Transcript: Organising in Place and Working Across Altitudes

Music by: Altitude - Declan DP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKqpyBn7jCM

Athanasia Price: Hello, thank you everyone for joining today's open learning session, “Organising in Place and Working Across Altitudes”. My name is Athanasia from Social Enterprise Australia, and thinking about enablers for collaboration is something that I am particularly excited about.

We host these sessions as part of the Social Enterprise Development Initiative, funded by the Federal Department of Social Services. Our aim is to hold spaces where a variety of people all across the social enterprise community and related networks can share what they know, and what they're learning to help strengthen connection and hopefully continue momentum towards these shared goals that we're all working towards.

Today's session is convened by Regen Labs in collaboration with Regen Melbourne. Before I hand over, I'll acknowledge that I'm thankful to be on beautiful Quandamooka Country. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, and recognise their continuing connection to the waters, skies, and lands that we all have the privilege of living and working on. I also pay my respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants joining today, recognising that your participation brings 65,000 years of systems thinking and relational care for people, place and planet. We understand that in all our work, whether we're a peak body, intermediary, social enterprise, researcher, or funder we all have opportunities and responsibilities to take actions that demonstrate value for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and futures and contribute to equity and justice as part of our everyday work. For us, that means learning, unlearning, making mistakes and practising every day, as we're trying to do at Social Enterprise Australia. 

Now, without further ado, it's a real pleasure to be joined by Dimity Podger from Regen Labs and Nicole Barling Luke from Regen Melbourne. Thank you both. 

Dimity Podger: Thanks so much for such a warm welcome, and really great to be here with you all. We're super pleased to be joining you for this open learning session and to share insights from WEAVE, the Regen Economy Systems Lab. WEAVE is an innovation, collaboration learning community commissioned by Social Enterprise Australia as part of the SEDI Program from the government. 

I'm Dimity, a co-founder of Regen Labs and convener of WEAVE, and I'm joining you from Dharawal Country and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

It's my pleasure to introduce our WEAVE learning partner, Nicole Barling Luke, Director of Earthshots with Regen Melbourne. Together, bringing learning around organising for change from an urban environment, Melbourne, a beautiful capital city, and Regen Labs, working at a national level with regional enterprises in regional places.

Our work has a very connected agenda, and you'll see this from our stories that we'll share with you today. But it's also different, so let's get into it. Over to you Nic, to set the scene. 

Nicole Barling Luke: Thanks, everyone. I'm joining from the beautiful Wurundjeri Country, here in Melbourne. 

We wanted to start a conversation about some of the things we've been learning both here in an urban context in Melbourne, but also, where are the patterns of that showing up in other places?

I wanted to start here (image of ruffled cat). I'm not sure if anyone has ever had this feeling. Feel free to reflect on what that might feel like for you. One of the challenging things we often find when working in this grand system space is moving between altitudes. For example, what does it mean to look at where affordable fresh food might be found in different suburbs in Melbourne? How does that connect to our supply chains regionally and nationally? How does that connect to our future food resilience? How does that connect to the shocks that we're seeing now and are going to see in the future? Also, how does that food connect to our cultural sense of belonging, what we have on our tables every meal when we're sharing food with friends and family? All of those layers are in a conversation at any time when you're thinking about the food system. We sometimes call that altitude sickness. 

This idea that, for example,  when you're mountain climbing and gaining or reducing altitude too quickly, the body hasn't had enough time to adjust to those conditions. When we're working in these really complex spaces, it can feel a bit like the body or the brain hasn't had time to adjust to the layers and the conditions that we're trying to accommodate at any given time, because it is so complex and interconnected. That's what we mean by working across altitudes. Where are we seeing these different layers of the system? 

We've been thinking about some maps that we might use to help navigate this feeling, so we don't all look like the cat every day. What we're going to work through is one framework that we've found useful to help orient where we are at any given time, and also use that as a way to share some really exciting work that we're seeing emerge from our places here.

