Be What you Love: total systemic change, one fractal conversation at a time: with Dr Anna Birney of Forum for the Future

Accidental Gods

If we are going to meet the challenges of the climate, ecological and cultural crisis, we're going to have to change the systems that surround us: Education systems, health care systems, food systems, economic systems... ultimately systems of government. How can we do so peacefully and kindly without leaving vast numbers of people in freefall?

The systems around us have grown up in a world that assumed them impervious to change. But - as Greta has said - change is coming. So how do we navigate it, and shape it to a flourishing future? How can we be part of the bigger change the world needs to see?

Dr Anna Birney is Director of the School for System Change at the Forum for the Future. She is author of Cultivating System Change: A Practitioner's companion, and she is 'passionate about designing and facilitating systems change programmes that support people, communities and organisations to transform their practice'.

Anna started facilitating multi-stakeholder processes around the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. At WWF-UK she ran a six-year education programme on system change which included setting up 56 communities of practice to knit together innovative practices. This experience supported her to develop practical system change frameworks for WWF-UK and Forum for the Future as well as organisations including Unilever, Nike, Shell Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Innovate UK and the NHS, through the System Innovation Lab - experimenting and learning how to develop different practices.

This led onto setting up the School of System Change where as well as overseeing the learning and curriculum, Anna now coaches on a wide number of projects and initiatives including the Marine CoLab, the #Oneless project and Oxfam’s System Innovation in Woman’s Economic Empowerment. She is the author of Cultivating System Change: A practitioner’s companion which is based on her PhD.

“Having cultivated the School since 2016 it gives me great pleasure to continue to engage and learn from participants, contributors and partners to evolve what we offer. I am most excited about how we can grow the number and diversity of facilitators and the diversity of learning, exploring what systems change practice might look like in different contexts and geographies.”

Links:

Forum for the Future: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/
School for System Change: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/school-of-system-change
YouTube Video for the BaseCamp Course: https://youtu.be/B-oqDQkQ54U
Anna's Medium page: https://annasquestions.medium.com/
Anna's Book: https://www.waterstones.com/book/cultivating-system-change/anna-birney/9781910174098
Cultivating the Future: Medium blog: https://medium.com/school-of-system-change/cultivating-system-change-a-practitioners-companion-e05e541c1726
The Presencing Institute: https://www.presencing.org/