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This paper develops connections between design thinking and social practice theories, presenting a toolkit intended to support the development of sustainability interventions and policies capable of encouraging sustainable practices. Key developments in design thinking and social practice theories are critically examined, and a toolkit is presented that sensitively combines their conceptual and methodological insights. The toolkit is one of the first resources that enables practitioners to operationalise social practice theories without substantial prior engagement or training. It thereby offers an accessible resource to support the design of initiatives that could disrupt resource intensive practices and support the emergence and normalisation of less resource intensive alternatives. This paper specifically addresses the contribution the toolkit makes to advancing discussions regarding practice-oriented design. • Connections between social practice theories and design thinking are developed. • Social Practice Theories extend focus towards a socio-technical system focus. • Design Thinking provides immersive participatory methods for intervention planning. • We present a toolkit to aid creation of practice-based sustainability interventions. • A co-productive approach is outlined to enable others to develop practicable outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Sustainability experimentation research tends to focus on governance and infrastructure. • Festivals are a good example of under-researched already existing collective experiments. • 'Not doing' for sustainability is important, and change need not always be so effortful. • The festival also highlights the importance of social legitimisation of alternative practices. • Recognising flexible everyday practices as adaptive capacities is essential in climate change policy and research. Experimentation has become a popular term amongst those interested in fostering more sustainable social futures. But the ways in which researchers and policy makers have thought about experimentation have generally been with reference to new infrastructural and governance conditions. Focusing on intentional interventions downplays the capacity for change stemming from peoples' already existing practices. In this paper, we propose that the camping music festival – a site that continues to be seen by some as a cultural laboratory in which attendees try out new identities – can be thought of as a site of 'already existing' sustainability experimentation. Drawing on 60 interviews about personal washing at two camping music festivals in the UK, we explore the festival as a site from which we can draw lessons about how societies in the Global North might cope with the disrupted water supply linked to future climate change. Interviewees divulge how escaping societal expectations about bodily cleanliness can become pleasurable and the enjoyment found in resurrecting otherwise disappearing societal skills for living without easy access to familiar washing infrastructures. Spending an extended period without these infrastructures, and enjoying the experience, brings into question the assumption of an unwavering consumer need for constant supply that is embedded in modernist visions of 'Big Water' systems. Thus, we argue that research on the geographies of 'already existing' sustainability experiments holds new potential for reimagining mundane, everyday practices within research and policy agendas on sustainable futurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While infrastructure is often understood to operate 'in the background', scholars have increasingly attended to the labour that enables urban material flows. Drawing on empirical material collected through fieldwork and document analysis in Lilongwe, this paper explores how different residents of the city experience and respond to the regular failures of infrastructure. We examine sanitation in one middle- and two low-income areas, considering the contamination of drinking water and the collapse of latrines. Attending to the gendered, embodied, affective, and intimate dimensions of maintenance and repair labours, we develop three interrelated arguments. First, we frame incidents of failure not as individual accidents but as part of persistently fragile infrastructures. Second, we contribute to extending the gaze of infrastructural labours beyond manual work and 'expert' knowledge to consider a range of unpaid practices and their role in preventing, responding to, and being impacted by failure. Finally, we show that both the labour and impacts of infrastructural failure disproportionally fall on (low-income) women. Emphasising the ongoing, gendered struggles of keeping sanitation infrastructures functional helps us to see the limits of scholarship that centres clearly identifiable jobs associated with infrastructure's construction, maintenance and repair. We conclude with reflections on the implications of these arguments for our understanding of the knowledges and labours that keep infrastructures working, and the conditions in which these are performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are fundamental unresolved questions about the nature of the interplay between digital innovations and water management processes. However, there has been little research on how increasing digital transformation impacts water management and infrastructure in the Global South. This article draws on a socio-technical lens and primary field data to analyse the digital transformation of water management in Ghana's state water utility company. Digital water innovations were found to be recent and delivering relatively limited impacts yet, with value mainly accruing at the utility's operational rather than strategic level, and incremental, not transformative. Digitalisation and datafication also present avenues for power shifts, internal and external struggles, and changes in water management structures and responsibilities. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications for water service governance and research and suggestions for using data and information generated from digital water infrastructure to improve services. • Socio-technical lens applied to investigating dynamics of digital transitions within a public water utility. • Contributes real world empirical evidence to understanding water digitalisation. • Different configurations and technologies mediate the relationship of actors, management practices and the outcomes of change. • Socio-technical and inclusive management models are key to digital water transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, smart metering is becoming increasingly prevalent in the utility sector, sometimes as part of extensive smart grid projects or within strategies aimed at the digital transformation of utilities. In the water sector, smart water metering infrastructure has been positioned to alleviate key water management and water access challenges. To date, there has been little empirical investigation into how it is deployed, implemented and experienced by end-users in urban Global South contexts. This study uses a socio-technical lens to address this evidence gap with a mixed-method empirical case study from urban Ghana. Results show smart meters as a utility-centric socio-technical infrastructure, with the water utility having designed the customer out of its current rollout approach. The utility's approach is an incremental one that is responsive to the existing context yet provides limited upgrades and impacts to existing systems and actors. We demonstrate how smart meters are much more than neutral, often shaped through everyday realities but have also become new junctions of friction, mistrust and scepticism between the utility and users. In exploring these issues, we raise questions about the smart metering agenda and related digital transformation policies of utilities, highlighting directions towards more customer-centric design and implementation in the design and deployment of digital water infrastructure. • Smart metering in the utility sector is expanding rapidly, assuming potentially-transformative gains for both utilities and customers. • Investigation into smart water meter deployment in one Global South city offers insights into the realities of its impact. • Utility-centricity characterises the implementation and use of this smart water metering. • Smart meters are so far incremental alterations to existing water infrastructure and everyday water practices. • End-user engagement and customer-centric design are crucial for transformative, long-term gains from smart metering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]