This is one framework. There are so many incredible frameworks out there. I know Understorey have a lot of them. This one in particular we drew out because I think it's quite an accessible way, whether you're new to the systems world or you've been in it for a while to ground and return to these different entry points of what it means to do complex work. 

Some of you might have seen this before; if you haven't, welcome. It's adapted from the Geels transition model, which some of you might have seen. This adaptation is done by Charlie Leadbeater and Jennie Winhall. What they're really looking at is how do systems transition and how can we think about all the different things that happen at a time when we're transitioning?

One layer or one altitude is thought of as 'niches' or the Micro spaces. This is where people start to develop radical new solutions, new habits, and new ways of life that are often responding to local challenges. It might be many of the activities that you might be working on. Those projects that are trying to find a solution to a challenge that we're experiencing now. 

Oftentimes, what we're hoping for is that these niches start to coalesce or form new kernels of an adaptive or an alternative system. Where are we seeing these projects or opportunities for the future we want to see? It might be happening down your street, on your street, or in the neighbourhood next door. Where is that pocket of the new future starting to emerge? 

We have this other altitude, which is the landscape level, that Macro layer. This is where we see our societal values, culture, political ideologies, trends, and economic patterns. Changes at this level, at the landscape level and changes at the Micro level, where these niches are, emerge. They don't necessarily change a system; they don't transition a system, but they create the context and the opportunity to do so.

They create the conditions for this Meso layer, this 'regime' layer to change. That's where we see the institutions, technologies, markets and organisations that give structure to a system. This is where we are looking for that system's transition. Where do new ways of working get embedded? Where do new conditions, where do new incentives get created that are enduring? That might be the type of thing that we're looking for in a systems transition. 

Those are three broad altitudes we like to think of that need to be working in complementary ways if we're to ask or if we're to see how these systems might transition.

You want to see; where are those niche levels gaining momentum? Where is the landscape creating a new window of opportunity? Where is the regime starting to respond to both the pressure that's coming from the Macro and those new ideas that are coming from the Micro? 

Some of you might be familiar with that framework, some might not be. We like to think of that as one way to orient ourselves to different altitudes. What both Dimity and I are going to talk through is how we think about that in the context of our work. Where is it helpful to think about it as a map? Where does it start to coalesce all at once, all the time? Then we start to feel like that cat again, being quite lost. 

This is how you can see this happening over time, where you've got this Macro layer of the landscape. There is either pressure or opportunity created that can start to influence this Meso level. Importantly, you have these niches creating a sense of momentum, or there is something that breaks through into that Meso layer. 

If we think of this as a map for our conversation. How can we orient ourselves on these different altitudes? In the context of Regen Melbourne's work, let's navigate the map. As mentioned, we're a not-for-profit, working here in Greater Melbourne. We are in service to our place. We often say the client is Greater Melbourne. We've been around for about five years, and think of ourselves as a place-based intermediary, if you will.

So, where are the places in the system of this beautiful living, breathing city that need new flows? Whether that's resources, ideas, or new collaborations. How can we create new flows in service to what this place would like to happen for itself? In the context of that landscape level, our origin story was the double crisis of the black summer fires, immediately followed by the COVID lockdown, where we saw all the consequences of an unequal economy come to the surface.

People experienced the COVID lockdown fundamentally differently depending on whether they had a safe income or depending on where they lived in the city. All these cracks in our economic system really came to the fore, and that was on the back of that ecological crisis, where we saw smoke sitting in the city for the first time. It was a moment for the city itself to have a sense of identity because we really understood where the boundary of Greater Melbourne was. It was a sense of identity, but also recognising that the economy we have is not working for everyone. There are only a few that this is serving. If we look across our city, which is a beautiful, privileged place in many regards, there are many places where it is not serving and it is not serving people equally.

So, there's this pressure, we're all feeling it, and it's interesting to think about five years ago what we were feeling. Actually, what we're feeling now, and you can see it in the streets, people are feeling the pressure that the economic system we have is not serving everyone.

