Our approach to the (poly)crisis is part of the crisis?
We can actively repattern & rewire in the direction
of radically different (imagined) regenerative futures?
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We use living systems thinking to explore the dynamic patterns of a system and how we can shift them in order to shift the system itself.
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We use this to see, sense into, and name key patterns that help fuel the polycrisis - at macro and micro level, co-creating a joint understanding of what informs and drives our evolving state of play.
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We use this to explore how we can untangle, re-imagine, re-wire, and re-pattern this pattern web - and our responses to it.
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We apply past, present and future awareness and lean into emergence to reveal repatterning pathways towards systems health.
The future is a dance between patterns and events
— Embracing Complexity
About Us
The Repatterning Collective is guided by two "What if" questions:
- What if - our approach to the (poly)crisis is part of the crisis?
- What if - we can actively repattern and rewire in the direction of radically different (imagined) regenerative futures?
As the climate crisis and other major crises increasingly spiral out of control, we find ourselves at a critical rupture point. Patterns help shape our (in)ability to effectively address our global crises.
Using the Iceberg analogy, underneath visible events and disruptions sit invisible (fractal) patterns. How these patterns are arranged and expressed informs our structures, constructs, and designs. They equally show up as thought patterns, informing our mindsets and worldviews.
All of us know about patterns. Patterns are often sticky, making it difficult to change the ones that don’t serve us well; and to build new patterns that make the old ones obsolete. Patterns and their interactions therefore play a crucial role in informing and driving each system and its outcomes - they're the hidden wiring underneath the system. And if we don’t consciously rethink the foundations of our designs, we risk perpetuating them.
What this tells us is that to transform a system, we have to hone our (re)patterning literacy – how to change multiple interconnected patterns and their interactions (with the system’s infrastructure, constructs, designs, mindsets and worldviews) in order to change the system itself. At the same time, we have to equally be acutely aware of how the current 'pattern web' may respond. And build this into our repatterning response.
There are no single answers or outcomes here. We have to be willing to work with emergence, whereby the path is part of the answer. Thereby engaging in an iterative process of untangling, reimagining, rewiring, and repatterning this web - and our responses to it. Imagination hereby has the ability to free us from the practicality of applied patterns of thinking and doing, thereby opening up new pathways.
Many of us already do this and some of us are very good at it. Even more of us lack sufficient skill and insight to be truly effective pattern spotters and re-patterners. At different levels in our economies and organisations, we see ample examples (whether policy or practice) where our collective responses keep repeating or perpetuating the very patterns we intend or at least ought to disrupt. Either through replicating unhelpful patterns of the past, or by patterning the dominant system in the approaches and solutions aimed at addressing its fallout.
This is why The Repatterning Collective is creating a pipeline of exploratory and applied learning on repatterning. To hone our ability for and deepen our understanding of repatterning, as a critical component of transformation in the increasingly complex and daunting world we’re facing today.
Vision
The Repatterning Collective is inspired by the idea of incubating a 'Bell Labs for a new world’.
An experimental container and "idea lab" for actors to jointly discover and engage in the practice of (re)patterning, as a critical component of systems redesign and the pluriverse of innovation taking place in the Horizon 2 of paradigm shift.
In doing so, it also aims to support a move away from the pervasive pattern of fighting our global crises as individuals and instead help us forge a deeply collective response.
The old world is dying, and the new world
struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
— Antonio Gramsci
What we do
The Repatterning Collective is currently exploring multiple strands of inquiry into repatterning, some of them in close collaboration with aligned partners:
- Developing, testing and trialing a set of facilitated & self-guided approaches through virtual and in-person formats, and their ability to meaningfully engage practitioners in repatterning towards a regenerative future.
- An ongoing series of concise interviews with cross-sections of practitioners in the “change” field, bringing out insights and learnings on how repatterning is perceived and applied.
- The application of a repatterning lens to specific inquiries, such as in leadership or towards critical challenges playing out as part of the unfolding polycrisis.
- The potential of AI and machine learning, as an exemplar of pattern recognition, to support practitioners with bespoke guidance on repatterning for their challenges at hand.
“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it” (Winston Churchill)
"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" (Frederic Jameson)
“We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective” (Kurt Vonnegut)
“If solutions within this system are so impossible to find then maybe we should change the system itself.” (Greta Thunberg)
