Redesign Everything Challenge

What Design Can Do (WDCD) is proud to announce the launch of the Redesign Everything Challenge, its fifth Climate Action Challenge in collaboration with the IKEA Foundation, set to kick off on January 17th until March 13th, 2024. What Design Can Do invites innovators from every corner of the globe to submit ideas that radically redesign our world—from products and materials to stories, systems, services, and spaces. This call for creativity extends to all aspects of our lives, emphasising the need for circular and regenerative solutions. The challenge seeks to answer the question: What role can designers play in the transition to a fair and circular future?

The Time to Redesign Everything is Now
Today, signs of climate breakdown are everywhere. The stark reality of having just endured the hottest recorded year yet serves as a wake-up call, as extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and disruptions to ecosystems become more pronounced. However, experts say we still have time to act—a critical window of opportunity in which we must reduce carbon emissions to avoid the worst scenarios that loom on the horizon.

To make this change, we’ll need creative solutions of every scale and in every sector. Many of the problems we currently face are deeply—and increasingly—interconnected. That is why this year—as the planet enters an era of global “boiling”—WDCD is throwing the door wide open and launching its most expansive challenge yet. 

Design as a Catalyst for a Circular Society
Tackling the climate crisis means changing how our economy works (and how it doesn’t). No sector can do this alone—but designers can make an impact by shifting from linear to circular ways of making, using, and living. Next to this, the most important role of design is that of radical imagination: seeing what does not yet exist, making ideas real, and forging ahead with optimism. That is why for this competition, WDCD are looking for creative climate solutions that cut across various sectors and disciplines. This includes new ideas and existing enterprises for how we might reduce the overall impact of our industries: from food, fashion, and packaging, to mobility, electronics, digital services, and construction. 

How to apply
Participants are invited to submit their project online from January 17th to March 13th, 2024, via the Challenge website.

The Redesign Everything Challenge seeks creative climate solutions across five main disciplines: products, materials, communications, spaces, and systems & services. 

In April 2024, a jury of leading experts in design, social impact and climate action will select a minimum of 10 winners. Winning ideas are turned into reality with € 5.000 in funding and a global development programme, which includes online training, mentoring sessions and a bootcamp. This program will support the winning teams in further strengthening their projects and propelling them through 2024 and beyond. As part of the WDCD Challenge network, winners will have the opportunity to appear in global publications and opportunities to speak at WDCD events.

About WDCD
What Design Can Do is an international platform that advocates for design as a tool for social change. Since 2011, they have undertaken numerous activities to promote the role of designers in addressing the world’s most pressing societal and environmental issues. To see previous Challenge winners, click here.

About the IKEA Foundation
The IKEA Foundation is a strategic philanthropy that focuses its grant-making efforts on tackling the two biggest threats to children’s futures: poverty and climate change. It currently grants more than €200 million per year to help improve family incomes and quality of life while protecting the planet from climate change. Since 2009, the IKEA Foundation has granted more than € 2 billion to create a better future for children and their families.

Redesign Everything Challenge

For more information and to participate in the Redesign Everything Challenge, visit: redesigneverything.whatdesigncando.com.