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The Agents of Change program is a two-year, project-based learning program to develop Extension Professionals’ capacity to engage in Adaptive and Transformative Leadership. Its primary goal is to develop the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in leadership to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just Extension programs and community change initiatives. This manuscript describes the program and an initial evaluation and results.

Results of an evaluation of the first year of the program indicate that regular training sessions and support are appropriate for leadership development and that Extension Professionals are using the learning, awareness and tools from this program to address challenges with Adaptive and Transformative Leadership elements. Also, Extension professionals demonstrated commitment to personal growth, community engagement and understanding of their multifaceted roles as change agents.

Participants are sharing resources from the program with colleagues, leading meetings differently, questioning the status quo and pushing others to try new ways forward.

Following the positive call for a special issue on Architectural Pedagogies and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the purpose of this overview article is to contextualise reflections on nine selected articles, within recent efforts made by professional organisations, which aspire to blend sustainable development into the collective psyche of both academics and future professionals.

This article adopts four lines of inquiry by capturing key insights on the place of sustainable design knowledge in architectural education validation and accreditation at both national and global scales; presenting analytical narratives on the recent global efforts that embrace excellence in architectural pedagogy through addressing SDGs; elucidating the two knowledge spaces, centred on pedagogy and sustainability, which are strengthened and supported by Archnet-IJAR, and offering reflections on the nine articles published in this special issue that aims at integration of the two knowledge spaces.

Contextualisation and reflective narratives offer insights into current efforts and demonstrate a clear commitment of professional organisations to embed values relevant to SDGs. Efforts of the Education Commission of the International Union of Architects and the UNESCO-UIA Validation Council of Architectural Education appear to have advanced significantly over recent years with a clear prospect for a sustainable future. The nine articles published in this special issue respond clearly to the goal of Quality Education (SDG4), but not all of them have addressed the goals related to Good Health and Well-being (SDG3) and Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11), and their place in architectural pedagogy. However, they take a step further to address aspects of climate change, globalisation, sustainable architecture and urbanism, social sustainability, global north/global south dialectics and decolonisation.

The findings offer opportunities to recognise efforts by professional organisations, map key pedagogical experiments into these efforts, while providing lessons learned from best practices aiming to effectively integrate SDGs into architectural pedagogy.

No serious effort has been made to articulate the integration of SDGs into architectural education at the level of research or design studio pedagogical practice. Addressing architectural pedagogies and sustainable development is predicated on the fact that there is very little written or known on integrating SDGs into architectural education and design pedagogy. Understanding, appreciating, and sharing various efforts and approaches to incorporate SDGs into architectural pedagogy is a key step towards a sustainable future.

Moving away from the stories of financial disaster we encountered in Chapter 2, Chapter 3 examines what it means for fans when their club is suddenly awash with more financial muscle than some nation-states due to the generosity of a wealthy benefactor who is seemingly more interested in sporting glory than in financial gain. This chapter engages with the notion of the football club as a billionaire’s plaything. Roman Abramovich’s acquisition of Chelsea in 2003 saw the West London club embark on an eye-watering spending spree and a sustained period of on-field successes, one that was unknown in the club’s history to that point. As a result, we take Chelsea during the Abramovich era as a starting point for considering how this model of ownership affects the relationship between fans and the connection that they have with their club. The evident success that financial muscle can bring shows owners what a happy fanbase is capable of, what they are capable of doing, and what they are capable of ignoring. The success of the financially doped teams of the 2000s created a precedent for winning over a fanbase with a successful football club, but nevertheless sat awkwardly with the normative ideals of how a football club should exist in the world and relate to its supporters.