POWER OF PLACE: Designing Places For Life
SPRING/SUMMER 2025
Power of Place: Designing Places for Life is an open introductory learning journey for aspiring regenerative designers who want to be part of creating a regenerative future from place. It is designed and delivered by people working in transformative change in place and includes many real-life, current projects for study on which the team and previous cohort members are working.
Below are the modules and subjects of study and pratice we cover in this Journey.
The Sources of Separation
Exploring the story of separation and the pattern of civilisation collapse.
We are in a the middle of a once-in-500-year transformation of human paradigm. We are in a moment of frozen potential of systems collapse, like civilisations before us. We have an unprecedented opportunity to re-align the future towards futures for life.
But how did we arrive at a point where the life support systems on which we depend are in overshoot? How did our economic and social designs fail of their potential and promise?
The sources of our machine-orientation and fragmentation are so deeply embedded in our consciousness, we don’t often see them. We start here to de-veil and de-power the mechanistic mindset of the past to birth the regenerative paradigm of the future.
Discover how healing the story of separation can future-proof landscapes, communities and culture.
Living Systems Principle 1: Evolutionary Potential
The power of potential not problem-solving.
Living systems always evolve. They always move forwards. They don’t look back. They adapt to the context of the present to create the conditions conducive to life.
We humans prize problem-solving. It attracts funding. It is heroic. It is very necessary. In regenerative design we don’t start with problem-solving, we start with future potential. In focusing on actualising the future, we change the dynamic of our design. We are not working on the symptoms of our past failures but activating the living potential of our futures.
What is the next leap for our place that brings alive the next order of value creation and life for all?
We call this working from evolutionary potential.
Learn how working from evolutionary potential can not just restore but regenerate whilst inspiring future generations.
Living Systems Principle 2: BioCultural Uniqueness.
Falling in love with the bio-cultural uniqueness of place.
One of the most destructive things that we do to our living communities on planet earth is to treat everything generically. We think about non-human and human economic and social systems as if they were the same everywhere.
Place is the context in which the relationships between humans and their places can best be worked on. We can understand them and form coherent images of what makes the place work; what economic enterprises have worked over time, what cultures.
If we can help each place to contribute their unique potential into the world, we have the ongoing differentiation of culture and a network of healthy places which create planetary health.
Find out how to create thriving vibrant communities from the essence of place that prioritise both people and planet.
Living Systems Principle 3: Nested Relationality.
All life is created through thriving relationship and exchanges. All life is nested in a multiplicity of systems.
Life works through a process of exchange which takes place across the boundaries of interconnected and inter-relational systems. That dynamic exchange and interplay of relationships is what creates diversity and health thriving places.
We learn how to identify the systemic flows across boudnaries that are important to our places and map the level of health and wellbeing in them.
We call this Nested Relationality.
Transform your city into a flourishing place which is climate resilient and adaptable through the cultivation of deep connections in the communities you serve.
Living Systems Principle 4: Life is Nodal; practice nodal acupuncture.
Exchanges of life and nutrient in living systems happens at critical nodes. Practising Nodal Acupuncture is essential to shape systems evolution.
Nodes in systems are the critical points in which the interchange of relationships and nutrients happen. Nodes are the vital intersections in which, if we intervene with discernment, we can create a systemic shift in ecology, economy or culture.
Learning to identify nodes, and the ways in which we can act on them with discernment and integrity, significantly increases our changes of creating transformative change.
We will look at several place-based institutions and emergent projects who are using nodal acupuncture to shape ecological and social justice, cultural regeneration and food systems change.
We call this Nodal Acupuncture.
Demonstrate innovation and leadership by de-risking critical complex decisions by designing interventions with cutting edge regenerative design.
Living Systems Principle 4: Urban Acupuncture.
Following in the footsteps of the late, great Jaime Lerner.
As mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, Jamie lerner transformed his city into a global model of sustainability and livability. Over more than 40 years of innovation, he showed that changes do not always need to be huge and expensive, but if discerningly developed at critical nodal points in a city, they could change the experience and culture of humans and develop oceans of sanity for non-human nature.
