Author: Oliver Broadbent

Posted on

Big news — Cohort 6 Applications for the Regenerative Design Lab are now open

Our big news this week is that the application process is now open for Cohort 6 of the Regenerative Design Lab. 

Here’s some things that make this moment particularly significant

This is an open lab — unlike the previous two labs where we had focused more explicitly on policy, this lab is for people interested in applying regenerative thinking across a wide range of contexts. We haven’t had an open lab like this for two years, so we are expecting a large number of applicants. 

Policy makers are still very welcome, and you’ll be working alongside designers and built-environment professionals to explore regenerative thinking in practice.

With this lab, our community of past and present participants will exceed 100. The network effect of this many activated change-makers is potentially huge.

The fly-wheel is spinning — with each revolution of the lab, we add more momentum: insights, tools, learning from taking action. It gives each cohort the potential to go further. 

We have a text book — the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design is our manual for developing regenerative conservations with a wide range of audiences.

So are you ready to apply to join this journey? If so, we’d love to receive your application.

Regenerative Design Lab — Cohort 6
Posted on

I’m so glad the humans have come

Just imagine, you are visiting the site of a new development. And you are suddenly aware that you are surrounded by voices. The voices include the insects, the animals, the trees, the plants, the fungi — all saying in chorus:

“I’m so glad the humans have come!”

Because when the humans come they make things better. 

By creating buildings for themselves they improve habitats for others. 

By harvesting materials they contribute to, rather than deplete local renewable resources. 

They take waste and turn it into valuable inputs. 

And their waste is a valuable asset for the rest of us. 

They are so sensitive to the fragile balance of the ecosystem. 

They listen.

They work with us to find the best next step.

Now that the humans are here, we can thrive even more. 

Just imagine.


Because that is our North Star in regenerative design — that every time we design and build something, the world gets better. So that if we weren’t there, the ecosystem would miss us.

Posted on

Field notes: trying on the Systems Change Lab for size

Last week I had the privilege of facilitating an afternoon session for the Engineers Without Borders UK Systems Change Lab in London.

This is such a powerful initiative. It is an action-led community whose purpose is to make global-responsibility the norm in engineering. In their previous meet-up in Birmingham, participants had designed a new community structure. My role this time was to bring that structure to life so people could feel how it might work in practice. 

The community structure has three levels of engagement: 

  • membership; 
  • action groups that self-organise around specific themes; and 
  • a steering group. 

Sounds great — but does it feel like? How might it work? Where do people see themselves fitting in?

Three-part facilitation

Affinity Clustering

We began with one of my favourite warm-ups — walk around the room, catch someone’s eye, do a little hop — to set the playful tone from the start. 

Then came affinity clustering. Participants walk around the room with a large sticker on their chest saying a topic they are interested in exploring in the lab. The aim is to congregate with people with related themes. I called ‘twist’ a couple of times to give players the chance to try out different group configurations before settling where they felt the strongest pull

Simulating an action-group meeting

Newly formed grouped explored their shared interests and how they could collaborate to take action on this theme. Each group chose someone to be their representative at the steering group meeting.

A steering-group fishbowl

The representatives from each action learning group gathered to form the steering group, and held a live meeting in the middle while others observed. Onlookers outside the fishbowl could pause the conversation and offer reflections. 

Across these three stages the community structure came to life. People could feel the dynamics, understand the logistics and make suggestions for how to make it better. 

The fishbowl in particular opened up important early questions: 

  • How much autonomy should the action groups have?
  • How much should the steering committee  steer or respond?
  • How does information get communicated across the whole Lab?

These are important questions in any organisations, but particularly ones that are action learning and self-coordinating. 

If you’re interested in the EWB-UK Systems Change Lab, you can join their mailing list here:

Systems Change Lab
Posted on

Feedback = understanding

I’m grateful to my friend and Regenerative Design Lab colleague Ellie Osborne for this model. 

On the second day of our Cohort 5 Autumn Residential, we were sitting around the fire discussing interconnection in design. More explicitly, how connected do we feel to the places where we take materials from to build our buildings. 

A key factor in how regenerative systems stay in balance is through local feedback loops: knowing how much material is available and how much can be used without causing harm.

The feedback loop gives information about what is available. But perhaps a more human way to understand this feedback is to think of it as understanding. 

If a developer decides to build a new building in the city using material dug from just outside the suburbs, I am likely to have a much stronger view about this decision than if the material comes from a distant place I have never heard of.

I have an understanding of what it would mean to double the size of the open-pit mine if it were right here, compared to elsewhere. 

Now, mining, at small scale, can have a positive impact on habitats, and has been an important part of human construction for millennia. But that’s not the point. 

The point is, the closer the site, the stronger the feedback. The stronger the feedback, the stronger the understanding.

Posted on

Flops — the aérotrain

I snapped this photo of a photo at the Flops?! exhibition last month at Paris’s Musée des Arts et Metiers. The exhibition explores the importance of failure in design. Which is an important topic, for another day. For now I just want to share how much I love the story of the aérotrain.

