From Stuck to Emergent: Learning to Dance with Difference

The practice itself is becoming a rhythm. Part of sensing and moving in these times. Every 6 months or so, I start to make a list of some of the patterns i’m noticing, the conversations that keep repeating and take some time to take stock of what this might mean.

For me, noticing these patterns isn’t about neat conclusions but about paying attention. Naming what repeats, surfacing what stays hidden, and finding ways to keep moving together in the complexity of these times.

But it can feel like an uncomfortable blur between professional noticings and personal practice.

This time it’s split into two distinct parts.

1. Stuck patterns i’m noticing. No surprises when we’re watching genocides and catastrophic natural disasters in real time, alongside experiencing division and polarisation on so many fronts. I’ve certainly been with a deep sadness that’s never been far away.

2. And if you look beneath there is a groundswell of emerging practices and framings that are quietly taking hold. All of which hint to big shifts and changes in how we’re living and organising.

Stuckness: What might we be moving away from

Infrastructure deadlock

It feels like we’re stuck in a deadlock when it comes to infrastructure. The old systems we rely on have been essential for getting us this far, but they’re creaking under the pressure of a world that’s changing faster than they can adapt. At the same time, new kinds of infrastructure are starting to emerge — but less visible, often more distributed, not so centralised but with the power to transform how we live and work.

The tricky bit is the gap between the two. But there’s some transitional infrastructure emerging — the bridge we desperately need but rarely talk about. I’m biased as I’m playing various roles in some of these — be that developing the platform of The Decelerator to catalyse more practice and attention to significant decisions and organisation needs to take — be that, particularly around points of endings and closures. Being part of the board of Shared Assets and its evolution to be movement infrastructure, shifting from having a board to a governance circle, taking a funders lens on the potential of a fiscal hosting ecosystem that is fast emerging.

These transitional systems are fragile. They don’t have the same comfort and familiarity as the old ways, and they can get written off as fads or jargon-heavy. They need proper funding and care to survive, yet the resources just don’t seem to be there in the fullness that is required. Is it because funders worry about backlash from the established infrastructure? Or is it because it’s easier to stick with what we know? Without support, though, these bridges risk collapsing before we even get across.

If we want to build a resilient future, we have to stop starving the very systems that could carry us through the transformation we need. It’s not a question of whether transitional infrastructure matters, it’s a question of whether we’ll recognise and back it before it’s too late.

Beyond cookie cutter funders

The reality is that philanthropy comes in many different flavours, and not all of it is about driving change. I feel like I learnt this the hard way. I was attending a series of funder events over the summer where it dawned on me that I had been in such a bubble of change, I forgot that quite a lot of philanthropy just wants to fund the status quo. They are after all the product of an extractive and capitalist system. And yet ‘funders’ often get tarred with the same brush. Too often — funders are tarnished or met with the same assumptions and projections, not seeing the nuance and different motivators. But there is no such thing as a cookie-cutter funder and how you can engage with them needs to change accordingly.

Behind the polished strategies and mission statements, funders live with a hidden web of contradictions: carrying the weight of privilege while often sharing the values of those they fund, saying “no” in a world of urgent need, and navigating the emotional toll of being both part of the system and frustrated by its limits. They’re seen as powerful (and are, relative), yet inside they wrestle with scarcity, projections, and the pressure to always have answers. This hidden work is rarely acknowledged, creating mistrust and keeps funders at arm’s length, leaving the ecosystem misaligned and the possibility for honest, co‑creative change out of reach.

Lost voices

I’ve had multiple conversations with people not feeling able to say how they really feel or what their experience has been, particularly for those in leadership roles. You need to tow the organisation line — and can in the process can lose a sense of your own voice.

And yet — in intimate conversations, where you can feel trust, a depth of honesty can emerge. It gets beyond the veneer of LinkedIn posts, success stories you can pick up on the honest reality of what this work takes, which it needs to be enabled and nurtured and the humanity that sits behind it.

I’ve loved how Corporate Bodies podcast has put words to organisational weirdness and starts to dig into why this might be — what organisational forms do to us.

Trying to get beyond this is partly why I’m co-hosting a writing retreat in November — this time for those, like me, experiencing and pushing the edges in the funding ecosystem. I really believe we need more honest stories . And while writing can play a role in processing and making sense of things — doesn’t always mean it needs a mass audience.

Emerging: what might we be moving towards

It’s often easy to critique and challenge what isn’t working and the bigger patterns, but alone they can be paralysing. Alongside these forces, you often have the opposites in close proximity — but they don’t have the same neatness in how to talk or express them, so they remain less seen or understood. I’m sharing some of what I’m seeing emerging. But doing this by sharing some of the micro practices and ways i’ve been trying to live and express these, in small but not insignificant, ways.

Dancing with difference

Dancing has been the metaphor I keep returning to. I’ve pushed my own edges and signed up for an expressive dance class the past months. Well outside my comfort zone, but I was surprised by how easeful it felt. It wasn’t about copying steps, but about responding to gentle invitations, moving fluidly in ways that felt right for me.

In many ways, it’s the perfect practice for these times: a reversal of control, where the art lies in dancing with different interpretations of the same instructions. Keep moving regardless, and connecting, lightly, with others as you go. In a safe enough and held space, this simple activity has become a helpful metaphor for this moment. Expressive dance has been a surprising teacher and opportunity to hone this essential capacity of keeping moving and dancing with difference.

Learning to trust embodied knowing

I find this one hard to talk about — because embodied wisdom and knowing doesn’t always have neat words. I returned from the School of Systems Change network gathering ready to shed notebooks from ~2014–2000. Literally ripping them up, transmuting them into new vessels — via the medium of papier mache with my son. Part creative act and summer holiday activity filler. But really trusting in the embodiment of the knowledge is now ready to take on new forms. There’s a little visual story, a creative act that sums this one up.

It’s not just the notebooks but a culmination of practice. From the small, day to day resourcing moments enabled by Resilience Toolkit we’ve been practising as a Thirty Percy team, really listening, trusting my intuition, writing becoming a grounding practice and perhaps the embracing of dancing and movement.

Leaning into liberatory leadership

Within Thirty Percy, I feel I’m beginning to taste what a healthy, even liberatory version of leadership could mean and feel like. But it seems there are still too few stories, role models, and real-life examples of what liberatory leadership looks like in practice. Though writers like Amel Murphy and the Liberatory Leadership work have offered glimpses and words for what i’m starting to experience.

What if leadership itself were an invitation to integration, bringing together your experiences, wisdom, and desires, not just for your own growth, but alongside others and in service of the ecosystem you’re part of? At its heart, leadership could be about living with integrity while finding opportunities to contribute at a scale far bigger than yourself.

I’m exploring these ideas further through a long-form piece / series that I’m hoping to share in 2026.

I’m sure there’s more. But the school summer holidays well in the past, and the new school term in full swing, this feels like enough for now. I’m ever curious about what resonates and what practices others are seeing emerging. Most likely there will be more in another 6months time or so.