Finding the right ‘pinpricks’ of action when we have limited resources is a form of nodal acupuncture.
We call this Urban Acupuncture.
Learn how to reduce infrastructure costs and increase environmental resilience for your urban communities.
Living Systems Principle 4: Earth Acupuncture.
Following in the footsteps of the earth regenerators.
Many of us are motivated by the change to restore some of our depleted ecology and landscapes – the critical life support systems on which we rely. They may be as large as marine systems, kelp forests, bringing waterways back to health or simply creating habitat for nature on our farms and forests.
All these activities can become systematic and nodal. From reintroducing ecosystem engineers like beavers to bringing back whole river systems to life.
We call this Earth Systems Acupuncture.
Enhance the vitality and vibrancy of your ecosystems and biodiversity. Turn farms, national parks and landscapes into places of ecological health for generations to come.
Living Systems Principle 8: Life is Process & Pattern.
Patterns are the tracks of life’s evolution. We must learn to beome pattern trackers.
All life is process. Pattern is the tracks of life’s evolutionary process. The rings of a tree bole tell the story of its life. The meanders of a river tell a tale of the rise and fall of mountains, and sometimes the intervention of humans. The patterns of life share wisdom about how we may design for life. Branching is life’s way of maximising the space for vital exchange and relationship and maintaining diversity. Networked patterns both hold the tension of extremes and create self-organising resilience.
To be able to see the future unfold in our minds, we need to understand the patterns and processes that are unique to our places so that we may continue the unfolding process in the appropriate context of place.
We also need to become trackers of our own thinking, sensing, doing, meaning to hold the courage for transformation. We call this a pattern mind.
Hear about real-world examples of thriving cultures and mindsets from places and people who are creating relatable, relevant and lasting change.
Living Systems Principle 5: Life loves Wholeness.
Life is a pattern of interconnected Wholes.
We have operated for so long from a fragmented and categorising mind that it is hard to experience wholeness. There are few places left on earth that have not been impacted some way by the human system.
To learn how to design for whole salutogenic health often feels complex and beyond the realms of possibility. We look at how to sense into wholeness and apply it to the work that we do, successfully.
Develop a practice of actionable, regenerative inclusion across the living diversity of your community.
Living Systems Principle 5: Bioregions as WHOLE systems.
The rise of bioregional design. The innovation & consciousness architecture needed.
Life on earth works in interconnected and interrelated distinct regions. We call these bioregions, eco-zones and ecosystems. In pure biological terms, bioregions are enormous territories. When we look at them through a joint lens of non-human and human systems we find distinct areas of flora and fauna that map to particular cultures and economic activity.
Where these are thriving, they are almost always aligned to the unique processes and patterns of the place. We explore what it means to work at this fractal scale of place and who is doing it well.
We call this bioregioning.
Unlock the full potential of your place and people. Regenerate ecosystems. Unlock economic innovation that creates future resilience.
Living Systems Principle 6: Life creates Fields of Energy.
Convening fields of energy is an art.
Fields of energy exist everywhere. As quantum physics begins to align with indigenous knowledge in pursuit of life, we are learning to understand what fields of energy are in human systems.
Calling a field of energy into being and activation is an art of regenerative practitioners. They are often social movements which transform the places, cultures, policies, systems in which they operate.
Fields of energy need social infrastrucutre to enable them to resist the lure of the dominant culture of the way. We look at how to bring fields of energy to life and how to sustain them with key regenerative practices.
Discover how to vitalise your community and stakeholders through creating regenerative futures.
Living Systems Principle 6: Fields of Energy needs Social Infrastructure.
Transformative change needs social infrastructure if it is to resist the lure of dominant culture.
Fields of energy do not automatically last the course and achieve the transformative change they set out to. Too often, they fall prey to the dominant divisive culture in which we operate. They need intentional design in the form of social infrastructure to fulfil their future potential.
We explore, apply and test different forms of design and practice that can enable a community of place and practice to thrive in challenging conditions.
Overcome resistance, entropy and inertia and create engagement and change that lasts.
