We make available resources from our work with Shared Agendas, published under an open CC BY 4.0. license and freely available for use and adaptation.
These documents provide the foundational frameworks and tools that underpin how SharedAgendas.org works with place-based collective processes. They offer a shared reference for actors engaging with this work.
Each document can be read on its own. Taken together, they form a coherent set covering governance under complexity, multi-level systemic change, and key dimensions of practice, investment and learning.
Organising distributed action for system transformation
This paper introduces the concept of Global Shared Agendas as a way to relate and interpret distributed transformation processes across territories and contexts. It explains how place-based Shared Agendas, broader developments and evolving system dynamics can be connected through a shared analytical structure that supports collective interpretation, learning and decision-making over time.
Using the circular bioeconomy as an illustrative example, the paper describes how system maps, theory of change approaches and artificial intelligence can support the organisation and interpretation of heterogeneous information across domains such as policy, investment, technology and place-based experimentation. The approach emphasises distributed sensemaking, contextual interpretation and adaptive learning under conditions of uncertainty, while avoiding predictive or optimisation-oriented understandings of systemic transformation.
Structural conditions and governance requirements for sustaining Shared Agendas
Organising collective action for systemic change under conditions of uncertainty, interdependence and distributed responsibility places demands that expose structural constraints in existing organisational and institutional arrangements. Sustaining Shared Agendas over time brings these constraints into focus.
Experience from place-based collective processes for systemic change shows that difficulties in maintaining coordination, connecting learning to decision-making, and holding shared direction are present from the outset and intensify as initiatives and actors multiply over time.
This document examines how these challenges arise in practice and identifies the key governance tensions and infrastructural requirements for sustaining Shared Agendas over time.
Connecting collaboration, learning and directionality through Shared Agendas
Sustaining collective action under conditions of uncertainty does not depend only on governance structures, portfolios of initiatives or monitoring systems. It also depends on how actors collaborate, remain engaged when tensions persist, and maintain coherence in relation to a shared direction as contexts evolve.
This document focuses on the human capabilities and practices through which collective action is sustained over time in place-based processes for systemic change. It brings attention to recurrent patterns of practice that allow collaboration to become a shared capability, enabling Shared Agendas to function as adaptive processes oriented by a shared vision of the future and evolving through action and learning.
Maintaining direction, contribution and learning over time
This document sets out how theory of change and learning are used within Shared Agenda processes.
It explains how theory of change functions as a working reference to articulate direction, surface assumptions about contribution and relate diverse actions over time, rather than as a fixed plan or performance framework. It also describes how monitoring and learning are organised as collective practices that inform coordination, prioritisation and decision-making as place-based work evolves.
By grounding theory of change and learning in ongoing Shared Agenda processes, the document clarifies how direction and coherence are maintained while collective action adapts under conditions of uncertainty.
Connecting collective action, learning and capital in place-based transitions
This document examines the limits of current systemic investment approaches when they engage with complex, place-based change. It argues that even portfolio-oriented investment remains insufficient if it is not connected to the governance conditions through which collective action is organised, interpreted and adjusted in practice.
By analysing Shared Agendas as territorial governance arrangements, the document reframes how the contribution of investment is understood in contexts where change emerges from the interaction of multiple initiatives over time.
The tools presented here support collective work in Shared Agenda processes. They help participants frame place-based problematic situations, interpret system change dynamics, identify system conditions, work with tensions, and connect action with learning over time.
Each tool includes a visual template and a short PDF guide.
Helps actors distinguish different types of challenges and align their responses with the nature of the situation.
Supports collective understanding of place-based problematic situations by making different problem framings visible and creating the basis for shared interpretation before analysis and action.
Used to make sense of how practices, rules, investments and coordination currently interact in a place in relation to a specific challenge and a defined direction of change.
Supports collective sense-making about systemic change in relation to a place-based challenge by relating landscape pressures, dominant practices, and emerging alternatives, and how their interaction shapes change over time.
Used to work with persistent tensions shaping Shared Agenda processes, helping actors navigate interdependent orientations over time rather than treating them as problems to be solved.
This tool supports collective work by helping actors distinguish different types of challenges and align their approaches to action with the nature of the situation they are facing. It helps avoid treating complex or uncertain situations as if they were technical or controllable, and provides a shared orientation for how to act, experiment or stabilise.
Choose a tool to explore it in detail
Supports collective understanding of place-based problematic situations by making different problem framings visible and creating the basis for shared interpretation before analysis and action.
Used to make sense of how practices, rules, investments and coordination currently interact in a place in relation to a specific challenge and a defined direction of change.
Supports collective sense-making about systemic change in relation to a place-based challenge by relating landscape pressures, dominant practices, and emerging alternatives, and how their interaction shapes change over time.