At the same time, there are windows of opportunity at that landscape level. There are windows of opportunity emerging around what a well-being economy could look like. What is a different way of organising this system that we have assumed? The economy has felt like it's in the realm of the experts. Only a couple of people really understand how it works, and it's very smoke and mirrors. Well, no, we work with Kate Raworth, who is an economist based in the UK, looking at doughnut economics. She says the most interesting tool that you can have when thinking about the economy is a pen or a pencil, because it means you can redesign it. It was designed in the first instance, so what does it look like to redesign it? Some of you might be familiar with doughnut economics; for those not, I'll very quickly introduce it.

Often, we think about the economy as a line that has to go up. Growth, it must grow, but why is that the shape? Why is that the shape of how we think about our economy? What if it looked like a doughnut? You have this green space in the middle, this safe and just space where we're thriving. Where there's a regenerative sense of place and belonging, 

both for our place, but also for the whole planet. What you see in this framework is that on the inside, you've got your social foundations. There are things like food, health, education, water, belonging, and mobility, all the things that you might need to thrive as a society. Then on the outside, you've got your planetary boundaries. These are things like climate change, air pollution, biodiversity loss, and land conversion. What we're seeing here in the red is that we have transgressed our planetary boundaries. We have overshot what this living planet can handle. We have put too much pressure on the planet. What you can see on the inside is that we have fallen short of our social foundations. Not everybody has what they need to thrive. 

This is Kate's proposition of how we could think about a new economy. What would it look like to live in the dough of the doughnut? The green space where we're not overshooting, but we're also not falling short. This came about at the same time that Regen Melbourne was emerging. When we're continuing to feel these economic pressures, but also start to have new conversations about how we might organise an economy. Doughnut economics is one of many in this well-being economy space. It can be a useful tool to have an entry point into both a big altitude of the economy, but also quite an accessible one. If you're thinking about this little wedge here, which is food. What does our food system look like here in Greater Melbourne? How does that connect to the broader altitudes at play? 

That might have been a quick run through of multiple, different altitudes at once. When we return to this map, that's some of the tools we're thinking about at the Macro layer. What does it look like to see that new window of opportunity at the landscape level? What would it look like to redesign or rethink where our economy is heading? Where we're centring life, not growth.

Check in with the body, because we're about to change altitudes. We're going down to this niche layer. What does it look like? I'm sure many of you on this call are working in amazing spaces that are creating alternative systems on the ground, in your communities, and places. What does that look like, and what are the shapes we're seeing there? 

One of many examples that I could have called on here, it was incredibly hard to pick. One that I wanted to pull out was this project that we're working on with The Wellbeing Protocol and over 10 community groups across Greater Melbourne. It is a distributed grant-making pilot that we've been working on. On the surface, essentially, it's an app that has been developed by The Wellbeing Protocol. What it does is create a space for democratic participation in a different way by channelling local ideas connected with a vision for the place, decided by the people who live in that place. Then that can channel and connect funding through it, that's distributed untied. So the people of the place are deciding where that money should flow.

We're working with about 10 community organisations across Greater Melbourne who are working on such different things in their own spaces, responding to their local needs, because they are the best suited. They know what needs to happen in their community, whether that is a biodiversity initiative or working with people at risk. They know what their local solutions need to look like. What this is about is how we create a funding mechanism that can change the power dynamics of having to apply for a grant, for instance. Instead of recognising and responding to the community-led knowledge that they have of their place and what it is to make that thrive. Yes, that's a small niche. It's not a new idea, but what we're looking at is how you could work across a network of these community groups to show demand for that type of funding, and for this type of hyperlocal organising. As one of many, many niches that are emerging around different types of community-led change, different types of democratic participation, and different types of funding flows. 

We could have stayed here at the niche level for a long time because there is so many interesting activities happening across Greater Melbourne. It's both inspiring and somewhat exhausting because it's a lot of activity. 

