Creative industry
The Assignment
The Creative Industries Fund NL invited The Lab of Thought to guide the process for the open call “Roads to Wellbeing”. The call was aimed at spatial designers who want to collaborate with public authorities, stakeholders, and experts on the mobility challenge facing the Netherlands. The central question:
How can the profound mobility transition ahead be shaped in such a way that mobility becomes a tool to improve the quality of life—for everyone?
The Role
The Fund was explicitly seeking a process partner that is not only skilled in facilitation but also a critical voice within the transition itself—a partner that brings creativity, academic insight, and reflective power to move projects forward in meaningful ways.
As process facilitator, our mission was to activate superpowers, build superteams, and orchestrate radical change across all 15 selected projects. We supported project teams in identifying and articulating solutions, challenged them to work from new perspectives, and encouraged them to embrace discomfort as a productive force for reframing reality.
One example: we asked each team to explain their project goals to teenagers—forcing them to translate complexity into clarity and purpose. Throughout the process, our focus remained on building learning organizations: teams capable of navigating uncertainty and discovering new pathways to societal impact.
Our Belief
The substantive expertise within the selected projects was evident. Yet in the context of the mobility transition, we continue to see a gap between policy on paper and the reality on the ground. From public pushback against parking regulations in cities like Haarlem and Amersfoort, to the continued rise in car ownership, and a Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management declaring that “the best days of the car are yet to come”—the contradictions are clear.
To bridge this gap between ambition and implementation, we believe new capabilities (“superpowers”) and capable teams (“superteams”) are essential. Teams that can respond with agility and skill to the stubborn dynamics of the real world are better equipped to create meaningful impact—and to secure broader support.
These capabilities revolve around seeing, thinking, and acting differently. That means questioning the dominant language, assumptions, and mental models that shape mobility decisions. Our role as facilitators was therefore not only to support the process, but also to provide those who are open to it with tools to develop these new ways of working.
Our Approach
We offered reflective peer sessions, provocative speakers, and tailored assignments. We also provided one-on-one guidance to each project. At the end of the program, we produced a podcast series to explore how these teams might carry their learnings forward—continuing to place quality of life and broad-based wellbeing at the heart of future work.
In that series, we specifically explored:
The dominant assumptions about mobility that the creatives encountered—and how design research helped surface new questions that were not initially visible.
The key lessons learned by project leaders during the design process, as well as the new narratives and “narrative seeds” planted through their work.
The evolving roles of the practitioner, creative, advisor, and institutional partner.
The teams’ visions for the future of mobility—and the ideals they’re now working toward.
And the provocative closing question:
What can we do that no one is asking for?
