Author: Oliver Broadbent

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Pattern book field notes – action learning and continuous place-based design

The Pattern Book for Regenerative Design is propped against a sign saying keep off the grass. In the backdrop is the quad of a Cambridge college

This week I took my copy of the Pattern Book to Cambridge. (Its second visit: in July I dropped it — and my laptop — in a puddle. Both recovered, and this time was less eventful.)

I was there to deliver my annual September workshop for the new cohort of students on the Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment (SLBE) masters at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Two Pattern Book entries featured strongly.

Continuous place-based design

The workshop was called Design your learning process. We began by asking: what is design? I asked students to sketch a diagram of design as they see it.

This is central to the Constructivist method: start where the learner is, then connect new concepts to what they already know.

After sharing diagrams, I introduced a series of design models, each adding a new dimension, until we reached the Continuous Place-Based Design motif. At each stage, I pointed to overlaps with the students’ diagrams.

The point isn’t to treat any model as a strict procedure, but to use it as something to compare with reality — and then think how we might shift that reality for the better.

Action learning

From there, we turned to the idea that continuous place-based design is really a learning process. Which led naturally to the Action Learning motif.

It’s easy to be passive in learning. The real value comes when we apply theory to practice and then reflect on the results. The Pattern Book entry for action learning even includes a script for running these conversations with colleagues.

This month, I’ve been in workshops on live infrastructure projects where the same theme has surfaced again: organisations struggling to learn from mistakes. Not lessons learned, but lessons lost. For me this underlines that action learning isn’t just a training method — it’s a principle for working in complex systems.

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It is such a pleasure to teach on this course — this is the start of my eighth cohort! Many graduates are readers here, so if that’s you: thank you for sticking with me all these years.

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Learning as a design process

Diagram showing the cycle of Continuous Place-Based Design: Observe, Brief, Ideas, Make & Test — all centred around Place.

In a flip of yesterday’s post — if design can be a learning process, then learning can be a design process too.

What would it look like to approach learning the way we approach design?

Design begins with intention. It asks: how do I take an existing situation and make it better? That invites us to name where we are now — and to define what better might mean for us.

Design also embraces divergence. In a learning context, that could mean exploring unexpected sources, challenging the materials in front of us, or inventing new ways to engage.

Design gives a different meaning to testing. Not testing to see if I made a grade, but testing to see if I fulfilled the brief. 

And design invites us to keep coming back to the brief and ask how could the brief be improved.

By designing our learning we have the potential to not just passively follow a learning process but to create one that more intentionally meets our needs. 

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Design as a learning process

Many projects treat design as a problem with a fixed answer. But what if we treated design as learning journey?

In a complex world, design needs to be a responsive process. This means observing, setting intentions, developing ideas, testing them and seeing what happens. With each iteration of this process we get a better understanding of how the system responds to our thinking — and how our thinking needs to respond to the system.



  • This mindset encourages us to:
  • Respect complexity
  • Work iteratively
  • See value not in a single deliverable, but in insight that accrues over time

It’s hard to argue with that. And yet many design processes are linear and short-term.

But just think about what long-term value could be unlocked by shifting from merely delivering an answer toward building understanding.

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The dream walk experiment at Hazel Hill Wood

Last week at Hazel Hill Wood we ran a ‘dream walk’ with staff and trustees. The aim was to tune into our long-term hopes and aspirations for the site, as we continue the responsibility of creating a thriving place for care and learning.

Hopes and dreams are part of what a place is trying to do. They arise from our relationships with place and help steer the flow of change.

We began with Zuma Puma’s Box-Clearing warm-up (a technique I learnt from one of my clown teachers —more on that in another post), then set out into the woods. The rules were simple:

  • Walk to a place in the wood.
  • Walk with your gaze slightly raised to invite in fun and curiosity (another technique from another clown teacher, Robyn Hambrook) 
  • Share what you’ve always hoped for this place.
  • Imagine how it could be, how it might change.
  • Speak until you’re done.
  • The next person picks up — not to challenge, but to add their own dreams.

We captured dreams in audio and notes, later mapped across the site.

What I learnt from facilitating the process

  • The temptation to say why not is strong — the delivery mindset of Horizon One is never far away. With reminders, we shifted into a more open Horizon Three frame.
  • Some dreams resonated and compounded — one voice building on the next until a vision took shape.
  • Some spots felt dream-silent, as if they were low-energy places. Others flowed with possibility, hinting at where change energy gathers. This was a real ah-ha moment for me.

This dream walk supported three things at once: observation in Continuous Place-Based Design, imagining Horizon Three in the Three Horizons model, and adding inputs to our Kalideascope. 

You could consider carrying out a dream walk where you are: walk, notice, and speak your dreams of place aloud. You might be surprised by what takes shape.

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Consult your hopes and dreams — part of what a place is trying to do

The first stage in continuous place-based design is observation. It is a beginning that says before we do anything different here we need to try and understand this place. 

The aim of this phase is to gather as much data and wisdom as we can before proposing changes. That data can be physical, cultural or even intangible — anything that helps us to notice what makes a place distinct, what gives it its feel. 

One of the data sets I think is often overlooked — but vital — is hopes and dreams.

These are easy to dismiss as not ‘real’ but I see them as very real. Our hopes are distant but visible from where we are now — rooted both in the present and in the future. In the language of the Three Horizons Model, they belong in Horizon Three: an outline of what we see from here in the future. 

Since the design process spans the present and the future, hopes and dreams are a vital link.

The hopes and dreams of the people that live or regularly used in a space are founded in their complex interaction with that place. So asking simple questions like: 

What is your hope for this place?
What do you dream I could become?

…can a great deal about the current lie of the land and its future potential. 

