The Cynefin Retreat.....2025

?? Reserve your place now

? What can you expect from one of our retreats?

Cynefin Retreats are where we bring outstanding faculty together with engaged, interesting participants to sow the seeds of new creation and consolidate it as it happens. Part intensive conference, part symposium, and part laboratory, they allow those who attend them to work on their own ideas actively, drawing inspiration from our methods and network. And as for us, they encourage us to keep evolving and ensure that our work is regularly exposed to new influences.

? What should you anticipate from one of our retreats?

Sitting at the transition from research to action, Cynefin Retreats are the embodiment of the Cynefin Co philosophy. Just like there are complex and ordered systems, there are complex and ordered approaches to learning and training. The generation of new knowledge is closer to complex; it is fresh, raw, uncertain, and exciting. In the spaces we create together, we aim to stimulate conditions and see what emerges rather than deciding in advance what we will learn. This is what Retreats do!

? Who might you meet at a Cynefin retreat?

Because the magic is as much the peer learning as the ‘expert’ perspectives, your fellow participants are as much a part of the experience as the Eagles. Our attendees are diverse. You will meet knowledge management aficionados, consultants of all kinds and stripes, long-time complexity practitioners as well as newbies, innovation-focused roles, educators, people from public services and policy, researchers, IT experts, design thinkers… the list is endless.

Using short lectures from expert practitioners on this topic as a starting point and inspiration, you will have plenty of time for rich discussion with small groups so that everyone has a chance to talk and listen. By the final stages, there is ample space for cross-pollination and creation. What does this look like? Anything from designing new methods to sharing knowledge and even defining collaborations.???

? “Communication is not just what is said; it is what it is possible to say” - Nora Bateson

Our contexts are brimming with life and relationships that place us across realms of more-than-human worlds. Communication happens in the in-betweens as we navigate these landscapes of our lived experience.? Against this backdrop of mutual learning, the boundaries between me and you are as distinct as they are blurred. Here, communication means many things, often as loud in silence as it can be elusive when explicitly formed. Scaffolding these interactions is an act of me and an act of us, yet the ways our world works are not always apparent.??Are you intrigued to learn more about this complex topic, grounded in rich and diverse contexts of lived experience?

? Our retreats are built on the notion that we are all one big organising system, and all participants in our broader Cynefin ecosystem play a role in what emerges.??Take a moment to pause and feel your feet on the ground. Where does your breath rise and fall?? Closing your eyes, pay attention to what you can hear. How does your body respond? Stay in the noticing. Are there any movements or sounds that want to come through? From this space, what is possible? Along with encouraging you to join us in March, could you consider this additional invitation for some somatic sense-making today?