Ahead of our upcoming training with The Cynefin Company in February 2026, this panel will open up a conversation on how complexity science can help us navigate today’s intractable challenges.
We are thrilled to welcome Dave Snowden, one of the world’s most respected voices on complexity and sense-making, whose Cynefin Framework has reshaped how organisations approach uncertainty.
Dave will be joined by Ellie Snowden and Anna Panagiotou from the Cynefin team to explore how how story and narrative shape our sense-making and can transform our approaches to the metacrisis.
This event is for anyone working at the interface of practice, policy, or culture change who senses that our current ways of thinking are not enough.
Complexity invites us to pay attention to interconnection, uncertainty, and emergence and reminds us that our identities, beliefs, hopes, and fears are anything but “soft.” They are central to how we act in the world.
Together with our panel, we’ll explore how story and narrative shape our sense-making, not just as tools for understanding but as catalysts for imagination, extending our vision into possibilities that lie beyond the immediate and into the “more-than-human” world.
This discussion will set the stage for a 4-week training in February 2026, offering a taste of how complexity thinking can guide practical action and deepen our appreciation that, in a complex system, no agent is without importance.
Participation in this event will give you access to a discount for the 4-week training, should you wish to deepen your engagement.
Do you have a question or are you experiencing an issue with your purchase? We are happy to help. Contact us.
Details
Date and time: December 16, 6.30-8.30PM GMT (check your local time)
Tickets
Regular: £15,-
Concession: £10,- (for people on low income who can otherwise not afford to join the event)
After-party
An informal gathering to digest, connect and let the conversation roam. The After-party runs for 60 minutes and starts 30 minutes after the end of the speaker event.
After a rich and resonant public conversation with Dave Snowden and The Cynefin team, we are opening the doors to a more intimate and informal space, a digital “after-party”. This is for those who want to reflect on what was said, speak from their own perspective, and see what unfolds in good company. Think of it like going to the pub after a play: the performance lingers, new thoughts arise, and the real conversations begin.
There’s no set programme. Just a shared curiosity and space to bring our reflections, whether they are thoughtful or messy, half-formed or well-baked.
Bring a glass of wine, a beer, a juice or a cup of tea, something to nibble and, above all, bring yourself. Let’s gather together. see where the conversation goes and discover where else that takes us.
Speakers
Dave Snowden
Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of The Cynefin Company, Dave Snowden is the creator of the Cynefin framework and SenseMaker®. A leading voice in complexity science and knowledge management, he works globally with governments, businesses, and organisations on decision-making, strategy, and change.
Eleanor Snowden
Eleanor Snowden is a Senior Research Consultant at The Cynefin Company, specialising in health and care. With a background in medical anthropology, she uses narrative, SenseMaker®, and complex facilitation to explore patient journeys, workforce experience, and leadership.
Anna Panagiotou
Anna is a Senior Research Consultant at The Cynefin Company. She has been a part of the Cynefin Centre since the beginning of 2020, bringing a perspective informed by materiality, archaeology, and her academic background to the theory and practice of complexity. Anna is involved in several programmes, including Climate Change and Education, and she is also particularly active in the area of Health. Anna has an MA in Egyptian Archaeology and a PhD in Mediterranean Archaeology from UCL.
Upcoming training
Early next year, Eleanor Snowden and Anna Panagiotou will host a training with the Centre for Climate Psychology that dives deeper into complexity, story, and sense-making.
This light-weight training draws from complexity science and human knowledge to explore the theory and practice of working actively, on the ground, in the moment, with intractable problems.
Complexity science has a lot to teach us about interconnected, dynamic, uncertain environments and the questions that have no single answers. When it comes to us humans, complexity science recognises the importance of our connections, identities, beliefs, attitudes, hopes, fears and dreams. There is nothing “soft” about these things – we ignore them at our risk. So in this training, as we look at how we make sense of the world in order to act in it, story and narrative will be core, both as a way of understanding and sense-making and as an activator of creative imaginations that take us beyond what we see around us and into the "more-than-human" realms.
This kind of sense-making necessarily includes practice and action, so in our sessions, we will look at the doing-in-the-world as part of being in the world, supported by the realisation that, in a complex system, no agent is without importance.
Express your interest in the training by joining the waitlist below.