I wanted to look at this final altitude layer. Systems work is challenging for everyone, I think everyone on this call would know that. This one can be the challenging bit. How do we create enough window of opportunity at the landscape layer and enough momentum and coherence of these niches to join up in a strategic way to hit that Meso, those structures of the system?

Something that we're working on at Regen Melbourne and across the city, is seeing how can we scaffold that transition? From all these incredible niches, how do we scaffold them into how the current system is structured, the deep code of how we organise ourselves? What is something that can intersect with that? Actually change some of the patterns of how decisions are being made at the moment. Our response to this Meso level is what we call Earthshots. 

You might think of a Moonshot, which is when they said, We are going to the moon. They didn't know how, but they made that bold statement. By doing so, all these different ways of organising were created. There were new innovations, new markets were created, new ways of collaborating, whole industries emerged in order to channel behind that goal. Now we are not interested in colonising space or going to the moon. We are interested in working in our place here, as an Earthshot. So what would it look like to put out these wildly ambitious goals? Then say we don't know how to get there. By putting out that declaration, how might we organise ourselves differently in service to what that goal is?

We think of these Earthshots in lots of different ways. When thinking about that map we're looking at, how can we think of them as coherence-making mechanisms? How can it be a way to create momentum of both the niches, and also responding to the context at that landscape level to break through that Meso layer.

I'll step through a couple of elements of these Earthshots, so we can think about how they're designed. I think we're seeing a lot of promise in how they might be interacting with the current system. It's a bit of a gamble right now to see if these actually can break into the way our current system is operating. I'll break down a number of elements because I think this is instructive. These are the hypothesis of what we've put together to see if it can break into that current system. 

The first layer is a declaration of intent. One of our Earthshots is making the Birrarung/Yarra swimmable again. A) because we love swimming, sure, but B) that's a Trojan horse. If that river was healthy and thriving again, the whole city would be healthy and thriving. For that to happen, so many parts of our system would have to change in order to make it possible. How do we use the bold goal of a swimmable Birrarung as a multi-solver? There would have to be improvements in river health; our cultural relationship with the story of that river would have to change. Many things would be at play, that is nested under that grand challenge. It's also an ecosystem response. There's not going to be one single thing that happens, as a result of one organisation, that makes that river swimmable. It is an entire city response.

You've got engineers creating technical solutions around stormwater. We've also got the advocates who have been working on this type of initiative for years and decades to recognise that a healthy river is a healthy city. You've got your legal teams who are working with the landmark legislation that recognises the Birrarung as a living entity. So, what does it mean to put that into practice? What does it mean for the state government? Who already do great care of their waterways, to align this in a more strategic way to the friends of groups who are already caring for the waterways in their backyard. That's another layer. 

The third layer is that we create these nested system boundaries for multiple entry points. As I said, it's an ecosystem response. There are also these transition pathways, we call them. To break down the challenge, to say, okay, yes, it's going to take a whole ecosystem. How can we create some coherence about the pathways that we have ahead? So that they can be playing in their own rhythm, at their own time, at their own pace, but still working towards this grand goal, and have a sense of coherence about what is being created, not necessarily a sense of coordination. We find those transition pathways are quite helpful at that coherence layer. 

Then we have what we would call projects, a portfolio of projects. In this context, it's interesting to think about that as a portfolio of niches. All those niches that are already underway, what does that look like to come together in a strategic portfolio? 

Across our work at Regen Melbourne, whether that's in the Earthshots or the Systems Lab we work with, we have over 32 of these projects that are looking at: what are the things we are seeing in the city? How can they be a collective learning vehicle for a more aggregated impact?

Thinking about how that portfolio of niches would start to intersect with the layers of our system as we understand them. We want to be looking at the narrative. So what is the story of the river? What is the story of our streets here in Greater Melbourne? What are the stories of our food system and how we connect to food? We also want to look at levers like policy, regulation and our legal system in the work we do across our streets. 

