My aim is to seed, catalyse and coordinate projects that re-write our current story.

Phoebe has a background in complex systems and systems thinking which she applies to distributed governance, network design and community building. She recently finished working at The National Lottery Community Fund where she introduced systemic approaches to the Digital Fund and UK Portfolio. She's now working to create spaces for collective capacity building for civil society.

Her practice of capacity building for networks builds on 10 years of complexity and systems thinking and work as an educator, digital facilitator and community and network builder. Her practice draws on work in the areas of distributed governance, institutional innovation, funding, ecology, arts, experiential futures, narrative, organisational design and the imagination. Experienced in seeding, catalysing and building networks and communities, she has worked with funders and organisations to build systems change ecologies. Her inspiration derives from symbiotic microbial communities and mycelial networks. She is working on Moral Imaginations - a design lab for experiential collective imagination practices, building the case with others for civic imagining towards moral futures.

On the importance of experiments

In science, we design methodologies to interrogate the world around us, to learn about how systems work, and improve our own skills - iterating each time to get better at what we want to achieve. These are referred to as experiments. After an experiment, we pause, collect the data, analyse, reflect, re-calibrate, and iterate. We try new things, get our hands dirty, and most importantly, learn.

I apply the concept of experiments to life. Life is the lab. Some projects will succeed, others will fail.

Each project or venture has added in experience, whether that is practical experience like running a business or sector-specific experience like understanding the critical leverage points for systems change in the food system. Experiments are core to working with complex systems and being effective at systems change.

Work and projects

The Don’t Go Back To Normal Project

Don’t Go Back To Normal is an ethical stack for all areas of society, and a movement of people who commit to change every corner of their lives, and help others to make these changes. Each divestment from the old normal and each transition to a new platform or service or subscription brings all of us closer to the new world that is possible, and is reachable in this pandemic.

Advisors: Alanna Irving, Brett Scott, Francesca Pick, Lynne Davis, Paul Powlesland, Rieki Cordon, Tantek Çelik, Tibet Sprague and Tony Lai
Watch the launch event

Working as a funder at The National Lottery Community Fund and consulting funders on rethinking philanthropy

An 18-month contract managing the £12.5 million Digital Fund (read more at the Digital Fund blog www.medium.com/digitalfund), and leading a learning and insights programme for 29 grantholders. Introduced a portfolio of systems-informed approaches: ecosystem building, facilitation, digital sensemaking and use of Miro board, Slack, Kumu for online systems mapping and regular blogging. Built up a Fund-wide Futures Community of Practice of 180 people across the Fund, and introduced experiential imagination practices.

Spotlighted blogs:

Playlist of webinars, interviews and videos:

The National Lottery Community Fund - Video Playlist

Building a Community of Practice for Distributed Governance: DGOV Foundation (website: dgov.foundation, Twitter: twitter.com/dgovearth)

Read my article on Complex Governance Systems and the DGOV Foundation here.

I started DGOV Foundation with three others when we saw the gap between the legal, technical and social governance communities and wanted to create a forum to bring them together to foster collaboration, discussion and innovation across disciplines. We were funded by Tezos Foundation, Aragon Foundation and Ethereum Foundation to build collaborative infrastructure and cross-sectoral coalitions.

We have hosted two annual conferences and built a community of 460 people so far across the disciplines and research areas of Distributed Ledger Technology (like blockchain), distributed governance, legal engineering, Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) and global governance. Our community contains a broad spread of members, including the creator of Ethereum, faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, Executive Director of Ethereum Foundation, Stanford’s legal innovators and founders of major DAOs Aragon, Tezos, Colony, DAOstack, and practitioners of Holacracy, Enspiral, Sociocracy and MIT’s Theory U.

DGOV is a community of practice that supports the progress of distributed governance research and implementation.

Training teams, organisations and networks in Horizontal Organising and Leadership: Going Horizontal (goinghorizontal.co)

Read my article on horizontal organising in Labour Together here.

I train teams and organisations in the Going Horizontal methodology, created by Samantha Slade and stewarded by the Percolab organisation.

Going Horizontal is a comprehensive guide and set of trainings for organising horizontally - named by Frederik Laloux as the guide to practicing Reinventing Organisations. You can buy the book Going Horizontal here and download an excerpt here.

