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 essential elements required to endure and evolve authentically with unpredictable change.
- Practice is defined as conscious participation and integration, as an ongoing process toward increasing capability of a given activity. 1
- 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 structures2 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.
Past Work
Event Organising
Although Prisma as a system is influenced primarily by regenerative design practices, the events themselves serve the purpose of calling into being today the alternate futures we3 long for tomorrow to bring. Our core event-organising framework centres action, which takes place as an in-person intensive after a multi-stakeholder participatory design process. The aim is to embody organisational forms that represent life-centric economy, at bioregional scales, as a systemic intervention toward opening up whole-system transition pathways. These momentary embodiments aim to make real a systemic intervention into a given system of focus to unlock increasing orders of socio-ecological value. Crucially, what is of value and how that is represented, digitally, is defined by and for community.
Team Formation
Over 100 teams have been incubated with these organising frameworks, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, both with Prisma core facilitation teams present and without, by remotely training facilitators of community centres via online calls. Feedback has consistently centred the following pattern: steep learning curve; significantly more meaningful than any other technology programme they have experienced; will and commitment to continue their project development, often regardless of funding opportunities.
Story Publishing Infrastructure
Event organising centres on developing the capacities of hubs to publish a data-backed account of both the organising process and the intensive, as the start of an ongoing accounting of systems-change. This infrastructure creates multiple perspectives into participatory action, hosted in their own cloud environments to safeguard data sovereignty. Whilst being quantitatively rigorous, the publish stack is designed to address multiple levels of story-telling abstraction. Several publishing apps and their user-experience have been designed to support generating reflective perspective on the event experience, in order to make visible the learnings, including both inner and outer dimensions.
Hub Deployments
During the course of event organising, as part of developing self-publishing capacity, hubs deployed, configured and customised several publishing applications using a third-party cloud service provider as an interim step on the way towards self-hosting with a sovereign hub node. Over 30 deployments were made, distributing primarily two apps: one for static documentation and one for agent-centric (mobile-first), real-time, voice-based contribution accounting.