Used to work with persistent tensions shaping Shared Agenda processes, helping actors navigate interdependent orientations over time rather than treating them as problems to be solved.
Used to work with persistent tensions shaping Shared Agenda processes, helping actors navigate interdependent orientations over time rather than treating them as problems to be solved.
This tool helps participants recognise that a place-based challenge may contain different types of situations, each requiring a different way of working.
It clarifies which parts of the challenge call for standard procedures, technical analysis, experimentation and learning, or immediate stabilisation.
It is especially useful at the start of a Shared Agenda, when participants need to align expectations about planning, uncertainty, learning and control.
The problem framing wheel structures collective work around how a place-based problematic situation is understood from different perspectives.
It brings together different ways of describing the problem, its causes, its consequences and the opportunities that emerge when the situation is reframed.
It is used in the early stages of a Shared Agenda to define the scope of transformation before systemic diagnosis, portfolio design or experimentation.
The pentagonal map structures systemic diagnosis around the conditions that shape movement towards a shared direction of system change.
It helps identify facilitators and inhibitors across policies and governance, markets, investment and financing, science, technology and infrastructures, and society and culture.
It is used once the place-based problematic situation and the shared direction of system change have been defined.
The multi-level perspective framework supports a shared reading of how system change unfolds through the interaction between broader pressures, dominant practices and emerging alternatives.
It helps participants interpret why change gains traction, slows down or takes unexpected forms, and how local action relates to wider system dynamics.
It is useful when participants need to understand how a place-based situation is changing in relation to broader dynamics.
The polarities template supports work with persistent tensions that shape collective action.
It clarifies the value of each pole, the limiting effects that appear when one pole dominates, the actions that can retain value, and the signals that show how the polarity is evolving.
It is useful when discussions become repetitive, coordination loses clarity or initiatives pull in different directions.
The theory of change template connects the shared direction of system change, system conditions, systemic portfolios, assumptions, outputs and system-level signals.
It clarifies how collective work is expected to influence relevant system conditions and how progress will be interpreted over time.
It provides a working reference for maintaining direction, interpreting contribution and connecting learning with ongoing collective work.
The facilitators and inhibitors template helps interpret how system conditions operate in practice as evolving constraints.
It examines how specific facilitators and inhibitors influence movement towards the shared direction of system change, where their effects become visible, and what may need to change, adapt or strengthen.
It supports a more precise understanding of how system conditions affect coordination, experimentation, adaptation, continuity and the development of alternatives.
The polarity loops tool helps participants interpret tensions that shape Shared Agendas processes. It supports a more precise reading of how dominant practices and emerging alternatives interact, what costs current dynamics generate, what value alternative practices can bring, and which conditions could strengthen them.
Helps actors distinguish different types of challenges and align their responses with the nature of the situation.
Supports collective understanding of place-based problematic situations by making different problem framings visible and creating the basis for shared interpretation before analysis and action.
Used to make sense of how practices, rules, investments and coordination currently interact in a place in relation to a specific challenge and a defined direction of change.
Supports collective sense-making about systemic change in relation to a place-based challenge by relating landscape pressures, dominant practices, and emerging alternatives, and how their interaction shapes change over time.
Used to work with persistent tensions shaping Shared Agenda processes, helping actors navigate interdependent orientations over time rather than treating them as problems to be solved.
This tool supports collective work by helping actors distinguish different types of challenges and align their approaches to action with the nature of the situation they are facing. It helps avoid treating complex or uncertain situations as if they were technical or controllable, and provides a shared orientation for how to act, experiment or stabilise.
These documents develop the Shared Agendas framework in specific fields, providing structured approaches for understanding challenges, organising action and supporting systemic change across different contexts.
An operational framework for resilient and regenerative transformation of urban-territorial systems
This document presents an applied framework for organising the transformation of cities and territories as interconnected social, ecological and economic systems.
It defines a shared direction through six principles and four systemic portfolios — flourishing, reorganising, restoring and rebalancing — and uses polarity loops to interpret the dynamics that sustain current urban configurations and the conditions through which alternatives can gain strength.
The framework connects place-based collective action with broader system transformation and proposes an approach to monitoring based on system conditions, observable signals and collective interpretation over time.
Structural conditions and governance requirements for sustaining Shared Agendas
Organising collective action for systemic change under conditions of uncertainty, interdependence and distributed responsibility places demands that expose structural constraints in existing organisational and institutional arrangements. Sustaining Shared Agendas over time brings these constraints into focus.
Experience from place-based collective processes for systemic change shows that difficulties in maintaining coordination, connecting learning to decision-making, and holding shared direction are present from the outset and intensify as initiatives and actors multiply over time.
This document examines how these challenges arise in practice and identifies the key governance tensions and infrastructural requirements for sustaining Shared Agendas over time.
