- SHIFT is really the culmination of everything we’ve done and everything we’ve learned. It developed over three years, emerging directly from ideas and experiments that started with Complexities.
- We’ve collaborated with a wide range of urbanists from across the Global South and its diaspora: researchers, academics, activists, policymakers, organisers, journalists, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, product designers, architects. The breadth mattered.
- What emerged is a system that combines multiple formats. Games, case studies, music, ideas, prompts, analytical tools. All of it working together.
- Each edition is organised around four modes of engagement: Explore, Think, Adapt, and Play. The intention is straightforward—to give people practical ways to understand the systems shaping their cities, to imagine alternatives together, and to think about possible actions grounded in their own context.
- SHIFT is designed for educators, organisers, practitioners, and community groups working on questions of cities, culture, and social change. What connects them is a shared need: to engage complexity without shutting people out.
- It’s not a programme or a workshop. Think of it instead as infrastructure for conversation—portable enough to work in formal and informal gathering spaces, with multiple entry points depending on what people need.
- Our launch edition is titled Emergence, and it consists of 28 items exploring how ideas, institutions, and practices actually take shape in rapidly changing urban environments.
- The first edition has established a framework that future issues will build on, each introducing a new theme and set of tools that expand the system over time.
- Three years of work on the first edition have shown us something important: complex ideas don’t need to be dumbed down to become accessible. When you structure them through prompts, stories, and interactive formats, groups can engage difficult questions collectively without needing someone external to mediate the process.
- We’re also learning that the journey matters as much as the destination. Where SHIFT goes next is genuinely open. Its evolution will depend on how people actually use it, adapt it, where it proves useful or falls short. Those responses will shape what comes next. What stays constant is the intention behind it: contributing to more inclusive and practical ways for people to think together about how we live now, and what the cities yet to come might look like.
Adanech Abebe
Benji de la Pena
Charles Onyango-Obbo
Chat Chuenrudeemol
Claude Bona
Cosimo Campani
Deen Sharp
Dixon Chibanda
Ferial Hafajee
Gavin Weale
Geci Karuri-Sebina
Idris Jala
Jesusegun Alagbe
Kim Gurney
Kwanele Sosibo
Lee Middleton
Mahdi Sabbagh
Mark Lewis
Mathias Agbo
Mikael Awake
Mpho Matsipa
Olalekan Jeyifous
Omar Yousef
Racquel Rolnik
Rahul Mehrotra
Renzo Quinto
Rob Muggah
Ruchi Gupta
Sammy Baloji
Sheela Patel
Susan Parnell
Tatiana Thieme
Tolullah Oni
Vincent Plisson
Vukosi Marivate
Vyjayanthi Rao
Wael Al Awar
