Making Sense of Systems Learning & Practice Series

In a world of complexity and overwhelm, it can be easy to default to our habitual ways of knowing and making sense of the world. This series invites you to explore the potential of expanding your skills and ways of sensing and making meaning that can contribute to systems change for just and regenerative futures.

In a world fast lurching towards AI, how can we practice, hone, and attune to our innate ways of knowing and sensing, so we may actively participate in understanding what is happening within ourselves and the world around us? Exploring multiple ways of sensemaking – from visual practices and pattern spotting to somatic awareness and the power of metaphor – this is an invitation to get curious about our creative, multidimensional sensemaking selves, and learn how to channel that in our personal and professional worlds.

To dive deeper, we invite you to join us for this practitioner-focused learning and practice series through five online 2-hour sessions (May-July 2026) with experienced contributors from across the field to explore ways of sensing and making meaning for systems change – and how you can too.

This series is for anyone looking to ignite their senses and expand their capacities for making meaning – and wanting to leave with practices you can apply to your life and work. You can join the full series or just the sessions you want to.

Each session features experienced practitioners who are deeply grappling with these questions and showcases where they are in their exploration; as well as connecting, reflecting and sharing practices with peers who are working through the complexity of this work. We take an approach in our series striking a balance between sharing multiple methods and ideas collectively with discussion and supporting us to explore these for practice.

The series explores four inquiries followed by an integration session to close. The last sensemaking session is open to anybody that has participated in at least one of the four sessions.

1. Sensing from our ways of being (and knowing)

How do our mental models shape how we sense the world?

Our patterns of thought shape how we see and make sense of the world around us. This session explores both the deeper patterns that connect us as humans and the diverse mental models we use to understand the dynamics we encounter. From the worldviews embedded in artificial intelligence to intuition and attention, we will explore how meaning is formed, how it shapes our actions, and why it matters.

Date: Thursday, 7 May 2026
Time: 10:00 ET / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 19:30 IST
Check your time zone

Contributors

Announced soon.

2. Sensing through whole body awareness

How might we know the world through our embodied selves?

There is more going on in the world, and in ourselves, than we often value or tune into. This session explores what somatic awareness, our full body capacity to sense, can offer to how we pay attention from group dynamics to wider systems, revealing what is alive in the field. Visual cues, kinesthetic sensations, and relational signals can become channels for understanding and for being present to what is actually happening, guiding our way forward.

Date: Thursday, 21 May 2026
Time: 10:00 ET / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 19:30 IST
Check your time zone

Contributors

Announced soon.

3. Finding expression through visualising and metaphors

How can we start to express and articulate what we are experiencing, feeling and seeing?

We are often frozen by the complexity of a changing world, thinking we need comprehensive analyses and detailed maps to understand what is happening. And yet, we can begin through small acts of observant expression. This session invites us to find that first mark on the page, the doodle or scribble, the posture or metaphor that can unlock and reveal what is present in a dynamic, helping us make meaning of what we are noticing without getting stuck in getting it right.

Date: Thursday, 11 June 2026
Time: 10:00 ET / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 19:30 IST
Check your time zone

Contributors

Announced soon.

4. Weaving and harvesting meaning

How might we find the narratives across an array of data and insights that reveal the systemic patterns?

Map-making in systems work is more than finding commonality. It is about tracing the threads that weave toward a wider tapestry narrative, one that holds coherence and helps us see the simplicity on the other side of complexity. From this narrative, we reconnect with our agency and our capacity to act from what our systemic exploration reveals.

Date: Thursday, 25 June 2026
Time: 10:00 ET / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 19:30 IST
Check your time zone

Contributors

Announced soon.

5. So what - making sense of sensemaking

How might we make sense and take forward learnings into our practice from this series?

Join us for a reflective closing session to surface key insights, sense shifts, and map how sense making practices can help us understand a complex, overwhelming, changing world.

Date: Thursday, 9 July 2026
Time: 10:00 ET / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 19:30 IST
Check your time zone

This series is a ‘choose your own path’ learning experience which means you can join the whole journey or choose to participate in the sessions that feel most relevant and alive to you.

We will convene five times for two hours. Each session will include:

• Framing and an introduction to the session topic
• Inspiration, dialogue and applied learning opportunities with experienced guest contributors
• Space to reflect with peers on how the topic relates to your different contexts and experiences
• An invitation to develop your next micro or macro experiment or practical application of this topic in your context

The closing sensemaking and weaving session is free and open to anybody that has participated in at least one of the first four sessions. Participants will receive an invitation to this session nearer the time.

The series is intended for a range of experience including practitioners who are looking to develop and hone the ways you make sense of things. We believe each session would be beneficial to those who:

• Have interest in systems change and working in systems
• Have some experience or desired to identify out patterns and insights in your life and work
• Are working in the spaces inbetween and looking for ways to bring insights together

We are intentionally keeping the 'prior experience and knowledge' broad as we would like to encourage those from different and diverse ways of knowing and working to join us for an expansive and fruitful conversation.

Contributors

In each session, the hosting team will be joined by experienced guest contributors who will bring in personal anecdotes, stories, and ‘how to’ practical routes for engaging with the topic being explored.

Hosting team

The fee for this series is offered on a sliding scale. Please select the option that is most appropriate for you, depending on what you can afford. Course fees are per one individual, not one team or organisation.

For the full series

• Regenerative: £550 GBP
• Supporter: £425 GBP
• Supported: £275 GBP

For individual sessions

• Regenerative: £150 GBP
• Supporter: £125 GBP
• Supported: £75 GBP

Which option is right for you?

Regenerative: We encourage philanthropy, corporations, and the public sector to join our series on the regenerative rate. Your registration will support others to participate. This rate reflects the true cost of the series.

Supporter: We encourage those working in the small to mid-size for-profit organisations, charity sector and community organisations (typically a participant joining to financial sponsorship from an employer) to join our series at this rate. This rate reflects most of the cost of the series.

Supported: The supported rate enables those who are independent or freelance, or who have limited funds to invest in their learning and development. Each cohort has a limited number of places for those coming in on the supported rate. When possible, we encourage those with some flexibility to join us on a supporter rate.

VAT does not apply.

No refunds are available for the series, however you can transfer your ticket to another individual to join. Email the School team at [email protected] if you have any questions about this.

To take part, you can join the whole journey (at a discounted price) or sign up to individual sessions and choose to participate only in the areas that feel most relevant and alive to you.

Team and group enrolment is available. Please reach out to the School at [email protected] for group pricing as well as the option to add on team coaching to help the team ground learnings into projects or initiatives.

We seek to create safe and brave spaces for participants from different backgrounds and lived experience to engage in learning together. We acknowledge the power and responsibility we hold in our role as a convenor and learning provider, placing multiple ways of knowing and awareness of difference as fundamental design principles in our programmes.

Read more about our commitment and journey around equity and difference.

Accessibility

If you will need additional or specific support for your wellbeing or access needs, then please let us know as soon as possible, so we can factor this into our session design. You can let us know in the enrolment form or email us at [email protected] – we are happy to arrange a call to discuss how we can support your learning. The course producer will also be on hand throughout the course if you have any questions or concerns to raise.

If you have any questions about the learning & practice series please contact the School team at [email protected].

If you would like to discuss additional coaching or a Learning & Practice Partnership to support your learning, get in touch with Sean at [email protected].