Experiments in collective agency

Live prototypes for the futures we build together

Most of us can see what needs to change. What's harder is finding ways to move together before the conditions are ideal, while it matters.

Collective Futures designs experiments that start from what people already have. Small enough to begin now. Designed to travel.

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Rehearsing the future in the present

We are living through a genuine unravelling. Not a crisis to be managed and returned from but a threshold: old institutions are losing their grip while new forms of civic life are not yet fully visible, and the gap in between can feel like freefall.Most responses to this moment ask people to wait. To hold on until things settle, until the right institution steps in, until there's more clarity. But those conditions never arrive on their own, and waiting just delays learning what might work.

Something changes when people experience acting with others, even once, even briefly, imperfectly. It's not only what they understand that changes, but how they relate to their own capacity. What felt like someone else's problem becomes a shared question. What felt too large becomes something that can be moved, at least a little, from where you are.That kind of shift doesn't come just from more information. It can be sparked through a rehearsal: a live attempt at collective action, tried out before everything is clear, using what is at hand, in the conditions that exist right now.That's what this work is for.

Locally rooted, multiple scales

Complex challenges are felt most sharply in communities, even when their drivers sit elsewhere. That's also where many resources and relationships live, so we design experiments where people have energy and something at stake.Experiments can be seeded at different scales, from a small group to a federation, and across territories, from local to transnational.What travels is not the format, but the shift. People carry that pattern into their own contexts, adapting it in ways we couldn’t have predicted, without needing permission.

It might look like a community exploring how it could own its data. Or a European network of practitioners rethinking civic education in an age shaped by algorithmic systems. Different entry points, and no need to wait for stable conditions.

This might be for you

People and organisations working across local, national, and translocal scales, especially when change feels too large, too fast, or too fragmented to respond to alone.

Groups

You can see assets and possibilities, but the first move isn't obvious yet. What can help is a shared experience that makes action feel energising, not risky.

Communities

The relationships, skills, and motivation are there. What's missing is a shared impulse and a light structure to start without anyone needing to become an expert first.

Networks

You connect people across places, but this moment asks for more. You want to spark experiments, hold coherence, and work with unlikely allies without centralising control.

Federations

You hold infrastructure across organisations – governance, resources, reach – and want ways to activate that capacity at the speed of what's unfolding.

And beyond

Artists, young people, organisers, entrepreneurs, advocates, anyone who cares and wants to act. Many of the next forms of civic life are emerging at the edges.

Ways in

Different moments call for different ways to begin.
All pathways share the same design logic: asset-based, power-aware, and grounded in what's present. They differ in depth, time horizon, and the kind of infrastructure that starts to form.

First experience
Activation ● 60 minutes to half a day
→ Surface what's present
A structured experience that surfaces what's already in the room – assets, tensions, unlikely connections – and leaves each person with one concrete move.

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No preparation needed. No prior knowledge of AI, community resilience, or civic innovation. Just a real tension and a group willing to spend some time on it together.

The seed protocol, the most portable version of this, can travel without facilitation support. Anyone who has lived it once can run an informal version.

Sprints
Ignition ● 1 day to 3 weeks
→ Build early momentum
Short sprints that turn overlooked assets into visible action: a prototype event, a mobilisation tool, a new collaboration. The goal is ignition, not perfection – a first signal that something new is possible.

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Sprints can also take place inside existing convenings – a network gathering, a federation meeting, a conference – where people are already assembled but need a designed space to move from conversation into action.

Experiment Cycles
Practice ● 6 to 10 weeks
→ Sense, act, iterate
Structured loops to test, reflect, and adapt: shaping new roles, rhythms, and ways of working. Insights become repeated practice.

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It generates something tangible: a group that has practised how to act together, and a prototype that's worth developing further.

This is often where organisations shift from being hosts to becoming anchor institutions, as the capacity generated through the experiment stays within the network or the community.

Field Labs
Infrastructure ● 6 to 18 months
→ Build relational infrastructure
Sustained spaces where repeated experimentation brings people into working relationships across places and institutions, and where new ways of organising begin to take shape.

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A field lab doesn't start with a fixed outcome. It starts with a shared question, a design logic, and enough committed people to generate something genuinely new. What emerges – new civic arrangements, funding flows, or ways of organising – is discovered through the work, not designed in advance.

This is the layer where individual experiments become a pattern, and where that pattern begins to reshape the institutions and networks that hosted them.

What begins as a small experiment can ripple far beyond where it starts.

Experiments in motion

Examples of how real tensions can be turned into live prototypes across fields and scales. Each can unfold as a sprint, a cycle, or a longer lab, depending on the context and ambition.These experiments can also be read as a progression: from making systems visible, to exercising public power, to acting locally, to building shared capacity across places.

