We are thrilled to be bringing together such extraordinary contributors for this year-end event, designed to spark fresh thinking and open new pathways for the year ahead.
Dave Snowden, one of the most respected voices on complexity and sense-making, whose Cynefin Framework has reshaped how organisations approach uncertainty. He will set the scene and present us with some of his core thinking.
We will then be joined by Ellie Snowden and Anna Panagiotou from the Cynefin team, who will explore how story and narrative shape our sense-making and can transform our approaches to situations that don’t have straight line answers.
We’re also honoured to welcome Caroline Lucas (UK’s first Green Party Member of Parliament) and Peter Merrifield (CEO of SWIM) will reflect on the themes from their own practice and experience as change makers.
Attendees are then invited into the conversation and have the chance to deepen their active involvement by joining the “After-Party”
Join us for an evening of rich and textured conversations on how complexity science can help us navigate today’s intractable challenges.
The event is recorded and recordings will be sent to all attendees.
Who should attend?
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.
Background information
If you are unfamiliar with Dave Snowden and the Cynefin Framework, you may be interested in this short introductory video or Dave Snowden’s Ted Talk.
4 week Training
This event will set the stage for a 4-week training starting in February 2026, which aims to bring practical tools and understanding how complexity thinking can guide practical action and deepen our appreciation that, in a complex system, no agent is without importance.
Details
Date: December 16th 2025
Time: 6.30-8.30PM GMT/ 10.30 -12.30 PT (check your local time)
Tickets:
We don’t have external funding and are dependent on your contribution to make these events happen. Thank you for your support.
Full Fee £15
Subsidised: £10,- (for people who cannot otherwise afford to join the event)
Supporter Fee: £25,- (This ticket price allows us to subsidise tickets for someone who otherwise could not attend)
If cost is a barrier, please get in touch.
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.
The Cynefin Company is an action research and development hub working at the limits of applied complexity science: where sparks become light, light becomes research and research becomes practice. It is not a soundbite or a buzz-phrase, we want to, and we do, make a difference. We are an interdisciplinary team working with a distributed network of practitioners across the world. We are authentic to our commitments, our ethics, and the valuable work of our members. The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems.
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.
Caroline Lucas
Caroline Lucas was the UK’s first Green Party Member of Parliament between 2010 and 2024, and before that served for 10 years in the European Parliament. She has also served as both Leader and Co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. She is a writer, campaigner and keynote speaker, with a particular interest in the role of education and the arts in mobilising action on the climate and nature emergencies. She has won numerous awards for her work: they include topping the list of the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour One Planet Power List of influential activists, educators and campaigners in 2020, and in 2024 the UK’s largest sustainable business awards scheme presented her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. She is Professor of Practice in Environmental Sustainability at the University of Sussex, Co-President of the European Movement, advisor to several climate and nature organisations including the Centre for Climate Psychology and the Climate Majority Project, and a Trustee of the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne. Her latest book, a Sunday Times bestseller, is Another England: How to Reclaim our National Story.
Peter Merrifield
Peter Merrifield is the founder of 'Support When it Matters' (SWIM), a London based organisation that offers vital support to Black and ethnic minority communities facing addiction, crime, homelessness, unemployment and other complex challenges. SWIM created a unique service model with major impact through unwavering commitment to centring those typically pushed to the edges. https://www.swimenterprises.com/
Host: Steffi Bednarek
Steffi is the founder and director of the Centre for Climate Psychology and editor of the book “Climate, Psychology and Change”. She has worked for local and national governments, the corporate sector, global financial institutions, the sustainability sector and large NGOs. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, the BBC, the Financial Times, Channel 4 and numerous journals and publications. She is an international guest speaker, lecturer and facilitator.
Facilitator: Bec Davison
Bec Davison is a coach, facilitator and consultant who works at the intersection of systems thinking, social justice and organisational transformation. Working with marginalised groups on the front-line and in leadership roles, Bec brings a sophisticated understanding of how power dynamics and systemic patterns shape individual experience, organisational behaviours and societal and global patterns.
After Party Facilitators
Jonathan Newman: is a Social Anthropologist who professionally runs focus groups that explore how participants, individually and collectively, understand topics or stimuli in relation to their own lives and experiences.
Jonathan takes people on an adventure of discovery; the hearing of outlooks and voices that are not our own, allowing ourselves to become fascinated by the wealth of understandings and the (dis) junctures between us.
Bec Davison: is a coach, facilitator and consultant who works at the intersection of systems thinking, social justice and organisational transformation. Working with marginalised groups on the front-line and in leadership roles, Bec brings a sophisticated understanding of how power dynamics and systemic patterns shape individual experience, organisational behaviours and societal and global patterns.
Steffi Bednarek: Founder and Director of the Centre for Climate Psychology
Upcoming training
Starting February, 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.
Learn more by clicking the button below.