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Co-design Summaries and Technical Training

Stages 1 to 4: From Embodiment to Application

Stage 1: Embodied Awareness & Contextual Grounding

The journey began with a focus on embodied experience, team dynamics, and systemic observation. Through a sensory-based room reorganization exercise, participants explored adaptive communication and leadership under constraints. The morning continued with team-building sessions highlighting empathy, adaptability, and shared leadership. A guided community walk and context mapping deepened understanding of local systems, revealing key themes such as waste management, urban inequality, and youth development. The day closed with reflective dialogue linking personal purpose to community impact.

Stage 2: Collective Insight & Early Prototyping

Building on embodied practices, Stage 2 moved toward sense-making and solution design. Participants explored the concepts of “potentialising” and emergent leadership, grounding theory in lived experience. Using the Emergent Learning Tables, teams mapped observations into insights, hypotheses, and opportunities. This process led to the formation of three focus groups tackling flood management, addiction intervention, and traffic congestion. The day concluded with a timelining demo, shifting the mindset from competition (prizes) to collaboration (sponsorship), emphasizing contribution over time.

Stage 3: Evaluating Value & Structuring Impact

Stage 3 centered on defining and evaluating “value”—personally, collectively, and within the broader community. The day began with a gratitude-based reflection circle and transitioned into group discussions on how value manifests through Action Learning. Participants designed early-stage MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) aligned with community needs and shared values—such as intergenerational gaming hubs and local knowledge-sharing tools. Afternoon sessions introduced timelining and schema development for capturing insights and tracking social impact. The day ended with strengthened group bonds and a sense of ongoing co-creation.

Stage 4: Iteration, Application & Presentation

The final stage was a hands-on intensive focused on developing and refining the services and products previously conceived. Each team worked collaboratively to iterate their ideas, making necessary adaptations for real-world application in their local communities. This phase emphasized practicality, clarity, and alignment with community needs. Teams then presented their solutions to a panel of external evaluators, responding to application-style questions and receiving feedback. The experience challenged participants to translate vision into viable offerings, strengthening their readiness for implementation and scaling.

Emerging Outcomes Across Stages 1–4:

  • Embodied understanding of systems thinking and leadership

  • Insightful, grounded community problem analysis

  • Creation and refinement of context-specific solutions

  • Integration of evaluation, feedback, and real-world testing

  • Confidence and clarity in presenting and defending ideas

  • Foundations laid for long-term collaboration and implementation

Some more materials worth checking:

  • Learning Arcs I: Power Point Presentation used in stages one and two.
  • Learning Arcs II: PPPresentation in depth about the methodologies used for each stage.
  • StoryTelling: Hacking Value Session
  • Blockchain 101: Technical blockchain training was provied by Ez, the Hub Programme Manager. This gave teams key APIs and frameworks to use, which everyone found incredibly helpful.
  • Technical Requirements: Technical requirements training was provided to get teams to think about how to structure the MVP they would develop in the second week, after they had spent the first week understanding their systems.
  • Curriculum: Curriculum that ARC (the hub that hosted the intensive) use to teach Cardano. Many of the teachings were done in-person and spontaneously as the agenda was emergent, adapting in response to how teams were forming and evolving, guided by facilitators.