Living Systems Principle 6: Fields of Energy form Centres For Life.
Centres For Life hold the transformative energy of change towards its direction of flow.
The work of evolving systems regeneratively is indirect work rather than the direct work of advocacy, power or influence. Systems evolution works by regenerating the energy field through nodal interventions. Centres are the vehicles we use; energy centres are uniquely found in all living systems. Centres act as attractors, bringing diverse energies together, developing them to a new level of capability, and then sending that back out into the system to transform it.
We explore how to shape Centre For Life through multiple case studies in which Really Regenerative has participated.
Collaborate with social movements to tackle the climate crisis, education, social justice, inequality through centres for life.
Living Systems Principle 7: Life is Evolutionary & Developmental.
To stabilise the energy of transformative change, we need intentional developmental processes.
Regeneration is not a solo, individual act. It is a collective process.
As Einstein once said: you cannot change the future from the mindset that created the problems you are facing in the first place.
The power and influence of any incumbent system is fierce. It is itself a living system which does not want to die. To be able to withstand the undertow of its power, we need to weave intentional and developmental structures into our communites and organisations for life so that we have practices to sustain us collectively into the future.
Empower yourself and your teams with the power to collaborate consistently whatever the challenges faced.
Living Systems: Illuminating the future.
The emergent future needs illumination through regenerative storytelling.
The emergent regenerative future needs three core things to sustain it. Illumination. Connection across fields in a way that scales out not up. Financial & mentoring support.
Illumination: in a post-truth and post-trust era how can we tell the story of the emergent future well in a way that is honest, truthful and yet also compelling and lyrical and which creates an atmosphere of active hope. And at the same time which can be understood by those who are not yet on the path to encourage them to take the next step – without mixing paradigms. We look at our communications systems and our language. Language is powerful. How do we birth a new future through language without creating a new story of separation?
Become a compelling regenerative storyteller to engage all quadrants all levels in future-focused action
Living Systems: Healing the story of separation.
Decoloninsing our futures. Distributing Power. Rethinking governance.
To be effective healers of the story of separation, we engage and build a range of capabilities.
We practice de-colonising our habiutual thinking but also the hierarchal designs that are endemic to our organisations, places and societies in pursuit of fairness, spatial and social justice.
We learn to design for the redistribution of power, inclusiveness and rethink our relationship with ownership, money and privilege in all the systems our project and place can reach. What does this transformative approach to fair futures in a living system look like?
Bring radical innovation to the ideas of ownership to unlock spatial and social justice.
A regenerative purpose for project and place.
Decoloninsing our futures. Distributing Power. Rethinking governance.
When we have come home to place. When we have understood and reconnected to the living flows that vitalise and energise our story. When we have identified the critical nodes on which it is ours to collectively act.
We envision and image a future state for our place. We shape an Evolutionary Purpose for our project and for our place through a synthesis of process, pattern and information that is contextual and appropriate for the fractal of place it will evolve.
Shape a regenerative collective purpose that everyone can be inspired by and own.
Living Systems WHOLE systems-for-life design principles.
The innovation & consciousness architecture needed.
Those Places for Life that we have worked with that are transitioning out of the dominant extractive culture towards a regenerative future, have some key qualities in common. There are critical enabling conditions that need to be in place.
In this week we look at those enabling conditions: place-readiness and cultural scaffolding, political will, the commitment to human evolution and consciousness development across all stakeholder groups, the innovation centres for life that are necessary, and the bioculturally unique purpose they embrace.
We learn to map all the relevant flows that are in our places.
We call this Designing Places For Life.
The Gathering Weeks
Regeneration is not a journey done alone. It is a journey of community and collective intelligence.
In our final weeks in Power of Place we hand over to you, our community. You shape the agenda, offerings, discourse, practice by bringing your reflections, challenges, frustrations, desires and active hopes for the future into our time together.
We have fishbowls for challenges. Breakouts for practice. Discovery dialogue to share learnings. Poetry. Art. Song and even dance – even though we are online. We constellate these weeks to serve what has emerged during the previous months in keeping with our regenerative practice.