Experiment	Tension	What we do	What this builds
Making sense of AI systems _{opacity > civic leverage}	Citizens and communities are increasingly affected by AI systems they did not design and can’t easily influence. A few private companies set the terms of how these enter public life, leaving people reacting instead of shaping outcomes.	Short, intensive sprints where participants map how AI shows up in their context, who holds power, and where leverage might exist (e.g. data commons, procurement decisions, public alternatives).	Shared clarity that unlocks first moves: a power-aware understanding of how AI systems operate, where civic leverage exists, and how people can begin to intervene, not just respond.
Rehearsing public power in the AI age _{pressure > practised response}	Civic leaders and public institutions are expected to make decisions about AI under pressure, often without the time, tools, or mandate to shape how these systems are used. A growing sense that “there is no alternative” narrows imagination and concentrates power.	Facilitated theatre-inspired rehearsals where leaders step into concrete dilemmas and real constraints, testing decisions around data, risk, governance, human-AI decision making and accountability before they have to make them for real.	Public power in practice: possibilities to prevent, not just react; to articulate and defend alternatives; and to define boundaries around how AI systems are adopted, governed, and resisted where necessary.
Mobilising what's already here _{latent assets > visible tools}	Communities hold latent skills, relationships and resources, but much of this remains invisible or disconnected. Starting can feel out of reach.	Pop-up labs that surface local assets and test creative ways of mobilising them: participatory fundraising, civic events, or other lightweight and fun ways of connecting resources.	Proof that more is already possible: practical mechanisms, confidence and momentum for pooling capital of many kinds (financial, social, cultural, creative, relational, imagination).
Prototyping constellations for local resilience _{fragmentation > shared capacity}	Community foundations struggle to mobilise local giving for intersecting crises (economic turbulence, political polarisation, fragmented public systems, ecological shocks). In broader philanthropy, funding remains fragmented, short-term, and disconnected from local realities.	Networked labs to catalyse a small number of local experiments, surface signals across places, and pool them into national leverage: federations share learning, match funds, and bridge with larger public, EU, and philanthropic resources.	Constellating resilience: early infrastructure in formation demonstrating local response capacity, networked learning and coordination, and prototypes of funding mechanisms that leverage local assets and actions with wider resources.

An emerging ecology

Small pockets of experimentation are connecting across places and fields. Collective Futures is one node in a wider ecology of people and practices exploring how societies can become adaptive and self-governing as old forms break down.Over time, this work can help seed transitional institutions: distributed, locally rooted, able to carry collective agency through accelerated change. Not rigid structures, but living forms that stabilise what matters as they continue to evolve.The goal is not a better civic sector, but a more civically capable society, where acting with others on shared challenges becomes something more people can access and practice.If you're working on something similar, we'd love to connect.

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Build this with us

Collaborations begin with a real tension in your context and a designed experience to meet it.We bring facilitation and learning. Partners bring their people, their context, honest reflection on what happens – and a co-investment in building something open and reusable.This isn't a typical service relationship: it works more like a commons. What emerges is available to others including you, the communities you may never meet, and the civic forms that don't yet exist.

The value is in the spark, not the ownership.It starts with a conversation about what feels alive and urgent for you.

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Practice stewardship

Alexandra Stef – initiatorI've spent over a decade working in community organising, philanthropy infrastructure, and action learning, helping groups start moving even when their vision is more ambitious than their initial capacities.That work keeps opening new territory.The challenges we face now – AI concentrating power, erosion of civic infrastructure, communities losing economic ground, ecological breakdown – are hitting hard and fast. Most civic practice wasn't designed for this level of instability and speed.Collective Futures is part of my response: designing live experiments that help people act with others, build power, and create forms of civic life that can travel.It's an open, evolving practice rather than a fixed organisation.If something here resonates, I'd love to hear from you.
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Frequently asked questions

What makes this work in practice?

A few conditions matter a lot.

The work starts from a real tension, something people can actually feel, not a hypothetical problem.

It stays close to what’s already present: the relationships, capacities, constraints, and energy in the room. We don’t try to import a solution from elsewhere.

The first moves are small enough to try, even if they’re incomplete. That matters more than getting them right.

There’s a balance between structure and openness. Enough design to hold people through uncertainty, but not so much that everything is predetermined.

And importantly, the work includes reflection on what actually happened, not just what was intended. That’s what allows it to evolve and travel.

None of this guarantees outcomes. But when these conditions are in place, something tends to shift. People begin to see what they can do together, and that’s usually where things start.

What actually happens in one of your sessions?

It depends on the format, but in every case it's something more than a workshop. Participants don't sit and listen for long. They move, take positions, work in small groups on real tensions, and leave with something specific: a first move, a committed conversation, a connection to someone they didn't expect to find themselves working with.

We publish field notes from each session so you can see what actually happened, including what didn't quite land, not just what we designed for.

What would working together look like?

It usually starts with a real tension in your context. Something that feels urgent, stuck, or emerging that people can feel but don't yet know how to move on.

From there, we design a first experiment: a live activation with a small group, usually around 15 - 20 people.

Sometimes that first move is enough. Sometimes it opens something people want to continue.

In those cases, the work can extend into a series of experiments, across places, or into developing and adapting the underlying protocols.

There is no standard pathway. Each step depends on what becomes possible next.

Is this facilitation? Consulting? Training?

None of these exactly.

It's not facilitation in the usual sense. The goal isn't only to help a group process what it already knows, but to surface and activate what isn't yet visible.

It's not consulting because there's no diagnosis, recommendations, or solutions handed over. It's also not training because there's no fixed program or a curriculum to go through.

The closest description is a designed activation, something that creates the conditions for people to discover what they can do together, and to build from there.

Is it only for established organisations?

No. Organisations are often anchor partners or convenors, but the work isn't limited to formal institutions.

It also happens with community members, informal groups, emerging networks, and sometimes with unlikely combinations of people who wouldn't usually find themselves working together.

Part of the intention is to make space for new civic actors and forms of organising to emerge, not only to strengthen what exists.

What is the bigger ambition behind this work?

At the most immediate level, it's about helping people move together on real challenges now.

The bigger ambition is to contribute to a more civically capable society, where collective action isn't limited to professionals, institutions, or rare moments of mobilisation, but becomes something more people can access and practise.

That includes supporting existing organisations, while also making room for new groups, networks, and ways of organising to emerge as older structures begin to loosen.

Live experiments for collective action. Locally rooted, designed to travel.

Behind the practice

Stewarded by Alexandra Stef, based in Madrid and working internationally.Working languages: English, Spanish, Romanian.

Writing

Notes to surface patterns, ask better questions, and share learnings beyond single initiatives.