Faced with wicked problems, interconnected challenges and extreme uncertainty? In need of new ways of thinking and doing?

Then join us for a day to develop:
•Insights on the systemic features of a complex world and the implications for informing systemic change practices and anticipatory futures methods
•Awareness of how systemic change practices underlie dynamic processes of being-becoming
•Skills for using foresight tools and techniques to anticipate preferred futures in order to change the present.

The workshop is co-hosted by the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition (CST), Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and the Sustainability Institute, where researchers and practitioners engage in innovative transdisciplinary research methods to teach students, change-makers and leaders to integrate theoretical and practical approaches of complexity thinking to shape more sustainable and equitable futures.

Tanja Hichert and Drs Rika Preiser and Deon Cloete‘s expertise anchors the CST’s competence with respect to futures studies/foresight, anticipation, complex systems, complexity thinking and systems change curation. The Sustainability Institute is an international living and learning centre that provides immersive learning experiences to facilitate new mindsets and approaches for tackling context-specific sustainability challenges.

DOWNLOAD: EVENT INVITE AND BROCHURE

BOOK A TICKET HERE: http://bit.ly/31hM8oR OR HERE:https://www.paypal.me/becominganticipatory

What?

A hands-on, learning-by-doing workshop to explore the use of practical innovations for tackling wicked and interconnected problems in a complex world for affecting systemic change.

Who should attend?

The event will be of value to organisational consultants, change agents, practitioner academics, activists and systems innovators.

Costs?

Early Bird Tickets* 

• £175 for Public Tickets.
• £145 for charities, persons from the Global South, Friends of CST, including Systems Innovation conference attendees, APF members, SOIF associates and Sustainability Institute alumni can contact deonc@sun.ac.za for a discount voucher code stating your affiliation.
• Early bird tickets are available until 12 August, thereafter

Standard Tickets*

• £195 for Public Tickets.
• £165 for charities, persons from the Global South, Friends of CST, including Systems Innovation conference attendees, APF members, SOIF associates and Sustainability Institute alumni can contact deonc@sun.ac.za for a discount voucher code stating your affiliation.

• Tickets are non-refundable but can be transferred to another participant by prior arrangement

When?

Thursday 5 September 2019 (this is a pre-conference workshop to the Systems Innovation Conference, London 6-7 September)

Where?

Nesta 58VE Meeting Venue, 58 Victoria Embankment, EC4Y 0DS, London. Located on the banks of the River Thames, central London, the venue is easily accessible by underground, rail, bike and river.

Who?

Facilitators: Tanja Hichert on anticipation, Rika Preiser on complexity and Deon Cloete on curating change

RIKA PREISER

In the face of increasingly complex, fast-paced, local and global issues and rapid technological advancement, new ways of thinking and responding to engage with the nature of these challenges are required. Understanding the multi-scale, interconnected and continuously evolving complex systems that characterise contemporary societies—such as the economy, our food supply, cities, the power grid, technological innovation, to name a few—demands in-depth understanding of the mechanisms and processes of how change and transformation occur and can be navigated within these systems. Rika will provide a short introduction to the features and patterns that characterise complex systems. Such an overview will offer the foundation for a new mind set that can inform new ways of thinking and acting that are mindful of the implications of the features of complex systems. By exploring the dynamic and emergent patterns of complex systems, the relevance of anticipatory and integrative practices become apparent for informing systemic change.

Rika Preiser is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Her research explores how an interdisciplinary engagement with Complex Adaptive Systems can inform conceptual frameworks and practical applications for Systems Change toward resilient Anthropocene futures and Earth Stewardship. She is addressing sustainability challenges at the science-society interface and explores systems-based approaches to inform better decision making in a hyper-connected world. Her work is focused on the human experience to recognise the normative call to re-imagine what it means to be human in the Anthropocene. Rika holds a PhD in Philosophy in 2012. Rika teaches complex adaptive systems thinking to students from the fields of medicine, business management, sustainability studies and agricultural sciences.

DEON CLOETE

Change curation is a way of being and becoming that cultivates the drivers of change underlying change practice. Change curators, as opposed to change-makers, work to effect systemic change through a deeper understanding and commitment to engaging with multiple deep-seated causes, ecosystems and culture.

Deon will guide participants through a process of gaining insights into the history of dominant systems with compassion and empathy while navigating wicked problems with practical wisdom to transitions to a re-imagined future. The process will explore the practicalities of change curation and unlearning change-making practices to enable participants to re-imagine their roles as change agents in light of anticipatory change work. Participants will explore the inner and outer landscapes of change curation through the Change Curation Framework to re-imagine personal, organisational and systems-level innovations. This new stance towards becoming anticipatory means engaging with the present in alternative, yet transformative ways which often call for new habits of mind, competencies and embracing embodied approaches to change curation.

Deon Cloete is a systemic change co-curator and systems innovation specialist, who guides change agents to embody complexity thinking and to re-imagine their roles in change interventions. He is an experienced facilitator of personal and organisational change that fosters contemplative and relational ways of being and becoming. He holds a PhD in Business Management on re-imagining the roles of change agents from a complexity-informed perspective. He follows an integrative approach to help us reflect on how we see ourselves, others and systems to develop new ways of being-becoming praxis. Deon’s research and consultancy seek to use alternative visions of the future in the process of ‘systems change co-curation’ to develop transformative systems innovations. He currently serves as a Research Associate at CST, Senior Researcher at UCT GSB Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Fellow on the Regional Observatory Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

TANJA HICHERT

Anticipation, as opposed to forecasting and foresight, is primarily about behavioural change based on an idea of the future. Thus, anticipatory behaviour, or an anticipation capability, ‘uses’ the future in present day decision-making processes and change activities, that can then help create preferred futures.

Participants will engage with the Three Horizons Framework to aid thinking about current assumptions, emerging changes, and possible and desired futures. The ‘Three Horizons Framework’ is an interactive, participative sense-making exercise for identifying change; from the established pattern of the first horizon to the emergence of fundamentally new patters in the third, which occurs via the transition – often messy and conflicting – activity of the second horizon.

Later in the day participants will use ‘Causal Layered Analysis’ (CLA) to explore a deeper understanding of the forces of change by surfacing unquestioned assumptions. CLA enables participants to look at a system through different lenses and provides a way for exploring the worldviews myths and metaphors that underpin certain actions and behavioural patterns. Re-imaging our deepest held beliefs – the myths and metaphors – then resurfacing through the layers of worldview and patterns, gives us new future narratives and ideas with which to work.

Tanja Hichert is an experienced professional futurist, also known as a strategic foresight practitioner who has maintained a link with academic Futures Studies in her career as a practitioner. She specialises in scenario planning, horizon scanning, risk management and facilitating strategic conversations that provide clarity and direction for organisations and institutions faced with complexity and uncertainty. She has extensive experience in applying Futures Studies to development issues in the emerging world, but with a solid track record in international business strategy. Tanja also teaches post-graduate students and serves on boards of Futures organisations.