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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. 

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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.

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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
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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.

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…because there is still a climate emergency

The most compelling factor in considering whether to accelerate decarbonisation of construction: 

  • Not supply-chain readiness
  • Not availability of data
  • Not consistency of methodology
  • Not even the economic benefit of creating an industry carbon assessors.

…but that there is still a climate emergency[1], triggered by emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that the construction industry is a major contributor to these emissions[2]. 

At a recent event on embodied carbon in new-build that I was facilitating, it was a breath of fresh air to hear this reason voiced. 

We don’t need a perfect, economically viable method to reduce carbon when the downside to not taking action is so great. 

1] UNEP. The Climate Emergency. https://www.unep.org/climate-emergency. Accessed 13 Nov. 2025.

2] RICS. Sustainability Report 2025. 2025, https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/reports/Sustainability-report-2025.pdf.

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The last time the nuclear circus arrived

Black and white photo showing a large cycling on the back of a lorry being towed through a village. The cylinder is much larger than the surrounding houses.

I love this photo of a photo, which I snapped last week at a sports centre near Sizewell power station. It was taken the last time a power station was built here, decades ago. The image reminds me of a travelling circus rumbling into town with wagons full of equipment.

Nuclear power stations are usually in remote locations, which means that when we build a new one, it inevitably involves big lorries driving down narrow roads. Like a circus, it really is a spectacle in the original sense of the word — a visually striking performance display.

But what caught my eye is the pride in these photos. They were displayed in the sports centre alongside trophies won the home teams. Many local people were probably involved in the construction of the first power station, and many more will be involved in the next one.

We rarely tell these stories of construction. But I often wonder, who built this, what were their stories, what were their hopes for this enormous thing as they built it?

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Stacked multiple ‘beanifits’

Beans.

Fix nitrogen in the soil when they grow, increasing soil health in the process.

Are a useful replacement for more carbon-intensive protein sources such as meat

Require a third of the water to grow than beef, kilo for kilo.

Are high in fibre.

Are cheap.

The first factor on its own is significant. What this says is that by growing beans we increase soil health. In other words we can meet our needs and in doing so be part of a cycle of enrichment. That on its own is regenerative.

But add on the other factors and we see stacked multiple benefits. These are changes are transformative. Like reducing private cars in city centres, increased urban tree planting, and reintroduction of beavers into certain environments. These are interventions that have the potential to unlock so many benefits, they become a cascade.

In a resource scarce economy, we need design solutions that don’t just make a small change but that unlock a wave of better.

Bean data from 

Guardian.co.uk/Wind of change as celebrity chefs join drive to get more beans into diet.

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Complete idiom

As the idiom goes: 

Jack of all trades, master of none.

But did you know this is only half of it. The full idiom is:

Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than a master of one.

Normally we only hear the first part, but the second half changes the sense completely. 

People who like doing lots of things… you can now feel better about yourselves. As for the specialists…

Thank you to the person two rows back on the train who shared this in my ear-shot.

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I’m so glad I came to your meeting

What would make someone say this?

How you greet them?

The thought you put into the structure?

Checking what they need to participate?

The care in deciding who attends?

The discipline and generosity in how you facilitate?

The biscuits?

Whatever it is, when your attendees are glad they are there, they can participate more happily. And when we are happy we can see more possibility. More potential. Willing to take a risk and propose something different.

But when gladness disappears, the creative shutters come down, and with them the possibility of a worthwhile session together.

So, what will make your participants say, yes that was great, I’m so glad I came to your meeting?