context will go beyond a one-dimensional transfer of knowledge (from teacher to student; from university to society). It will be a continuous mutual reflective experience. Learning will take place in coordinated and negotiated ways in a continuous exchange of different actors in physical as well as virtual spaces. A multidimensional and resonating space, which will enable, create and maintain its references for research and learning will not simply fade away once a degree or project has been completed. Mutual knowledge and skills from academia, the arts and experience will resonate with current challenges and enable an urgently needed re-reflection for responsible innovation. In short: ‘Activating Resonance Spaces’ are needed as innovative enablers for communication between all social actors. Future universities should act as and provide resonance spaces for the future of our societies and the planet. The core of future universities therefore should rather:

  • promote transdisciplinary thinking and acting ‘out-of-the-box’;

  • systematically encourage learning by experimentation and making mistakes;

  • foster a culture of critical and productive questioning;

  • promote the development of a learning culture in and between social organizations; and, last but not least,

  • build the personalities and identities of future generations and leaders by strengthening social and societal responsibility and a sense of community.

Initial steps and open questions towards transformational teaching and research in ‘Universities of the Future’ have been started in many places—small ‘pockets’ of innovative and transformational teaching and research in the universities of the world, in the context of community service learning, in programmes and research projects on sustainability, or as part of other innovative teaching concepts that have been developed at universities in recent years. However, small innovative ‘pockets’ rarely are connected, so innovation—in a more traditional way—has to be re-invented over and over again. Therefore, common consequences can neither arise from the results and continuous developments can be initiated, nor does the important systematic didactic–methodical exchange between the innovative offers of transformative learning succeed. Yet, at the same time, the vast majority of teaching still is based on the traditional one-way-street.

To break the wave, an interactive, dynamic and adaptive market and information place—for example, an interactive online platform as well as offline elements—might serve. This marketplace makes it possible to match and further develop the different actors with their ideas, competencies, questions, searches and resources as well as existing projects and results in a dynamic process. Future universities will need to add social responsibility and experiential wisdom and practical relevance to academic knowledge—which is how they will contribute to addressing the major future challenges of society.