Groundwork
A six-month programme to build the collaboration skills, the practical frameworks, and the cultural change tools to move your regenerative work from understanding into lasting impact.
Groundwork starts 26 Oct 2026
How the programme unfolds
Thirteen two-hour sessions, every fortnight, with guided work and peer groups between sessions. Each session builds on the last and adds a layer to your Blueprint. Co-creation is at the heart of everything.
Phase 1 - The collaboration skills toolkit
1 | Finding and Living Our Story as Changemakers
As a cohort, we establish ourselves as a group and co-create our working agreement. We each map where our mental models about change came from and draws our first scenario map.
2 | Power Over and Power With
We’ll develop the ability to identify power dynamics in any group, exploring comfort zones and why we freeze or default to hierarchy.
3 | From Conflict to Tension
We’ll explore how to transform friction into something generative, and the difference between conflict that damages and tension that produces something new. We’ll practice deep listening as one tool within a broader practice of making disagreement useful.
4 | Values, Boundaries and Triggers
The emotional vocabulary of change work. Building the language to understand your own reactions so you can understand others' with genuine curiosity.
5 | Participatory Decision Making
A practical toolkit for making decisions collectively without defaulting to hierarchy or false consensus. We’ll look at consent-based methods, advice process, sociocratic approaches, practising on real decisions from your own contexts.
Phase 2 - Narrative and tipping point, deepened
6 | Find the Story, Deepened
Real practice with the full Narrative Roadblock Map diagnostic. We’ll be using deep listening as the entry point, because you cannot accurately map someone else's narrative without first attending to their world.
7 | Tipping Point, Deepened
Building your actual Tipping Point People Map with specific names, specific relationships, and values alignment as the foundation. The people capable of stepping outside their comfort zone are your wide bridges.
Phase 3 - Purpose, community design and relational tools
8 | Purpose, Goals and Theory of Change
Distinguishing between purpose and goals, and beginning to build a theory of change that is honest about mechanism, not just aspiration.
9 | Community Design
The intentional practice of designing communities so their culture embodies the values of the work they exist to do. Roles, membership, and onboarding as cultural practices.
10 | Productive Disagreement
We’ll look at why false consensus is one of the most damaging dynamics in power-with spaces and explore frameworks for surfacing and working through disagreement in ways that build rather than fracture.
11 | Co-Creation and Co-Design, Part 1
We’ll examine the principles of designing with rather than for, working on real challenges within the cohort to use co-design methods in practice.
Phase 4 - Long-term planning and the road ahead
Week 12: Co-Creation and Co-Design, Part 2
Facilitation is a craft! We’ll explore how we can hold space for emergence and manage the tension between structure and openness.
Week 13: Blueprint Review, 90-Day Pathway and Close
Co-Lab peer review of your Cultural Change Blueprint. A reviewed, sharpened plan and a clear, grounded next step you can take immediately. You leave with something real.
A six-month programme to build the collaboration skills, the practical frameworks, and the cultural change tools to move your regenerative work from understanding into lasting impact.
Groundwork starts 26 Oct 2026
How the programme unfolds
Thirteen two-hour sessions, every fortnight, with guided work and peer groups between sessions. Each session builds on the last and adds a layer to your Blueprint. Co-creation is at the heart of everything.
Phase 1 - The collaboration skills toolkit
1 | Finding and Living Our Story as Changemakers
As a cohort, we establish ourselves as a group and co-create our working agreement. We each map where our mental models about change came from and draws our first scenario map.
2 | Power Over and Power With
We’ll develop the ability to identify power dynamics in any group, exploring comfort zones and why we freeze or default to hierarchy.
3 | From Conflict to Tension
We’ll explore how to transform friction into something generative, and the difference between conflict that damages and tension that produces something new. We’ll practice deep listening as one tool within a broader practice of making disagreement useful.
4 | Values, Boundaries and Triggers
The emotional vocabulary of change work. Building the language to understand your own reactions so you can understand others' with genuine curiosity.
5 | Participatory Decision Making
A practical toolkit for making decisions collectively without defaulting to hierarchy or false consensus. We’ll look at consent-based methods, advice process, sociocratic approaches, practising on real decisions from your own contexts.
Phase 2 - Narrative and tipping point, deepened
6 | Find the Story, Deepened
Real practice with the full Narrative Roadblock Map diagnostic. We’ll be using deep listening as the entry point, because you cannot accurately map someone else's narrative without first attending to their world.
7 | Tipping Point, Deepened
Building your actual Tipping Point People Map with specific names, specific relationships, and values alignment as the foundation. The people capable of stepping outside their comfort zone are your wide bridges.
Phase 3 - Purpose, community design and relational tools
8 | Purpose, Goals and Theory of Change
Distinguishing between purpose and goals, and beginning to build a theory of change that is honest about mechanism, not just aspiration.
9 | Community Design
The intentional practice of designing communities so their culture embodies the values of the work they exist to do. Roles, membership, and onboarding as cultural practices.
10 | Productive Disagreement
We’ll look at why false consensus is one of the most damaging dynamics in power-with spaces and explore frameworks for surfacing and working through disagreement in ways that build rather than fracture.
11 | Co-Creation and Co-Design, Part 1
We’ll examine the principles of designing with rather than for, working on real challenges within the cohort to use co-design methods in practice.
Phase 4 - Long-term planning and the road ahead
Week 12: Co-Creation and Co-Design, Part 2
Facilitation is a craft! We’ll explore how we can hold space for emergence and manage the tension between structure and openness.
Week 13: Blueprint Review, 90-Day Pathway and Close
Co-Lab peer review of your Cultural Change Blueprint. A reviewed, sharpened plan and a clear, grounded next step you can take immediately. You leave with something real.