Going Horizontal comprises of seven domains of practice: Autonomy, Purpose, Meetings, Transparency, Decision Making, Learning & Development and Conflicts & Relationships. These cover all of the areas that a team, organisation or network will need to tackle to start organising in more horizontal, transparent and collective ways. Read about Generative Decision Making to get to know this practice and watch me facilitate a Generative Decision Making process live here.

Questions you may be asking: How do we distribute leadership in our organisation? How do we design a collaborative governance framework for our network? How do we practice new ways of working to shift the culture in our team? What are practices I can start doing, today, to shift the culture of my organisation to one of participation, horizontality, engagement, emergence, and collective intelligence? If these are questions you are asking and you are interested in working with me, please get in touch.

Teaching ecology, ecosystems and complexity at Schumacher College (schumachercollege.org.uk)

I am an Associate Lecturer at Schumacher College, which is accredited by Plymouth University. Schumacher is a college founded on the principles of deep ecology, transition economics and sustainable living. I am on the faculty of the MSc in Holistic Science and spent 12 months (between 2016 - 2017) re-designing and evolving the material of the Master's degree in a co-design process incorporating feedback from 20 years of Alumni and current developments in science and technology. I continue to teach and give lectures on topics of Ecology and Gaian Systems, Symbiosis, Molecular Biology, Evolutionary Biology, and Biomimicry and Alternative Economic Models.

Schumacher College offers radical pedagogical curriculum in the form of short residential courses, online content and postgraduate Master’s courses

First-hand experience of decentralised organising & networked organising at Enspiral (enspiral.com)

I am one of 22 co-owners and members of Enspiral, which is a virtual and physical network of companies and professionals working together to create a thriving society via social entrepreneurship. We build experimental software tools and methodology for decentralized organizations and shared governance and culture. Read about me teaching about Enspiral at an Alternative Business School here.

Building and managing a global network of systems thinkers at Fritjof Capra’s Capra Course (https://capracourse.net/)

Watch the YouTube playlist of Capra Course webinars I hosted.
Read my article about Building a Global Network of Systems Thinker Practitioners

“When Fritjof first envisioned the Capra Course, he had in mind a vision of a globally connected network of practitioners who understand this shift in paradigm, and practice systems thinking in their work, life and projects. Now, five iterations of Capra Course later, this vision is truly becoming a reality. With practitioners joining from all over the world, and connected by modern-day technologies, the global network is bringing itself into being."

I worked as the Capra Course’s Course Development Manager from February 2016 to February 2018. This included community management, network building, community building, organisation of alumni events, Capra Course webinars, digital facilitation and collaborative network projects.

Past ventures

Developed and launched the training branch to Enspiral: Enspiral Org Academy (context paper)

Enspiral Org Academy is a training school for 4-day residential courses on decentralised
organising, self-managing teams and distributed governance. The training covers everything from decision-making in distributed teams, power, autonomy, retrospectives, stakeholders and roles, conflict resilience and culture. We have trained executives, professionals, freelancers, and activists. We were invited to run a bespoke training for the 40 National Coordinators of Extinction Rebellion straight afterwards in the UK in September 2019.

More information on the training can be found at: www.enspiralorgacademy.co.

This context paper goes into further detail on the course curriculum.

Food Systems: Future Farm Lab

Future Farm Lab was born from conversations around how to restore transparency and trust in our food system, and shape the future of our food. Originally focussing on foodtech and agritech, we have shifted our focus to where we think we can make most positive systemic change.

Our aim is to reconnect farmers to consumers, retailers and technology, and all of our projects reflect that mission. Our latest project is #OurField: the cooperative grains movement which you can read about below.

The Future Farm Lab team on site at a public engagement event around the future of food at Somerset House.

Launching a Food System Land Cooperative: #OurField Movement (ourfieldproject.org)

#OurField is a project that organises cooperatively owned fields of heritage grain for farmer empowerment and transition. The model allows communities to ‘buy’ into a field of grain and become part of the process in deciding how the crops in the field are grown.

Not only does this project enable the public to connect with farmers and learn about the intricate decisions that farmers have to make on a day to day basis, it gives farmers the freedom to experiment with new, publicly supported, growing techniques.

The aim is for this to act as a blueprint for others to follow with the ultimate goal of having communities buy into and be part of the grain growing process and markets all around the UK and beyond. #OurField is not only a project, but a movement for better grain, community support and taking back control of our food.