POWER OF PLACE: Leading From Place
Power of Place: Leading From Place is an invitation-only journey for senior place-based leaders who want to accelerate the capabilities needed for regenerative leadership.
To be invited you must have already participated in either Power of Place: An Introduction to Regenerative Placemaking or Power of Place: Designing Places For Life.
Each module is based on a chapter of Place For Life Act 2 – Who Do We Have To Become?
Not all chapters are featured.
Magicians of Multiplicity.
The ability to design for emergence. Design like an Ologist.
From a coin found in the soil placed in context, an archaeologist can tell us much about how ancient peoples lived. A geologist looks at the patterns of soil and rock formation and images the rise of fall of mountains and the clashing of tectonic plates to understand how landscape forms. The best urban planners, architects and eve landscape gardeners can see the future unfold in their minds eye.
At the same time they must all be adaptive and responsive to the context of the present, ready to alter course when systems take unexpected turns and shifts.
To design in place towards an uncertain and ever-changing future, is the skill we call Multiplicity.
Systems See-ers & Nodal Acupuncturists.
Exchanges of life and nutrient in living systems happens at critical nodes. Practising Nodal Acupuncture is essential to shape systems evolution.
Nodes in systems are the critical points in which the interchange of relationships and nutrients happen. Nodes are the vital intersections in which, if we intervene with discernment, we can create a systemic shift in ecology, economy or culture.
Learning to identify nodes, and the ways in which we can act on them with discernment and integrity, significantly increases our changes of creating transformative change.
We will look at several place-based institutions and emergent projects who are using nodal acupuncture to shape ecological and social justice, cultural regeneration and food systems change.
We call this being a Systems_See-er & a Nodal Acupuncturist.
Becoming Process & Pattern literate: Trackers of Mind & Place.
Patterns are the tracks of life’s evolution. We must learn to beome pattern trackers.
All life is process. Pattern is the tracks of life’s evolutionary process. The rings of a tree bole tell the story of its life. The meanders of a river tell a tale of the rise and fall of mountains, and sometimes the intervention of humans. The patterns of life share wisdom about how we may design for life. Branching is life’s way of maximising the space for vital exchange and relationship and maintaining diversity. Networked patterns both hold the tension of extremes and create self-organising resilience.
To be able to see the future unfold in our minds, we need to understand the patterns and processes that are unique to our places so that we may continue the unfolding process in the appropriate context of place.
We also need to become trackers of our own thinking, sensing, doing, meaning to hold the courage for transformation.
Upstream Thinking
There is always a source.
In our quick, sharp, staccato, problem-solving culture, we are often encouraged to act rapidly without a deep enough undertanding of the complexity we are working with. The challenges we face are interconnected and inter-related and often have a source far from the symptoms that present themselves. Whether that is the current explosion of mental ill-health, family breakdown, polluted oceans or depleted soils.
To act effectively we must become pragmatic and patient seekers of upstream thinking and design to enable our interventions to activate the potential for change.
We call this Upstream Thinking.
The rhythms of convergence, emergence & divergence.
Birth. Growth. Maturity. Death. Autumn Winter Summer Spring. Life is Cyclic.
Life may be evolutionary and ever-changing but paradoxically it is also rhythmic and circular and flow. It evolves in a cycle of emergence, divergence and convergence where the new horizon is emerging, the process of divergence keeps it vibrant, ever-changing and whole, and convergence enables new processes of life to stabilise.
Many of us live a 24-hour, always on lifestyle. How should we adapt and realign to the rhythms of life? How do we find the courage (and employee culture) for it to be acceptable to be in re-charge and not always in a state of high performance? How do we let go of our attachment to permanence, sameness and stability when in our current insecurity and uncertainty, the yearning for them is even greater?
Re-Sourcing & De-Veiling the Future
Revitalising the field of energy. Living the questions.
Regenerative design work is often described as living the questions. There is an emergent role that all regenerative design teams need which is beyond what we think of as conventional coaching. It helps ensure the bridge towards the regenerative paradigm is constantly renewed as its planks wobble and break and are again rescaffolded.