It seems like a small lever to pull, but the different types of rules around verge planting and how we can support community-owned responses to create more biodiversity in their place. In combination with how we might rethink how public liability currently works, which is a real barrier to how community groups are currently able to care for the spaces that they live, work and play in. Across these grand goals, where are we looking at those enabling functions? Simple things like how do we plant in our verge? How do we shut down our street so we can have a street party? How do we as a community organisation go and care for the place without having a terrifying bill around public liability? Where are those levers that we're also pulling in that portfolio of niches to embed a new way of doing things in how decisions are currently getting made? 

That was a very quick map dive. Very happy to go deeper or zoom out. It would be great to hear if that all makes sense as an attempt to understand the map. What is one way for us to think about all these different altitudes we fling across? I will stop talking because that was far too much of my voice.

Dimity Podger: Not at all, Nic, it's great to work with a framework like this. Thanks for articulating these different levels that you're working on. 

One of the things we learned, Nic and I, as we were working with this framework, it’s a framework that Regen Melbourne uses a lot, and through this learning partnership, I've had the opportunity of working with it to explain and understand the Regen Lab story. Thanks so much, Nic, for explaining that and bringing to life all of the different frameworks that you use and the projects and programs that have been evolving over a period of time. Very well done. 

It's my turn to navigate the map. It has helped us in our thinking around what the conditions have been at that Macro altitude, which has helped some of the niches form that we're working in. Also, what's happening at that Meso altitude, in the middle, that are challenges, blockages or enablers of some of the niches that we're working with.

I'm going to share the story of how Regen Labs came about using these three altitudes. Similarly, the landscape level shock of the terrible bushfires, and in a similar way, a large organisation response, WWF Australia's response and the opening there to form niches like the Innovate to Regenerate challenge. Also, barriers and gaps that were still there at the Meso level, and then Regen Labs formed to respond to those shocks and to try to address the gaps. 

We all remember the landscape level, at the Macro level, that the devastating bushfires, followed by floods and COVID, had such a massive effect. What it did highlight for us was that regional communities were really bearing the brunt of these climate shocks and also leading the recovery, particularly through multiple niche innovations, which is very exciting to see with community-led solutions. 

Those Macro conditions and this grassroots response led to a lot of capital coming into WWF Australia and receiving a flow of funds for bushfire recovery. The reason I talk about WWF Australia is that our team, which co-founded Regen Labs, that's where we were working. Reece Proudfoot was leading the Innovate to Regenerate challenge, and I came a bit later in the project and joined the Regenerative Communities portfolio. Phil Freeman, also a co-founder was involved in helping set up Panda Labs, where Innovate to Regenerate sat within WWF and another member of our team as well.

So, WWF received all these funds, and there was this growing challenge of climate disruptions alongside this recognition of the need for new economic patterns, which Nic has explained. WWF took that opportunity to embark on a national strategy to regenerate Australia and invest in niche-level innovation. That included the Innovate to Regenerate campaign and challenge, and the focus there was to try and catalyse a shift to a regenerative economy through activations at that niche level. It involves supporting regional community-led regenerative initiatives and enterprises. With this wonderful team and partnerships with other organisations, including Regen Studios, it involved a number of different elements. A film to awaken grassroots communities, workshops to surface ideas, local learning labs to incubate those ideas and seed funding to finance them. With all of that, though, there were still barriers that were at that level. At the Meso level, specifically, we were learning that the right type of capital wasn't flowing to these enterprises. There were structural challenges and awareness challenges, and also a lack of understanding of what these enterprises were doing in terms of healing the commons.

We also learned that enterprises themselves, these regenerative enterprises, needed further capability building, support, and connection into innovation ecosystems. We learned that there was still a lot more to do. When the Innovate to Regenerate program finished at WWF in 2023. Regen Labs was launched to continue the work to try and break through to that Meso level. It's really fun to use this language Nic. 

Regen Labs has taken on this bold vision of partnering with regional enterprises and local ecosystem partners to catalyse the shift to a community and nature-serving economy. This is an image that helps us think about what we mean and to explain what we mean by that to others. At a community level, what's an interconnected system of enterprises across sectors working deeply in place for the regeneration of those places? 