We are currently gathering our first cohort of 40 Londoners to become #OurField partners. If you are interested in joining, please register you interest via our signup form here.

Founding Team of 225 Academy, Learning Innovation Lab

I joined 225 Academy as a Founding Team Member in January 2015 and helped launch the business across the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and Mumbai. 225 Academy was a learning innovation lab that designed and delivered unique, intensive, 5-day learning programmes on Futures, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship to high school students from ages 11 to 18. We set ourselves the goal to design the ultimate learning experience that taught the most interesting curriculum of innovation, brought in the best expertise from around the world, used cutting edge learning techniques informed by latest neuroscience research and provided a transformational learning experience that could power a year of learning.

We partnered with top international schools across the above locations and designed bespoke workshops based on students’ needs that aimed to inspire, empower and show them a glimpse of a positive technological, social and environmental future. We used cutting edge methods in pedagogy and curriculum design, experimenting with participatory learning methods, self-directed learning, peer to peer coaching, personalised curriculum, and project-based learning. The curriculum broadly covered “Future of Technology”, “The Brain and Neuroscience”, “Learning to Learn 101”, “Entrepreneurship and Movement Building”, “Communication & Debating” as well as offering hands-on crash courses in coding and hardware programming. We built a global network of outstanding mentors to deliver this curriculum.

I was involved in everything from logistics of starting a company to researching and implementing new methods of pedagogy and curriculum design and designing the curriculum together with our mentors. 225 Academy was my first venture into entrepreneurship, and practical first-hand training in managing teams, delivering workshops, curriculum design.

Read my reflections from Mumbai 225 Academy here.

A Background in Science

Genetic Engineering at the Patrik Jones Lab, Life Sciences Department, Imperial College London

Eureka moment in the lab: bacterial biofactories start producing traces of the biofuel molecule, octanol.

From September 2014 - June 2016 I worked as a Researcher in Synthetic Biology at Imperial College London, in the field of genetic engineering of microbes.

I designed experiments and created solutions to an unsustainable world in the form of cell bio-factories. These bio-factories could one day produce biofuels, and high value products like cosmetics, bioplastics, and even help change the food system.

I also worked as a Teaching Assistant to Professor Patrik Jones, designing metabolic engineering practical classes, delivering undergraduate and Master’s degree lectures, and supervising four undergraduate and Master’s students. I have also been lucky enough to collaborate with our neighbours at the Royal College of Art to run workshops at the intersection of synthetic biology and art/design, and deliver talks that combine science and sustainability.

Consulting and Advisor on other projects

London Science Gallery (london.sciencegallery.com)
Collaborating with creative scientists, artists, designers and cross-modalists to create multisensory exhibitions and explorations that question technology and its role in our futures.

Guerilla Science (guerillascience.org)
Designing pop-up exhibitions using a love of algae and connecting Art and Science. Exploring the Future of Food and whether algae will be our key to surviving in space.

BioChanges (biochangesbiodesign.com)
Creating a community around biodesign, synthetic biology, biohacking, bioart, regenrative bioengineering internationally with events, meetups and knowledge-share worldwide.

Brainiac Club (brainiac.club)
Brainiac Club is a collectively owned learning company on a mission to make learning fun, relevant and social. We are using the latest social technologies to connect young brainiacs (10-15 years) to some of the best brains from around the world.

Born Limitless (bornlimitless.org)
Building a 'brain-trust' network of innovators in education.

The IO Collective (What is an IO Collective?)
An entrepreneurial experiment in collaboration and conscious capitalism. We are actively experimenting around new ways of working together, while creating templates, social tools and technologies to facilitate this. Our first retreat took place in Candili, Greece from 8th-14th June 2016. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining our journey.

Carbon Coin (carboncoin.cc)
Consulting on the world's first ever environmentally friendly cryptocurrency: Bitcoin 2.0.

The Vela Foundation
Advising and co-creating a floating incubator for entrepreneurs, artists, designers and scientists - on a sailboat.

Coaching and Teaching Mindfulness & Neuroscience

I have trained groups in mindfulness and meditation approaching the topic from the place of neuroscience and human evolutionary psychology.

Below is a video I recorded for high school students at the Bombay International School after teaching a 5-day programme in December 2016.