Regenerative re-sources help to bring team back to the source of their purpose and living systems mind through asking the most pertinent question a just the right moment.
They utilise universal frameworks to support their practice, selecting from a wide range of available materials. This is a practice and an art.
We call it Regenerative Resourcing.
Harmonizing Synthesisers
Life seeks balance and harmony. The ability to gather, discern and act in an instant.
Life seeks balance and harmony. In biology, equilibrium is reached when the internal and external factors are regulated resulting in stability and balance within a biological system. Equilibrium is important as it helps maintain optimal functioning ad conditions for biological processes. This allows organisms to function effectively and adapt particularly when dealing with ever-changing environmental conditions.
Today we are seeing an ever increasing flow of polarisation in human systems. Whether in politics where countries are swinging from left-orientation to right-orientation with increasing frequency, or in general culture where the drive for certainty in an uncertain world is pushing people into every more rigid positions. Polarisation is a handbreak on our potential to move forward to a regenerative future.
Our traditional approaches of compromise and conflict resolution offer only temporary patches on the deep fractures in our society. We need approaches that reach down to the root causes of our separation, and heal them through finding new future-focused perspectives.
We call this Harmonizing Synthesis.
Opportunity Acupuncture
Life evolves at the key nodes of systems where exchange and relationality is strong.
Opportunity in our current culture carried the overtones of individualism, getting-ahead, and extractive behaviour where the one benefits at the expense of the whole. Living systems are always responding to the opportunity of the context in which they exist on a daily basis.
How do we learn to be discerning opportunists? To see the moment in time when and where a system or a culture is ripe for intervention? Particularly for those of us working to hospice the dominant culture to help birth a regenerative future, being able to take advantage of the right moment, policy, happening, is critical. Think Greta Thunberg.
We call this being an Opportunity Acupuncturist.
Discerning Decision-Making
Navigating the double binds and paradoxes of regenerative futures.
Everywhere we look there are challenging decisions to be made that seem to have to easy answers but only polarised paradoxes or double binds. Sometimes it’s as simple as potholes vs parks. Other times it’s much more challenging: how do we design sustainable resilience local food systems when the economy is weak and the cost-of-living crisis and culture does not enable valuing of high nuntrient density food?
Our decision-making is made more complex by a post-truth era of suspicion, lack of trust in traditional institutions
Decision-making in complex adaptive, ever-changing living systems is a practice of discernment through experimenting, testing and iterating and cultivating a culture of comfortability with uncertainty and a dash of humility. Probe. Sense. Respond.
We call this the Practice of Discernment.
Shamans of Shock & Awe
Many of us have experienced the power of unexpected shocks to open a window for change. A surprise diagnosis of serious illness. The loss of a critical capability. The unexpected loss of a loved one. The global pandemic.
Ancient wisdom and contemporary neuroscience suggests that successive shock is necessary for transformative change. But how do we learn to intentionally apply shock well, and kindly?
The word ‘just’ is one of the many pernicious in our vocabilaries. We do not ‘just’ live on a random blue planet. We live on the incredible, superlative, marvellous, incomprehensible unfolding of life in all its glory, majesty and mystery. Our busy lives keep us from awe and wonder. It is not just for children.
We call the practice of using these powerful interventions as transformative practice, being shamans of shock and awe.
The Gift of Imperturbability
To have the determination, courage, compassion, adaptability to play a role in collectively shaping the future, it’s vital we are able to manage our state at any time. Enter the gift of imperturbability.
Imperturbability does not mean we are immune, senseless, unfeeling to the unfolding drama around us. It means we have been able to craft an environment, and build a determination to dance with the uncertainty of an emergent new era unrocked by its unpredictability and any rapid change of circumstances. It means cultivating an invulnerability to the energy drains of ego, fear, competition, separation, fragmentation and our individual needs – whilst still recognising that our individual needs are important.
The ability to manage our state and zero back to purpose – no matter the provocation or pain – is the gift of imperturbability.