Resilience & Recovery Hubs - Models from around the world
What makes a Resilience & Recovery Hub? This fieldnote focuses on the influences, reflections and learnings which shaped our thinking in Millgrove.
Latest
Electrification: reflections on resilience, adaptation & opportunities ⚡
Over the last eighteen months, a large chunk of my work has revolved around a humming central theme: Electrification. It's been less about wires and currents, and more so about the architecture and meshwork of resilience. As I look back on 2025 to where we stand now in
Advancing community resilience through Millgrove Resilience & Recovery Hub
At the end of 2024 we were delighted to receive word that two of MRAG's grant applications to AusNet's Energy Resilience Community Fund had been approved - both to drive community resilience in Millgrove, Victoria.
The Meshwork of Relational Infrastructure
What makes up Relational infrastructure when we zoom in? What are the qualities and attributes that might help us explain how we build it, nurture it and best invest in it - and indeed, what we can expect in return?
On Resonance
What is resonance in all its forms, and how might we focus on cultivating our ability to identify it, orient to it, feel it within ourselves and cast our own signals for others to receive?
Coalesce: Learnings from 2025
Reflections on a year of anti-patterning, shifting to a trip around the sun with the intention to 'coalesce' life, work and interests and grow together into the future.
Exploring the impacts of AI on Knowledge, Universities & Labs
AI is disrupting the university monopoly. We can't "hire our way" out of this transition, and trying to control emergence is a losing battle. Are sandboxes our best option to prototype a future University operating model?
Bloopers: Living Labs Report - Part 2: Typology of Living Labs
Living Labs come in many shapes and forms. This post aims to tease out some of the different forms to better understand their strengths and focuses to advance how we build and sustain Labs over time.
Trojan Mouse. Trojan Mice!
About a decade ago, I heard the term "Trojan Mouse" as a way to speak about small experiments or safe-to-fail tests. Ever since I've been thinking about what their role is in systems change.
Bloopers: Living Labs Report - Part 1: Generations
Living Labs are evolving over time, geography and in response to the challenges and opportunities for collective action. This post introduces Three Generations of evolution.
OLLD25: The Edges of University Living Labs
In October, I was fortunate enough to join forces with leading lights in the University Living Labs space at the Open Living Lab Days 2025 conference in Andorra.
Report: Advancing University Living Labs
University Living Labs are a relational infrastructure to orchestrate and catalyse portfolios of impact-oriented initiatives in collaboration with societal partners.
Living Labs
Three Lines Of Enquiry for Living Labs (OLLD25)
Open Living Lab Days 2025, a conference for Living Lab practitioners from around the world is upon us, and I'm in Andorra to explore three lines of enquiry.
Place
Putting the Place back in Place-based
Can we really be Place-based if we only pay attention to the People who live there?
Work
Update: Ecology of work, Europe & active experiments
The lichen-ous current state of my work and community life, and what's coming for the rest of the year.
Systems Practice
Deep Dive: Innovation Orchestration - challenges, value & impact framework
What value does an innovation orchestrator create, and what are the future aspects we need to address to increase their effectiveness?
Beyond the Lab: landscape scan and synthesis of regional innovation orchestration
Regional innovation doesn't just happen. Exploring the role of orchestration in regional innovation ecosystems - beyond the Lab.
Systems Practice
Exploring the intersection of systemic investment, place-based capital, community finance and social innovation
Funding and frameworks for a world in transition - session recording, reflections and exploration
systemic investing
Virtual Session: Systemic Design, Place-based Capital, Community Finance & Social Innovation
Join us for a timely exploration of difference types of finance, funding and investment suitable for tackling complex challenges faced by communities in Australia and Canada.
Social Labs
The Future of Labs - Part 4: The Language of Labs
Most people have never experienced a social innovation lab, so how do we talk to these people about what they do and why they're useful?
Social Innovation
The Future of Labs - Part 3: Report & Explorations
The Future of Labs 2024 Gathering Report is out! Find out more about what happened and the recommendations for social (innovation) labs from 65+ practitioners who gathered in Canada to explore the future of lab practice.
systemic investing
On Systemic Investing
Systemic investing is a promising complement to impact investing - moving from single point impact funding to a coherent portfolio logic to fund connected systems change initiatives and ecosystems.
Complexity
Provocation: Exploring Ecotone Organising
Ecotone organising offers a promising approach for fostering collective action on complex challenges. By creating spaces that are independent of existing organizational structures, we can cultivate hybrid cultures, shared capabilities, and flexible governance.
Complexity
Responding across the system
We need to address the complexity gap in climate responses.