If we come back to the map and move to that niche level again. Our work in response to this Meso-level challenge for enterprises and funders has been to develop two niche innovations. The first is the Regen Community Investment Fund and the second is the Regen Economy Activator Program. Together these niche innovations are looking at that systemic gap between enterprises needing the right support and the right finance. And investors, including the government, wanting pathways to invest for change.

We're innovating at this niche altitude to build new systems, structures, and cultures of thinking and doing. Creating new coalitions and alliances and attempting to make some shifts and create new structures that can exist in a more stable way at that Meso level.

Whilst a fund is not a new thing, a fund isn't an innovation or incubators. What we have done is co-design these side-by-side with place-based enterprises, First Nations communities, enterprise leaders, ecosystem partners and funders, to try and influence and design for these multiple altitudes within these niche innovations.

The fund and what we lovingly call the Regen Economy Activated Program, the REAP, together are increasing access of place-based portfolios of enterprises to the right kind of capital. They also help investors, either from within a place or from outside a place, to find impactful enterprises and contribute to blend their finance for greater impact. 

If we come back to the map. What we're experiencing now, a few years on, is that at the same time we're doing this work at the niche level, there is an emerging alignment at the Macro altitude as well. With a growing focus on place-based community-led economic transformation and this is further enabling opportunities at that niche altitude. The conditions are there for us to multiply and expand what we're doing at the niche level. 

This is where WEAVE comes in, a program supported by Social Enterprise Australia.

It's an opportunity for us to learn together and create coherence for the niches and the innovations happening at the grassroots, and trying to shift that Meso structure through this shared learning context. We're convening the lab to share insights, learn from one another and other initiatives happening in different parts of the system.

For example Regen Melbourne and our partner Ready Communities, and other place-based partners are bringing together different parts of the system to learn across three domains: business model innovation, social infrastructure and finance innovation. To amplify that learning to influence strategic intervention points, and try to influence the current regime and connect up the innovations at the place level.

In a nutshell, WEAVE is a platform or a scaffold to move learning forward, and build collaboration infrastructure. We are trying to join up the niches and the innovations that are enabled by that Macro condition to create more opportunities for the right flow of finance and capital to enterprises. To grow innovation ecosystems in places and then learn more about doing that. I will leave it there. But back to you Nic. 

Nicole Barling Luke: Thanks, Dimity. I can see one really great question in the chat and we have some that people pre-sent when they signed up, so we can have a good chat about things that are coming up.

We do want to land on some reflections on how, as Dimity says, we've been practising this language. Where is it useful to think about this? Where does it create too much mechanical thinking about what layer you are at? Where is it quite a helpful map to think about, where are we in a transition?

Both in the work that I am in and also the bigger picture, how do we help orient ourselves to that? A couple of reflections from what we would say is the ‘messy middles of change’. That moment of, how do these niches align with the Meso layer? That's really messy. That's where you get the altitude sickness from. 

It kind of goes without saying, but we do have to design with all altitudes in mind. We call it zoomability. Bec Scott likes to talk about it like the kite. Where are you holding onto the ground with the kite, but also where is the kite flying up and seeing a different altitude? I think work that is cognisant of where we are in a moving dynamic system is good. 

Dimity, you put this one in, which I think is 100% right. Trust and relational capital at any stage of a transition are critical. There was a question that we can come back to, that was posted by someone when they signed up: What do you need first? What does good social infrastructure look like in place-based work? I think both of us would agree that we should not move past trust and relational capital. 

Something we were also reflecting on is that these altitudes are not equal in their resilience. That might feel obvious to say, but niches by nature are sometimes precarious or sometimes set at a particular scale. That Meso structure is really sticky. It's there because it's been stabilised. An ability to bounce back or break through is not equal for all these altitudes. 

Do you want to speak to the next one? 