One the questions we ask in the Systems Survey motif (see the Pattern Book) is ‘what is this place trying to do?’

Hopes and dreams are part of that answer. They are usually motivating — either towards one place or away from another. They inject energy into certain courses of action over others. And so that are an important clue as to what patterns are already unfolding here or are likely to in the future.

So pay attention to hopes and dreams as well as the things you can physically observe. These dreams may already be shaping the path that this place is taking.

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Core tools for regenerative design now online

9 thumbnail-sized illustrated diagrams providing an over of the 9 constructivist tools for regenerative design. The tools are the ambition loop, changing mindsets, the goal of regenerative design, continuous place-based design, the living systems blueprint, the systems bookcase, the library of systems change, the three horizons and the kalideascope.

I am happy to announce that we have now published online our set of free-to-use core tools for regenerative design. These nine tools are central to our teaching in the Regenerative Design Lab. 

Accompanying each tool is a free-to-use downloadable image, designed by Alexie Sommer, who led the design of the Pattern Book and all our visuals at Constructivist. 

As well as the motif description from the Pattern Book, each tool has linked to it recent blog posts that relate to that tool’s function. In this way, we have aimed to create a set of core reference content that dynamically update as we conduct new experiments with these tools.

By publishing this toolkit we hope we can spread these ideas further at the same time as drawing more people into this work. So please do check them out and spread the word. 

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A process for processing processes

Processes make life easier, help us involve more people, guarantee quality and conserve our attention for other things. But only if they work. 

The first time we do something, part of the work is figuring out how to do it all. If we are likely to that thing several times, figuring out a process means we don’t have to make those decisions every time. 

Creating a process also helps other people over the activation energy hurdle and, where questions of quality or compliance come in, give us a way of making sure it is done properly And this work invested in creating a process frees up cognitive load to think about other things. 

In a sense, we relinquish our autonomy to processes for the benefits they yield. But when the process no-longer provides those benefits, it starts to cause problems. 

If for instance the circumstances in which the process was created has changed, but the process stays the same, then it becomes an ill-fitting glove on the hand of someone trying to take action. It constrains us, it is uncomfortable and we are constantly aware of it.

Things become worse when you don’t have a choice — when your organisation has told you you have to use this process. Then you no-longer feel the benefit of the loss of autonomy — it becomes a burden. And this can quickly lead to cynicism. 

So what can you do? I see three levers: improve, remove or emphasise. 

Improve — if that process is there to do work for you, but is no-longer doing its job, then make it work. This requires new up-front energy to reap down-stream reward. You may not want have to do this work, but the conditions have changed and you’ll continue to pay the price until you update procedures. A badly fitting process creates friction every day, which is energy sapping. If you are in a position of authority, then you hold responsibility for the processes your staff are obliged to work with. 

Remove — it’s much more common to add processes than take them away. Lean thinking in process design is all about stripping everything and then building back up with the essentials that do just enough to create a good product, whatever that might be.

Emphasise — and if you are stuck with the process, as many in larger organisations will be, then emphasise the value that the process is creating. If it generates data, make that data visible and valuable to the people using the process. If it helps keep people safe, then emphasise that message less it gets lost and then ignored. 

Improve, remove, emphasise. You could think of this as a process for processing processes.

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Emergent marketing – the RDL Cohorts for 2026

I’ve noticed recently how often a controlling mindset can creep in when I think about how we spread the word around the regenerative design lab. That controlling mindset seems to say, everything needs to be ready before we share any details. It makes assumptions about when people are ready to receive this information. And this mindset assumes that it is possible to control the way in which information is transmitted and digested. 

But in a complex and dynamic system we know such control is not possible. 

An emergent mindset wouldn’t seek to establish control but to work with this uncertainty. Rather than waiting for everything to be finished, it might say it’s enough to share the essence of what we are trying to do, and to let readers colour the picture in. It assumes that some people will get the info they need, and pass it on to others. Not everyone will get the message, but also that unexpected people will.

So it is in the spirit of emergent marketing that I share the outlines of our incomplete plans for our next cohorts of the regenerative design lab.

Cohort 5 of the Regenerative Design Lab will be an experiment in running an-house programme for an organisation. We are conducting this experiment with the Hazel Hill team of staff and trustees. It will be really exciting to bring together people who care for this wood with a process that has been hosted here since 2022, and will help us learn how to do this process for other organisations. 

Cohort 6 will be our next open cohort, running March to November 2026. There won’t be any special theme to this cohort, rather we are interested in attracting people with a wide range of interests in regenerative design as it relates to the built environment. Details including pricing our now available. You can register your interest but applications won’t open until November. 

And Cohort 7 will be our first alumni cohort, also running March to November 2026. We have seen that for many people that come on the lab, the programme is just the start of a journey into unknown territory that continues for many years afterwards. This cohort is here to support alumni as they continue on their journey of exploration and innovation in regenerative design. 

So there you have the outline, which I’ll leave you to colour and share as you see fit, and I’ll let you know when there’s more news.

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Fluorescent creativity

Fluorescent colours look brighter than the colours around them. That’s because fluorescent materials absorb light from the ultraviolet spectrum — which we can’t see — and re-emit it in the visible spectrum.

So while regular colours just reflect light from the part of the spectrum we can see, fluorescent colours borrow light from an unseen realm and shine it back at a frequency we can perceive.

The term highlight feels apt — they really do seem to hold more light.

And it gave me an idea: fluorescent creativity — the kind that brings in ideas from spectra that others on the design team can’t yet see, and makes them visible for the rest of us.

These ideas can shine brighter than anything we’ve encountered before, not because they’re louder, but because they carry energy from unexpected places.

Fluorescent creativity speaks to inviting in different perspectives, and tuning our own sensors into frequencies we hadn’t previously explored.