Co-Creating a Greener Future:
The Fit4Green Experience in Kuchl, Austria
By Owen Southgate | NYSA Sweden
Introduction: Youth Leading Sustainable Innovation
In June 2025, the picturesque Alpine town of Kuchl, Austria, became the setting for a bold and inspiring experiment in sustainability education. As part of the Erasmus+ Fit4Green project led by the European University Sports Association and supported by NYSA Sweden, this initiative reimagined the relationship between sport and sustainability by placing young people at the heart of the conversation, and in charge of organising a sport-themed event centred on environmental responsibility.
This was no conventional workshop. It was not simply an event about sustainability, it was a student-led, student-designed sporting experience shaped through co-creation, storytelling, and the Cynefin decision-making framework. These tools supported participants in navigating the complex intersections between socially impactful ideas and practical sporting activities.
Rather than being delivered to young people, the project was created with and by them. It demonstrated that education for sustainable development must be experienced, interrogated, shaped, and ultimately owned by those it seeks to empower.
A Student-Designed Sustainability Event: Ownership and Impact
At the heart of the event were the students of the Holtztechnikum School in Kuchl, who were not passive recipients of knowledge but active co-creators. They were invited to plan, design, deliver, and participate in an internal sustainability-and-sport event from beginning to end.
Working in self-organised teams, the students explored what sustainability through sport meant to them. Their ideas were both imaginative and grounded, from low-carbon physical activities to upcycled sportswear, and the repurposing of waste materials for game design. This was not about ticking boxes. It was a chance for students to connect their personal values, educational background, and ecological concerns in ways that were both meaningful and impactful.
The resulting festival of sport, attended by fellow students, teachers, and visiting stakeholders, sparked lively discussions about the potential for young people to lead transformative change in sport and beyond.
Narratives, Complexity, and Research Beyond Surveys: Using Cynefin for Deeper Insight
The event was not only a showcase of student creativity; it also served as a site for ethnographic inquiry. Project partner Innovationsmanufaktur, represented by Orsolya Tolnay, used the opportunity to observe, survey, and interpret how young people understand and communicate ideas around sustainability and responsibility within a sporting context.
Supporting this process was the Cynefin Framework, which had been introduced in a series of localised workshops in the lead-up to the event. The framework helped participants determine whether challenges were simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, or disordered—thus guiding how they might be approached.
It soon became clear that the issues students were addressing—climate change, consumerism, ecological accountability, firmly belonged in the ‘complex’ domain of the framework. These are not problems that can be resolved through best practice or prescribed steps. Instead, they require collaboration, emergence, and adaptive thinking, core principles of co-creation itself.
Through informal group dialogue, participatory observation, and open-ended surveys conducted via Google Forms, the Fit4Green experience became a dynamic method of enquiry. It enabled partners to gain insight into students’ behaviours, values, frustrations, and motivations for future environmental action.
Reflections: Integrating Co-Creation into Traditional Systems
Despite the clear success of the Kuchl event, project partners acknowledged the challenge of embedding co-creation within mainstream educational and sporting systems.
Co-creation thrives in ambiguity, iteration, and collective exploration. It values process as much as product. Yet traditional institutions often demand clarity, predictability, and measurable outcomes, conditions that can inhibit the potential of student-led innovation.
Educators championing co-creation may encounter barriers such as rigid timetables, inflexible curricula, or a lack of training in facilitative practice. Meanwhile, students who flourish in experiential and relational learning environments may struggle to align such approaches with assessment-driven models.
Nonetheless, the Fit4Green event in Kuchl provides a blueprint for what is possible. With thoughtful facilitation, strategic support, and trust in young people’s capabilities, it is possible to carve out transformative spaces, even within constrained systems. This requires not only policy flexibility, but a fundamental shift in mindset, from delivery to dialogue, from instruction to enquiry.
Looking Ahead: Building a Culture of Youth-Led Sustainability
The success of the Kuchl event sends a clear message: young people are not only willing to engage in sustainability, they are ready to lead. The task now is to embed this potential more widely across the systems of sport, education, and youth development.
As Fit4Green evolves, the insights from Kuchl, alongside those from similar events in Latvia and Slovenia, will inform the creation of a practical and adaptable toolkit. This will include co-creation methodologies, storytelling templates, and strategies for navigating institutional barriers.
More broadly, the project affirms a critical principle: in a world of interconnected challenges, it is young people, with their creativity, honesty, and deep, rooted local knowledge, who are best placed to drive sustainable transformation.
Projects like Fit4Green do not simply involve young people, they position them as sense-makers and catalysts for change in an uncertain world.
And in the small town of Kuchl, we were offered a glimpse of that future: grounded in community, built through collaboration, and powered by imagination.