Why

Seeding transition pathways¹ toward life-affirming futures,² whilst the number of crises and their effects exponentiate,³ requires radical and safe experimentation⁴ with multiple levels of aligned stakeholders. These stakeholders need to be able to evaluate⁵ their gestures⁶ as they try on new shapes,⁷ and communicate to a broader audience the learnings of those actions⁸ in a way that honours the complexity of the systems involved.⁹ Systemic shifts, to open up the possibility of such transition pathways, are actively provoked with changes in the underlying approaches to observation, being, and relation.¹⁰ Making visible the difference in approach of this awareness-based work¹¹ is the challenge we are addressing by organising and facilitating action-learning journeys.

What

Action-learning journeys are a process of co-designing and enacting a self-organising intensive. These intensives are participatory, collaborative and in-person. Each action-learning journey includes several weeks of on-boarding and alignment, in which participants identify a system of focus, its potential for evolution, and the intervention that brings the system trajectory closer toward that potential. The intensives are intended to create an experimental container in which to embody the roles needed by that evolved system state. The aim is to make visible the difference of organising collective action in this way, the learnings generated, and the ongoing flows of value between peers that contribute to system health as a whole.

Where

We work with practitioners on-the-ground and aligned partner hub-networks. These actors play a nodal role in their region, and are actively building the capabilities in their communities of place needed to steward its essence and potential. These hubs host the intensives.

How

We are developing a distributed incubator to enable the self-organising of these action-learning journeys, starting with the four process domains of enrolment, ground-potentialising, action and evaluation. By integrating facilitation, innovation and place-sourced design, we are not only incubating on-the-ground action-learning teams, but also the distributed participation infrastructure that makes it possible for teams to engage aligned partners in the communication and evaluation of their work beyond the end of the intensive.

When

The next action-learning journey takes place in Accra, Ghana, with enrolment starting March 17, 2025. The intensive will be held May 12-31.

Who

We are a tightly-knit team with precisely the capabilities needed to bring this work forwards, our combined experience spanning facilitation, network coordination, design and technology development.

Our partners are some of the most committed actors in their respective fields.