Dimity Pedger: Absolutely, Nic. It's an interesting one, and the two next ones come together. We were thinking about our reflection on ways you can bake in enabling conditions into the authorising environment. For example, in the Southern Highlands, where we're working with the Highlands Homegrown Economy, which is a group of partners. One of the things our colleague, Reece, has focused on is baking in the idea of a regenerative economy into the community management plans within local government. The language is there; then we have to figure out how to do it. But it's a way of baking in a concept and a way of thinking about the economy and planning for the future. That's one way of thinking about’ baking in’ and to also know that it may compromise niches that are needed for further growth and development. So being mindful not to impose a structure too soon in these transitions is important. 

Which probably leads to the final one. There are always more niches. There's a culture of being comfortable that we need to evolve the systems that we have. That they do stabilise and they still need to evolve. So being comfortable with niches, there is importance for innovation, and it is important to support. Anything else you wanted to add, Nic? 

Nicole Barling Luke: No, I think it's nice to end on there are always more niches because that perhaps beautifully segues.

There's a question in the chat, Does it take a significant landscape shift or that Macro disalignment for community to be activated or can communities be activated otherwise? So does it always have to come from a disalignment or an alignment? That's a great question and you are probably well placed to reflect on that, Dimity.

Dimity Podger: It's both, I guess. One thing that emerged for us with Regen Labs is that we came out of something that had already been a response to a calamity and that provided conditions. Kate Raworth visited Australia and provided a more proactive way of thinking about the economy. So there was the shock, that disalignment, as well as other ways of thinking about the economy - and we can proactively evolve in that way. 

For some of the work that we're doing, we're trying to share what we're learning, so that other communities can also proactively move forward without necessarily a burning platform. We do have a burning platform, I think, in many respects. If you can develop that culture of innovation, and proactive and initiative-based cultures, entrepreneurial cultures, then perhaps we can move to the future with less shock. But it's both. Yes and.

Nicole Barling Luke: Yes. Yes, and. I agree. I'm trying to think if there are any more place-based stories I can tell to bring this to life, but none are coming to mind. That map that we used today shows quite a neat timeline. As if niches are growing, and then there's momentum and that lines up with disalignment. That's a nice way to visualise a temporal scale that I don't think always aligns that way. I think a lot of communities always activate themselves. They are always creating niches. They are always designing and bringing to life stories that they need to work and live in the way that they want to work and live. So that is going on, and the neatness of that map shows a catalytic moment when that lines up with disalignment, but certainly not the only catalytic moment. 

Participant: Yeah, I wanted to bring in a more systemic perspective, and wonder whether we could create more of a circular thing than a linear development. As Dimity said so rightly, the forces can come in, and opportunities can come in at any level. It's about how you leverage those ones when they come, which you can't predict when they're going to come. You can create the condition, but sometimes it's as we know, not something predictable. Having a circular perspective to those three layers, if that makes sense.

Dimity Podger: Yeah, absolutely. It's spirally, it's circular. 

Participant: It's like the shape of a snail.

Dimity Podger: Yeah, it's a great question. 

Participant: At least it moves us from that linear perspective, which we need to.

Dimity Podger: Yeah, and I like this distinction between innovation or change-making. Some of what's happening at the niche level and also other levels is there's organising happening and organising for change and capability building and so on.

Participant: I think if we frame it as change-making, it's much broader than innovation. Of course, you can innovate at the business level, but from my humble experience, place-based initiatives innovate at different types of levels that doesn't exist in, for example, tech innovation. If we move away from innovation, it's actually less reductive, I would say. Change-making for me is more appropriate because we are really trying to enact a change. To create something different in the system, not just creating a solution. I don't know.

Nicole Barling Luke: I really like that distinction. I think there's something you said that picks up as well that place also collapses systems. Taking that place-based approach, you can't make a perfect diagram. You can't reflect altitudes because it is living, and breathing. It's 3D. It's alive, it has a history. So it reached the limit of a linear framework as soon as you're talking about a place.

