Collaborative Support Networking as a Systemic Design Practice for Approaching the Polycrisis

In this paper, the authors present collaborative support networking as a practice in systemic design and as one approach to addressing the diverse manifestations of the polycrisis. This collaborative networking is explored through the metaphor of the “Meeting of the Waters” in Brazil, a generative metaphor that provides a way of seeing a systemic design approach to the polycrisis as a complex confluence of difference and similarity that synthesizes into wholeness. Using this as a frame, the authors pose the question: “How do we design for collaborative support networking that affords the co-creation of regenerative, sustainable, and just futures in the face of the polycrisis?”