Action-Learning Journeys

An action-learning journey is an event. It’s an accumulation of energy oriented toward system transformation. The most critical moments of action-learning journeys are the intensives. The best action-learning journeys are those where the intensive feels like a singularity: a moment of exceptional circumstances that came together in such a way as to create a chance to demonstrate what to many seemed out of reach. Intensives are hosted by community hubs on-the-ground. The intensive in Accra, for example, lasted two weeks.

Action-learning journeys as a whole are incubators of governance evolution, future economy, social innovation and more, all originating from participatory co-design to align action with local system potential. The intensives are the time to embody those visions, to materialise those expressions of what could be - as an intervention into the systems of focus: health, food, and water systems, systems of storytelling and narratives, of eldership and care, of financing and justice.

The enrolment period is a time of creating the conditions necessary to build the social container for all stakeholders to feel free and able to literally enact system potential. This requires active participation: every participant in an action-learning journey is playing an active role.

An action-learning journey is a time-bound process in which a cohort of participants engages in learning-by-doing. The learnings are highlighted and communicated through evaluation. Together, these two movements of action and learning, contextualised by enrolment and ground-potentialising, are organised and held by facilitators to create an action-learning journey.

In short, an action-learning journey is the following provocation: there are plenty critiques of modernity, plenty dreams of the future, and plenty thought-leadership, theories, and frameworks. Let us make the lived reality as plentiful as the swirl of thoughts and words about what it could be like. Even if only momentary, for two weeks, let us bring the future into today.

The Replace Academy Case Study is an example from a previous action-learning journey, which created the aspect of knowledge commoning. This ALJ was entirely crowd-sourced, and purely self-organising, hosted by Astralship .

Accra is another example, which formed three teams, working on flooding, addictions and transport. This ALJ received 100k ADA  sponsorship from Cardano Catalyst , and was hosted by Accra Resource Centre .