It can have tools to invite people in who might not have that, it can be a really somatically scary thing to all of a sudden have your systems collapsed into a place. 

Dimity Podger: I think this question in the chat, What does it take in terms of time invested in learning processes and infrastructure to get to the places you are now? I think that's a question you'd be well placed to answer as well. It does take time. Maybe some thoughts on that Nic, from Regen Melbourne's experience. 

Nicole Barling Luke: How do we even measure time, right? I think it's really neat to tell a story of the last five years from an organisational perspective. We were born out of crisis, and then we organised ourselves in a particular way for a couple of years and had this iterative strategy. There were lots of different formations of how we organised our team, and how we were funded. All that grew. That has a very neat evolution to it, in hindsight, but all of that was already emerging out of existing relationships, existing partnerships, and existing initiatives that had been born and that had died. As always happens. Alison, who's been our reading list collaborator, used to work at Resilient Melbourne, which was this initiative that was born and then died in its own way, or was reformed rather.

What I'm trying to say is, there is an enormous amount of time that is invested to build what we might say, social infrastructure. What are the scaffolds? What are the handholds we can have to work together? But all of that exists on so much time that was invested, even before the investment of our time. That said, I would say one more thing. Having an emergent organic response to what a place wants to evolve into, as well as having quite a strategic response is where the effort often goes. We do set ourselves up in such a way that there is a scaffold that can contain, hold and direct forward some of the work that we're doing. I think that has been set up in a very strategic way that, no, we didn't know that's what we were going to do five years ago, but it is what we're doing.

You can track that, in terms of the learning processes, they're very iterative. We have internal practices as a team. We also have lots of conversations and collaborations like this that keep the learning cycles alive. Whether that's regional conversations with Regen Labs, or international conversations with DEAL, the Doughnut Economics Action Lab team. So the altitudes are shifting in our learning processes all the time as well. There actually is a lot of structured strategy that sits behind it, too. That was a long response to a short question.

Dimity Podger: If I were to talk about one of the pathways of learning within WEAVE. One of the ways that we're learning is convening place-based conveners in different places across Australia in an action learning approach. Folks involved include Liz Sanders and Matthew Wright-Simon from the hills and coasts in Adelaide. They're learning about different things, like,  how do you convene a wisdom circle of stakeholders at the system level? As in government and funders and ecologists, and in particular First Nations supervisors of a program of enterprises trying to collaborate for impact in their place. We're learning about that.

Liz is learning about how do you convene and activate a whole food system in a region. We're also working with Paula Williams in Northern Rivers around a coalition. A Northern Rivers food coalition to activate pathways for enterprises as well as a holistic food strategy that's at play in good times and bad. 

Then in the Shoalhaven and Kangaroo Valley, Tim Collins and Miki Kovari are learning about local food co-ops. In the Southern Highlands we are activating around a Homegrown Highlands Economy, which is a convening of enterprises and ecosystem partners. There's learning happening in all different places. One way to harness or surface what those insights are and share them is through this action learning journey that we're doing through WEAVE. There's a bit of an example for you.

Any other questions? 

Nicole Barling Luke: Or are we perfectly at time? 

Dimity Podger: We are. Shall we hand back to you... 

Nicole Barling Luke: ...our wonderful hosts. 

Athanasia Price: Thank you both. That was fantastic. I love the work that both of your organisations are doing and really appreciated learning more detail. I found the concept of altitude sickness and working across the altitudes really useful for some of the conversations we're right in the thick of.

Thank you also to everyone who joined us here today. A huge thanks to the team at the Department of Social Services, who are supporting these learning communities as part of the SEDI initiative. It's been wonderful to be able to share some resources across the social enterprise sector to help people lead these sessions.

Thank you to the Social Enterprise Australia crew behind the scenes who helped to put these on. Please check out Understorey, if you haven't already, which is the place where we host information about the learning communities including WEAVE, recordings from the open learning sessions and a lots of others as well.

Really appreciate all of you.