In cultural-historical activity theory, the move from orientation to action is connected to the experiencing of contradictions as personally significant conflicts of motives. Our study builds on the theory of transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS). We conducted a Change Laboratory intervention with adolescents to support them to work on their motive conflicts and to construct and implement projects they found significant. With the help of Sannino’s model, we analyse the evolution of students’ projects as efforts to move from mental future orientation to practical and material future-making. In our data, the conflict of motives and the creation of second stimuli emerged as the most critical steps in the TADS process. We argue that it is time to make the shift from studying young people’s future orientations as private mental phenomena to fostering and analysing future-making as material public actions that generate use-value and have an impact beyond the individual.

This chapter expands discussion of how to promote transformative agency by double stimulation during a Change Laboratory intervention. The intervention was conducted in an agroecological association, geared toward environmental preservation and social inclusion by strengthening family farming and developing agroforestry systems. The chapter analyzes how motives, movement, and mediation interact in the formation of transformative agency. The results show that through double stimulation, participants transformed the way they understood the origin of their problems. The intervention created a space for reflection in which, with the support of auxiliary instruments, the participants were able to produce a transformative movement, analyzing and understanding the structure of their activity, identifying conflicts of motives, and building a new orientation for the future of the activity. This intervention led to a novel concept of the coordination of the association based on the principle of shared responsibilities, as well as to the construction of a proposal to develop the organization.

The first half of this chapter outlines key concepts in cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), including implicit and explicit mediation and double stimulation. The nature of contradictions within CHAT is described as a springboard for development in workplace practices. The chapter then describes how these concepts have been operationalized in the work of Yrjö Engeström and colleagues through the formative interventionist methodology known as Change Laboratory. Change Laboratories are collaborative settings in which contradictions are brought to conscious awareness and worked on to redesign workplace artefacts, norms, and labor arrangements. As contradictions are resolved through new concretizations of practice, participants in the workplace increase their capacity to develop their working world and, therefore, themselves.