More Horizon 2: Funding Transformation-oriented Events

Definitions

These terminologies enable us to define the contribution Prisma makes toward creating the conditions for systems-change initiatives to take root.

• A transition-oriented project is defined as an intervention in and with place that is not only future-oriented, but also contains within it the stamina¹ required to endure and evolve with unpredictable change.
• Practice is defined as conscious participation and integration, as an ongoing process toward increasing capability of a given activity. ²
• Liquidity is defined as the capacity of value to move between different organisational contexts without losing meaning.
• Impact networks are defined as any organisation whose members work locally and simultaneously align and coordinate as one non-local whole.
• Hubs are defined as a physical node that has continually played a value-adding role in its region over an extended period of time.
• Teams are defined as local task forces whose projects’ processes generate at least one stream of verifiable measurement (currency).
• The term event is used as a short-hand to mean a convergence of intention among multiple stakeholders types to enact and evidence systems transformation.

Introduction

Given these definitions, we introduce Prisma as a distributed action-learning incubator, who’s work is to apply systems-change practice on-the-ground in spaces of experimentation in order to unlock whole-system transition pathways.

Concretely, this paper introduces an open protocol for organising and publishing transformation-oriented events, as a means for creating and evaluating experimentations in regionally-grounded action. Finally, we frame this event-protocol as a decentralised accounting system designed to create value liquidity across aligned, multi-level networks.

Context

We recognise the present moment, on a planetary scale, as one where western hegemonic rationalising and centralisation of power has created corporate-political-institutional structures³ of control that are entrenched in a paradigm of separation. We recognise these structures influence narratives and capital allocation disproportionately and often in direct contradiction to the wills of everyday people. Organisationally, these structures demonstrate levels of capacity for empathy and evolution insufficient to be able to respond effectively to increasingly volatile environmental conditions, which, ironically, are also the by-products of their own conquests. As established entities continue racing to extract, accumulate and consume, grassroots innovators struggle to find project viability before becoming re-absorbed into the conditioning and patterning of the order they were originally trying to disrupt.

Proposal

Although Prisma as a system design, the events

Footnotes

1. Stamina: the original elements vital for a given system’s authenticity and proper functioning. ↩

2. Fritjof Capra, 2023, referencing MacIntyre, 1985, p.186 ↩

3. We refer to neoliberal capitalism. ↩