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

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/

What is Accidental Gods ?

Another World is still Possible. The old system was never fit for purpose and now it has gone- and it's never coming back.

We have the power of gods to destroy our home. But we also have the chance to become something we cannot yet imagine,
and by doing so, lay the foundations for a future we would be proud to leave to the generations yet unborn.

What happens if we commit to a world based on generative values: compassion, courage, integrity?

What happens if we let go of the race for meaningless money and commit instead to the things that matter: clean air, clean water, clean soil - and clean, clear, courageous connections between all parts of ourselves (so we have to do the inner work of healing individually and collectively), between ourselves and each other (so we have to do the outer work of relearning how to build generative communities) and between ourselves and the Web of Life (so we have to reclaim our birthright as conscious nodes in the web of life)?

We can do this - and every week on Accidental Gods we speak with the people who are living this world into being. We have all the answers, we just (so far) lack the visions and collective will to weave them into a future that works. We can make this happen. We will. Join us.

Accidental Gods is a podcast and membership program devoted to exploring the ways we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations yet to come.

If we're going to emerge into a just, equitable - and above all regenerative - future, we need to get to know the people who are already living, working, thinking and believing at the leading edge of inter-becoming transformation.
Accidental Gods exists to bring these voices to the world so that we can work together to lay the foundations of a world we'd be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.
We have the choice now - we can choose to transform…or we can face the chaos of a failing system.
Our Choice. Our Chance. Our Future.

Find the membership and the podcast pages here: https://accidentalgods.life
Find Manda's Thrutopian novel, Any Human Power here: https://mandascott.co.uk
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