The train floats on cushion of air, like a hovercraft. At the time, British Rail was experimenting with similar floating trains, generating forward propulsion using magnets (you can still see the prototype outside Peterborough station, on the left-hand side as you enter the station going north). The French team were trying something different: strapping a gas turbine engine onto the roof. The prototype reached speeds of over 400km/h!

But jet powered floating trains weren’t to be. Despite positive results from early experiments, the existing industrial railway establishment wasn’t going to tolerate this incursion into its territory by the aerospace sector. The aérotrain experiment was cancelled in favour of the now familiar TGV.

But the traces of this audacious experiment remain — the track still runs parallel to the train from Paris to Orléans, an abandoned piece of futuristic infrastructure from the past. But I love these — they are a symbol of the power to imagine something different, even if it didn’t work out that way.

Posted on

Everything had to change for everything to stay the same

This is the key line in one of my favourite films, Visctonti’s 1963 The Leopard. 

Based on the novel of the same name by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, the film follows the life of the Prince of Salina during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. 

Rather than fight the revolution, he goes with it, because he senses that after the revolution the old power hierarchies will remain. 

‘Everything had to change for everything to stay the same’. 

This line could sound fatalistic. But I take it as a warning not to be complacent when we see change coming. Change might signal  the dismantling of the status quo. Or it could simply mean the current system rearranging itself to maintain power. 

How can we tell the difference? 

Well, we can spend time thinking about what the future is we want to build. What are values? How is it wired together? What would thriving look like?

In the Toolkit for Regenerative Design, two models help with this”

  • Changing Mindsets — how our worldview shapes the systems we create
  • Living Systems Blueprint — the characteristics of systems that create thriving over time

When we have clarity, then we can scrutinise the latest novelty and ask:

is it a path to better, or is it a path to more of the same?

Posted on

Facilitation technique: The Fish Bowl

The fish bowl is facilitation technique that enables a large group of people to observe a small group. The small group sit around a table and discuss a topic. The participants in the small group hold a discussion around an initial topic. A chair person holds the space, making sure people are contributing appropriately and adding their own observation. 

Standing around the small group are the rest of the audience. They are not allowed to contribute or interrupt. 

Once the small group has had some time discussing the topic at hand, the session facilitator calls cut, and asks the rest of the audience to comment on what they have observed. What did they see emerging from the conversation. What would they like to see the group discussing next. How would they like chair to facilitate the next part. 

The facilitator then instructs the chair on how to proceed. This switching between the small group and large group can go back and forth a few times until the session has met its aims. 

The Fish Bowl is good for exploring both what people talk and how they talk about it. By giving the opportunity to pause, reflect and direct the conversation differently, we get to see how different factors influence the conversation. 

Posted on

Starting to see the system

Yesterday we kicked off our new introduction to regenerative design, ‘Seeing the System’. 

The premise is simple: seeing more clearly the systems we are working with as a precursor to changing them for the better.

The system of drawing plans, mining materials, fabricating components, pouring foundations and assembling all these elements to create buildings and infrastructure — the system we call construction — is currently wired to cause net harm. 

Yes we create buildings, yes these buildings for the most part are beneficial, but the side-effects are major contributors to climate change and ecological destruction. 

To understand why, we have to see the system. 

  • What kind of systems are we dealing with?
  • What are the feedback loops that reinforce the way the system works?
  • How is the system organised?
  • How do materials and energy flow?
  • What is the system optimised for?
    What are the mindsets that govern our behaviour as well as our dreams?

Then we can start to ask what if that system were different? What if every time we built something, the places that were touched by that process were better off? Habitats enriched, communities enhanced — all through the act of design and construction. That’s the goal of regenerative design.

Seeing the system helps us to interpret this dream, compare it to reality and then help us figure out what step to take next.

We’ll be running another edition of Seeing the System in the spring — stay tuned for more info.

Posted on

Torpor

I like the word ‘torpor’ — a state of physical or mental lethargy. I like the word much more than I like feeling it. 

I feel torpor when I spend too long doom-scrolling the news. I notice hope quickly sapping away. 

The easiest thing is to be depressed about the state of the world. It is harder work to be hopeful. 

And yet, we have to find the energy to stay hopeful. Because the elements of the future we want to build lie in the present. They actually surround us. 

But if we succumb to torpor we stop looking, stop searching, stop noticing and then that future slips out of our fingers. 

(There’s three-horizons thinking underlying this post. Check out the Three Horizons Model in Tools for Regenerative Design).

Three Horizons
Posted on

The algorithm works for Horizon One

The algorithm works for Horizon One.*

The bit of code, which decides what you see next on your device, is optimised to keep you looking at your screen, and staying on that platform. 

The owners of those platforms are the richest and most powerful people and organisations in the world. They have no interest in change, unless it is change which consolidates power. 

To make change we need different platforms: community groups, newsletters, meet-ups, face-to-face participation, and yes, new platforms powered by algorithms that are wired for hope, care and thriving. 

*Horizon One is a reference to the Three Horizons Model.