How do we build a future worth living in - and how do we get there together? This practice-project module explores exactly that question, combining creative arts, experiential learning, and direct engagement with a functioning intentional community to give students tangible tools for sustainable transformation.

The course rests on two core aims. First, students are introduced to creative methods for social transformation, community building, and empowerment - theories and group exercises, which they can experience, reflect on, and thus embody themselves a different way of perceiving, thinking/feeling and interacting. Second, the module strengthens students' own creative capacities and their relationships with one another, fostering supportive leadership and teamwork skills.

Grounded in Otto Scharmer's Theory U, the program takes seriously the idea that real change starts with shifting the inner place from which we act - individually and collectively. Rather than dwelling on problems, students are guided to focus on possibilities, work with a growth mindset, and become aware of their own unconscious patterns, assumptions, and blockages.

What students actually do:

• Create a short personal film reflecting on something meaningful to them - a hobby, a project, a vision for the future, or a topic close to their heart and present this in the intensive group emersion.
• Engage with Theory U through Scharmer's writing and through practice, including Social Presencing Theater.
• Practice Dragon Dreaming and other creative-arts approaches to sustainable project cycles.
• Visit local sustainability initiatives, such as the Umweltstation Würzburg and learn from their experiences.
• Spend several immersive days at Schloss Blumenthal, an intentional community built on social-ecological transformation principles - including mindfulness practice, a guided tour of the community and its buildings, joint cooking in the community kitchen, workshops on community-building approaches, and evening story-sharing around the bonfire with community members.

Running from 17 April to 22 June 2026, the module is designed mostly in-person, culminating in a multi-day trip to Blumenthal that lets students step out of the classroom and into a living example of the transformation they're studying - turning abstract ideas about sustainability into embodied, collective experience.