Last week became a bit of a pinch point with 3 different pieces of work. It was a lot but it was also good. I’m excited to share how I’ve begun integrating the Rob Hopkins training from Week 22 into my work and I am hoping for some good news on up and coming work!
Welcome to my weekly studio/life notes, week 27 of 52. I am not using AI to write these weekly notes, it would defeat the purpose. In part the practice of writing these notes is to build my writing muscle.
The format for these notes remains the same: reflection, insight, a question for you, resources and a view to next week.
How was your week?
Reflection
Endings, possibilities and delivery all in a days work! I don’t even recall last Monday that’s how insane mid week was with a delivery of a full day workshop on Thursday and two other significant sessions Wednesday. The last day of June was spent prepping for the workshop, I wrote Week 26’s catchup. Might need to pull back the studio notes to the Friday. They are starting to drift into the next week of work, exactly as this one is. But also life happens.
Tuesday I spent finalising a presentation for a potential new piece of work that I would be pretty excited to do. It was delivered in a meeting to that potential client Wednesday morning directly after the closing meeting for the Co-Design Project. Insane morning. I had spent a good week thinking about the new work, designed an outline to a project including some change management, derisking and alignment work. My approach leaned a lot on my eBay experience of digital transformation and how much I learnt in those few years along with other work done in program management and delivery in the last decade across clients like Aer Lingus, PTSB, the Mental Health Commission. My work on adaptive challenges was also used. At the session I spoke about my philosophy of working strategically with clients on contracts or in a job, why I believe delivering projects and change is a lot about transparent communication and that building relationships is key. As adrienne marie brown says we move at the speed of trust.
When I got back home from Dublin, I still needed to create a slide deck for the Thursday workshop, I’d a good outline agenda but wanted a strong visual deck to keep pace during the day. I put a template together shared it with the client so they could add the case studies.
I was mentally drained. Knowing I needed to restore myself before doing anything further, I grabbed my togs and headed for a swim. Cahore was n’t so busy. I walked along the waters edge as far as I could towards Glasscarrig. Novel in that I’ve not walked that far along there before and curious to see the shallow and depth along that small strip of recently deposited sand. Retracing my steps back before swimming about 500m towards the pier. The colour of the sea a deep teal cold green. Restored and resourced I came home shared dinner and went back to my desk. Completing the deck late and being up at 5:30am.
Despite having worked Sunday, I was juggling and still finalising the artefacts, trying to take week 26 off work had definitely meant a trade off in time management.
The pitch session I gave myself plenty of work to do, but it was worth it. Or so I thought.
Insights
Try not to take important meetings on the move. It’s not as useful as you think.
Co-design challenges are always worth exploring even if the outcome is frustrating. Everyone learns so much more than if it was a cookie cutter traditional approach. Yes people do bump into more assumptions that get challenged, made visible and that in turn produces small islands of curiosity. Those small islands are where the magic happens in surprising ways.
Adaptive challenges need strong systems transformation scaffolding. It seems like bridging systems thinking with time travel and designing effective tools like my worksheet really help.
When you bring people into workshop spaces tackling an adaptive challenge you have to create a baseline from which to work.
This might be my top 10 on how to build relational workshops:
1. Help people get to know each other easily
2. Create the right conditions
3. Build trust
4. Tell them an outline of what you aim to do and get on with it
5. Keep on time with out being brusque
6. Introduce new to them concepts & processes simply
7. Make a mistake early so people know that’s ok, don’t be too slick or polished you are not granite
8. Welcome good discourse and healthy challenges
9. Acknowledge contributions
10. Make space for other voices and different paces of thinking
Mostly, be on point. Design a kick ass workshop and artefacts, co-create with clients if there is space and funding. Make space for younger voices and experience on the design team.
Deliver brilliant work we don’t have time for anything else!
Celebrate the wins. Even the small ones.
How that piece worked like that with the other elements, how you crafted a one day session. I know you want to work on deeper strategic stuff but supporting others to do their best work and equipping them is also critical if we are to scale and meet 2030 emission targets.
How else are we going to save €26BN? and create a flourishing low carbon future?
Sometimes you are not the right person for a piece of work. It’s ok to feel crushed after all the hard work and effort. But the world does n’t end there, although briefly it might feel like it. What can you learn from it? Try and get feedback. Respect decision that you have no real insight into the factors influencing it. Believe you did all you could. Be honest with yourself.
