Day 1 ⏐ Session 1
Time to Shift:
why we need system innovation
In this opening conversation, Charlie Leadbeater and Jennie Winhall introduced the week with special guest Bo Lidegaard (DK) and Melanie Goodchild (CA) to discuss the big how in how we shift systems.
Is incremental change sufficient or is a more radical approach needed responding to the various crises society now faces? But, it’s not only dramatic external crises that spur the kind of systemic change we might imagine. It can be in the slow power of shifting social norms, as old values rescind and give way to new ones, or long forgotten ideals are freshly cherished.
Drawing from Indigenous wisdom, Melanie looks at a deeply relational approach to systemic innovation, considering ourselves in balance with our wider environment and not at the center of it.
“... when you get new kinds of conversations going in a system there’s a kind of hum of change as people come together and create new solutions together. It gathers a kind of momentum. ”
Resources
Bo Lidegaard:
Melanie Goodchild:
Quotes from the session
“...the changing circumstances in the external crisis imposes different way of thinking, imposing almost revolutionary change, not revolutionary in the sense of grabbing the gun…, but revolutionary in the sense of self enabling, of taking your destiny into your own hands, when you realise that the life that you lived… with your family with your society was no longer viable…” (Bo Lidegaard)
“I can now practice a way of thinking, a way of reasoning where I don't choose sides between ideas. Instead, opposites dance together until a third presence shows up. It's really for us seeking balance by finding the magic and the medicine of emergence in the space between ideas.” (Melaine Goodchild quoting a Peruvian elder)
Emerging questions
What kind of shifts do you think we should be imagining? Is incremental change sufficient?
When you are doing this work, do you appeal to current values, or do you introduce a different set of values that might open us up to an opportunity for a different system to emerge?"