Fellows in the Wild: 2025 Fall Fellowship Workshop Recap
- Demetria Zinyemba
- Oct 8
- 6 min read
Updated: Oct 9
With additional reporting from Jennifer Young
Energy Futures Lab Fellows recently gathered for the second time in-person in Canmore at the mid-point of the Fellowship. Together, we worked to unpack insights gathered over the last year and put them into action.
Over the summer, work had been done to whittle down the Fellowship’s portfolio of tension investigations into four key tensions present across the energy industry:
Investor Coherence and Confidence
Relationships with Indigenous Communities
Energy Development in Rural Spaces
Pore Space
Many of the Fellows, particularly new ones, were itching to get to work, and after several months of working to understand these tensions, it was time to shift from working in the “problem space” to the “solution space.”
GROUNDING TO OPEN
Our second gathering was opened with a truly grounding land acknowledgement. Elder-in-training Gilbert Crowchild graciously and humorously shared his traditional knowledge of how the land, the water and the air have sustained for eternity, a sentiment that is echoed in the human experience of motherhood and nurturing. These ideas were cemented with a ceremonial smudge allowing us to be truly open and present for work we had in front of us.
ICEBERGS, REVISITED
The workshop’s first session focused on completing the ‘Iceberg’ (causal layered) analyses that Fellows had started to work on during the March workshop. These were used to generate a better, more nuanced understanding of the structures and mental models that underpin each of the tensions. In other words, diving even deeper into the problem.
In this session, Fellows utilized the data from 101 interviews conducted with people working within these tensions in their day-to-day roles to further explore the assumptions, beliefs and value systems that drive the tensions that we see in the energy system. We observed that many of the tensions are rooted in systems that are much larger than anything our group of fifty people could tackle. For example, in the Rural Energy Development tension, sticky notes added under structures and mental models included things like NIMBYism, rural values, inertia, colonialism, even ‘the way government is structured’. Not only did we spend most of the day in the “problem space” – at this point, it seemed the problems were much deeper and larger than we had initially thought.
SHIFTS AND NUDGES
Next, we sought to identify shifts in mindset, behaviour, structures or narratives that would need to occur in order to make meaningful progress on each of the tensions by December 2026. As part of this, we were asked to identify some enabling conditions – WWHTBT or “what would have to be true” for the shift to take place. We found ourselves wondering, “what if the thing that would need to be true, did not seem possible or feasible?” – like having regulatory certainty or people having the ability to discern misinformation. After some debate (and a bit of mental spiraling) one Fellow reminded us to be optimistic, and not limit ourselves to what we perceive as possible right now. We may not be able to shift the entire system, but maybe we could nudge it.
The FSSD'S SOCIAL PRINCIPLES
Sarah Brooks closed the day out with a pointed and impactful overview of the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development’s (FSSD) social principles that made many think deeply about what social sustainability really means in practice. She reminded us that social systems are living, adaptive networks, made up of people connected through relationships, interactions, and shared experiences. These systems are constantly evolving, finding new ways to organize and maintain balance even amid uncertainty and change.
Together, we reflected on how this adaptability depends on nurturing five essential conditions: health, ensuring people have access to safety and basic needs; influence, creating space for all voices to shape decisions; competence, supporting learning and skill development; impartiality, upholding fairness and justice; and meaning-making, helping individuals and communities find shared purpose.
The discussion reminded us that sustainability isn’t just about managing resources, it’s also about strengthening the social fabric that allows people and systems to thrive and adapt over time. This exploration of the FSSD social principles set the stage beautifully for the next part of the off-site, where we turned our focus toward systems mapping and the collective capacities needed to navigate complex change.
WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY
Day 2 started off with imagining our energy future via arts and crafts. We were challenged to visualize what the future might look like if the shifts we identified the previous afternoon came to pass and then build a Lego model or draw it. What can we do? And how? What are the initiatives already taking place that Fellows may leverage to bring these shifts about? The use of creativity was a great way to usher the Fellows into the long awaited “solution space”. And boy, did we get creative: there were some great stories, and even an AI generated, Titanic-esque image of certain, nameless politicians that stayed in the mind for a few days!
INTERVENTIONS & CHAMPIONS
And now, given everything we’d learned about the issue spaces – the events, observed patterns, the mental models, existing systems and structures, windows of opportunity, what should we do to close the gap between today and the future?
In complex systems, strategy rarely unfolds in linear plans. We talked about “opening moves” as the first, intentional steps that allow learning and adaptation to guide what comes next in a journey of learning, discovery, and potential influence in these tension spaces. Fellows were then challenged to identify the moves they believed were feasible, flexible and visible enough to build momentum and make progress towards shifting narratives and behaviours and resolving the tensions in the energy system. After an afternoon of brainstorming, reflection and dot-mocracy, Fellows were invited to identify initiatives they were interested in championing and/or supporting. And just like that - our 2025 portfolio of initiatives was born! We identified an initial portfolio of fourteen interventions in response to each of the four system tensions, many working across multiple tensions.
Initiatives (or interventions) launched with committed initiative teams, an initial definition of the solution, draft problem statements and ideas for initial steps to be taken in the coming weeks. Utilizing a variety of approaches and tactics, collectively the portfolio works across 4 key leverage points for shifting the system and utilizes 5 basic mechanisms.
4 Leverage Points for System Change
Empowering people and communities
Strengthening actors and networks
Reforming structures and processes
And shifting culture and mindsets
The four leverage areas loosely mirror Donella Meadows’ leverage points, spanning from feedback loops and information flows to the deeper rules and paradigms that shape systems.
5 Tension-Allieviating Mechanisms
1. Capacity Building & Education
Mechanism: Strengthening skills, literacy, or competence to enable better participation, decision-making, and collaboration.
Change logic: Equip actors with knowledge, tools, and relationships → reduce friction and perceived risk → unlock collaboration and investment.
2. Institution Building & Governance Mechanisms
Mechanism: Creating or strengthening enduring structures, associations, or frameworks that shape how actors interact or make decisions.
Change logic: Institutionalize collaboration, reduce fragmentation, create neutral third spaces to co-learn, and explore and standardize approaches → improve efficiency, transparency, collaboration and legitimacy.
3. Narrative Change & Public Communication
Mechanism: Shifting shared stories, frames, and public meaning to influence norms, legitimacy, and motivation.
Change logic: Reframe mindsets and narratives → shift the perceived “centre of gravity” in decision-making → enable more inclusive and future-fit policies and investments.
4. Financial & Policy Innovation
Mechanism: Creating incentives, instruments, or policies that directly influence capital flows or investor confidence.
Change logic: Align market and policy signals with social and environmental values → increase capital flow toward credible, inclusive projects.
5. Convening & Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration
Mechanism: Bringing diverse actors together to co-create understanding, identify shared goals, and prototype joint actions.
Change logic: Enable trust and mutual understanding → coordinate experimentation and policy → accelerate system learning and legitimacy.
It was great to see people raise their hands to lead so many initiatives, and to take initial steps towards action. And while it was uncomfortable to sit with the “problems” for so long, the interventions we identified seem a lot more promising than anything we might have suggested following the first workshop in the spring. Much credit to the EFL team for helping us navigate the journey thus far, and to the Fellows for their openness and willingness to explore.
FELLOWS IN THE WILD
We were fortunate to have a few days of incredible weather while in Canmore, and many fellows took the opportunity to go for a hike. Any hike is a great metaphor for the Fellowship – a reminder not only to trust the process, but to enjoy the journey as well as the destination.
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