As platforms for dialogue, art-science collaborations hold the potential to cross disciplinary boundaries to better understand and engage the public in addressing sustainability challenges. Moving beyond documenting outcomes, this study details how researchers and composers combined science communication and artistic expression to co-produce performances as part of the Baltic Sea Festival Science Lab. Drawing on insights from a joint reflection process, we recount our motivations for participation, provide insights on the co-production processes of six researcher-composer pairs, and share our experiences of the performances. We highlight openness to other ways of working, different perspectives and opinions, and emergence as well as collaborative skills, including listening, communication, and problem-solving skills, as key enablers for crossing disciplinary boundaries in art-science collaborations. As answers to the question on how, why, and in what ways platforms for dialogue can turn into platforms for learning, we discuss opportunities for designing safe-enough spaces, working towards a shared goal while embracing the unfolding nature of a process, and engaging in reflection to follow up on and make sense of one’s learning. Through this study, we hope to provide guidance for those who wish to engage in art-science collaborations to co-produce pathways towards sustainable futures together.

Addressing sustainability challenges requires collaboration and the inclusion of diverse actors in decision- and policy-making. Knowledge co-production holds potential to bring diverse actors together to jointly develop pathways for change-making. Yet, legitimacy and effectiveness concerns prevail: whose knowledges, interests, goals, and values shape pathways development, and can such processes lead to action and thus close the implementation gap? To address these concerns, this PhD thesis sets out to transparently unpack knowledge co-production with a focus on process design and evaluation. It aims to better understand the emergence of changes at individual and collective levels (e.g., competency development, trust- and relationship-building) and their role for change-making. While The Design Paper and The Learning Paper focus on a knowledge co-production process on the island of Öland, Sweden, The Walking Paper and The Living Lab Paper put insights from the Öland case in conversation with knowledge co-production processes in other multifunctional landscapes. The Design Paper outlines activities for moving from understanding water scarcity issues on Öland and actors’ different interests, goals, and values towards developing strategies centering collective change-making. The Learning Paper traces actors’ relational learning and the development of competencies in sustainability. The Walking Paper presents walking workshops as a method for better dealing with plurality in knowledge co-production by outlining activities for surfacing, sharing, and making sense of place-embedded knowledges, care, and agency. The Living Lab Paper documents effects of framing and process design elements on connecting knowledges and developing feasible strategies with implementation potential. A key contribution of this thesis is its insights into activities for grappling with complexity, dealing with plurality, handling tensions, and connecting with agency. It also leverages nurturing relations as a driver of change at both individual and collective levels. To further inform the theory and practice of knowledge co-production, this thesis suggests ideas for embedding knowledge co-production in real-world laboratories, bridging organizations, and the work of public agencies.

With increasing land-use pressures on landscapes, it is critical to improve their governance while being inclusive of those living there. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites and Biosphere Reserves play a crucial role in protecting both social and ecological values in designated landscapes, making them interesting sites for action-oriented research. The designation and maintenance of these protected areas can form and reshape the place-based identities and senses of belonging held by local actors and consequently enable or restrain the process of mobilizing action for sustainability. In this review, we build on recent literature and our own experiences of research in UNESCO sites to propose place-based identities and senses of belonging as potential deep leverage points that may be acted on to achieve transformative action-oriented research for sustainability while also reflecting on our own positionality before and throughout the research process.

1. Learning, and how we learn, is integral for the governance of complex social-ecological systems. With the growing interest in knowledge co-production comes a need to further study how to better enable learning between different actors engaged in dialogue-based processes.
2. We use an empirical case of a workshop series centred on collaborative water and landscape governance on Öland, Sweden, to explore how a process partly designed for relating to others supported participating actors in their learning. Based on an analysis of reflection exercises and semi-structured interviews conducted with all 17 actors, we assessed learning outcomes using competencies in sustainability as the analytical lens. Competencies in sustainability allowed us to investigate how and why actors developed individual changes in perception and built and strengthened the skills and attitudes needed to deal with complex challenges in practice.
3. We provide empirical evidence that relational learning takes place in knowledge co-production processes and supports actors in competency development. The detailed accounts of changed understandings of the problem, pathways forward and especially other actors show that relational learning plays a key role in addressing misunderstandings and conflicts of interest, which could make collaborative governance arrangements more feasible. We found that a mix of discussion and interaction formats and activities specifically designed for relational learning create opportunities for engaging with plural understandings, perspectives, interests, norms and values. Hereby, actors need to draw on active listening, compassionate communication, collaborative and critical self-reflection skills as well as positive attitudes towards plurality. Different assessment approaches embedded in a process provide time for reflection and revisiting the learning.
4. We argue that designing for, supporting and tracing relational learning in knowledge co-production leverages dialogue-based processes as a suitable tool for nurturing collective action for addressing sustainability challenges in complex social-ecological systems.

Enabling diverse actors to address interlinked sustainability issues is important and challenging. This paper focuses on how to design a dialogue-based knowledge co-production process to nurture collective action. Using the conceptualization of systems, target, and operational knowledge as the guiding framework, we designed and combined different complementary activities to invite actors to look at a wicked problem through multiple lenses and reflect on their own positions, perspectives, knowledge, and values. With a carefully documented workshop series held with local actors on Öland, Sweden, as our empirical case study, we demonstrate how we moved from exploring the multifunctionality of landscapes and understanding actors’ different values, preferences, and priorities, to developing four strategies for effectively accelerating and expanding efforts to adapt to climate change. Our study reveals how the process of mobilizing, articulating, and connecting individually held systems, target, and operational knowledge nurtures collective action. It also leverages dialogue-based processes as cornerstones in addressing sustainability challenges in an inclusive and equitable way.