No work is ever wasted
all our Ma’s
I don’t look for run of the mill work, I look for something different. Places where I can add exceptional value. Where I can make a difference with all of my skills. It looks different to different clients. But its wherever I can support others to do their best work. Sometimes it’s as simple as a phone call, a casual conversation, a meeting, a project, a workshop, a series of training sessions, events or a job. More often now it evolves from others looking for something different also. Oh the joy of being in the right spaces and being resourced.
I almost forgot the most exciting thing about integrating Rob Hopkins training from How to fall in love with the future!
In the morning of the Future Visioning Workshop we looked at case studies and brilliant pieces of work being down across the jurisdictions of Ireland, England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. We had representatives from industry, higher education, policy makers in the room appropriately a really good mix.
I had used a systems thinking approach and created a bespoke session.
Additions that were tested in the context of adaptive challenges from the Rob Hopkins training included:
- what if walk = was a highlight for many
- Yes And *people left excited to bring it back to their teams
- time traveling in the gestalt theatre worked really well ~ amazingly 2 women from the Department of Climate Energy and Environment stood strategically way in front of others, it was fascinating to see people’s reactions to that. When we all stood in 2030 and everyone had done what was humanly possible and they had exceeded their goals ~ I asked “what would need to be true for that to happen”
After the presentation by each group on the What if walk ideas. I invited the participants to vote on the What if statements they wanted to work on. 8 main ideas bubbled up. After lunch people worked in teams of 3-6 on the worksheet I designed that brings together several tools from the UK Systems Design Tool Design Tool Kit. We also invited them to think how they could test the idea in a week, month, year. Each group presented back to the whole room. Now the real work begins of bringing those ideas into reality to dial up resources to meet the challenges of 2030 commitments.
A note on methodology ~ Yes and is not exclusively used by Rob Hopkins, its origins is in improv, comedy and theatre training. Citations on wikipedia go back to 2014. It’d experienced it before and it was even used as a mantra for transformational change in eBay. But it’s the first time I’ve experienced it deeply enough to use it to incorporate it in my strategic design work.
The Gestalt Theatre methodology I used I learned from Diego Marín in 2018, on a Gestalt Theatre for Trainers course in Wexford based on his Mask of Conflict Training. However I’d never used it as a time travel tool in that particular way before, the idea really sprang from our group huddle in the grounds of Hawkswood beside the vegetable garden. Rob Hopkins mentioned he uses a similar approach. I think it’s most effective because it surprises people in its simplicity and embodied practice. It works in a temporal fluidity of suspending reality even for a moment. In that opening space of our futures we open ourselves up to the What if… to the art of the possible. It’s only after you have done that opening of the heart and brain muscle that then you go get people to walk in green spaces with trees if at all possible and that makes a strong tangible connection to movement, nature and lots of What if possibility.
It was exciting to see it work so well. To introduce a whole group of people to a different approach of creating pathways towards achieving 2030 emission commitments.
The other thing that worked surprisingly well was the one word closing.
Last week I also connected with some of the IDEN activators crew to catch up on what they have been up to across our shared island.
A question for you?
What do you to restore and refresh your energy, your headspace?
Resources
This week those of us connected to Joanna Macy’s work are holding her in our hearts as she has moved into home hospice care.
This image was a gift to Joanna Macy by the artist, Dori Midnight.
A strategic solar revolution in Eastern Europe, How the war with Russia is driving energy independence. Interesting to note that since the war with Russia, Ukraine has saved $13.8BN in energy costs due to the reduction in fossil fuels. Chris Baraniuk June 2025.
“it’s too late” David Suzuki the very depressing read It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost.
After reading that read some of Joanna Macy’s work or mine or better yet let’s go time traveling to futures where we have won.
Frederick Douglass Civil Rights Festival in Wexford 14 – 23 November 2025.
A view to next week
The future is already here! Next week is administration and email catch up, I have lots of availability and open to client work.
I’m planning on beginning to draw my book, brain dump all the things I’ve spent years thinking about and how to structure them so they are accessible and visible to others.
Planning for Electric Picnic and Global Doughnut Day Festival have begun for IDEN.
Aiming also to support Wexford Environmental Network and have a look at the website begin developing a content approach and plan to bring all of the work the group does together and set up a page for Our Lady’s Island Campaign also.
There is a family celebration I’m looking forward to and conversations with friends and allies. More swimming and being outside and active.
I’ll also begin collecting wild grass seeds that thrive on the land we steward. I use them for land gifts and share them with ceremonial practitioners and healers.
Each day is one we have not lived before let’s live a future worth living into rather than our past histories. Let’s unlock futures where humans have done everything possible and we live in low carbon post growth societies within planetary boundaries. That also means Ireland has saved €26BN by 2030.
Remember I’ve been to the futures, we won.
Roisin Markham 
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