OCAD University Pivot 2021

July 22-23, 2021 Virtual Conference

Full Paper doi: 10.21606/pluriversal.2021.0015

Liberating Structures for Pluriversal World-Making

FAUGHNAN Máille; MURPHY Laura
Tulane University
[email protected]

One-way lectures, status reports, brainstorming, and open and managed discussions can
all be tedious, alienating and demoralizing exercises of unbalanced power. We see
opportunities to rethink in-person and online interactions across spheres such as
workplaces, classrooms, conferences, and movement organizing. We share essential
principles of Liberating Structures (LS), a set of 33+ open-source methods for more
engaging and effective gatherings. We offer visual illustrations, practical examples, and
insights from our experiences using LS for teaching and facilitation. LS, named by action
researcher William Torbert and elaborated by Henri Lipmanowicz, Keith McCandless and
others, are grounded in complexity thinking (vs. linear machine models), observing that
innovation emerges from interconnectedness and non-linear feedback. LS thus attend to
“micro-structures” of convenings to better organize participants’ time and attention: the
invitation, participant distribution, timing and steps, group configurations and space
arrangements. Facilitators can adopt, adapt, repeat and combine methods like Open
Space, Troika Consulting, Drawing Together, and Impromptu Networking to support
gatherings of any size. We believe LS can ease the work of dismantling oppression and
reassembling the new pluriversal worlds we seek, by supporting communities of learning,
design and social change in organizing inclusive gatherings, challenging institutional
norms, and building alternative visions.

Keywords: liberating structures; complexity thinking; convenings; inclusion

1. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted our usual ways of gathering. It has been simultaneously harmful and
freeing. The shift to remote and virtual convenings was exhausting for many people and has excluded
people who lack access to technology. It also revealed possibilities for including more people across
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different geographies and abilities in digitally mediated gatherings. Perhaps the chief effect of this
rearrangement of social interactions was simply highlighting the importance of dedicated time for our
collectives to connect around shared goals, in whatever format. Yet we (the authors) also notice how
ineffective, boring, and unbalanced many meetings continue to be, whether they take place virtually or
in-person.
While meeting or instruction norms are far from universal, many conventions of gathering – such as
trappings of agendas and meeting minutes to purposes of decision-making and governance – are
pervasive in formal organizations as well as social movements worldwide (Brown, Reed & Yarrow, 2017).
While such gatherings play a key role in social life and organizational process, they have limitations.
Meetings – whether in the Kenyan health sector (Brown & Green, 2017), urban planning in London
(Evans, 2017), or the Spanish Occupy movement (Corsín Jíminez & Estalella, 2017), can “perform” the
work of participation or empowerment to varying degrees of authenticity. Ethnographic accounts of
transnational scientific projects reveal that while meetings can be a time-wasting exercise, they can also
be generative for both relationships and project outputs (Riles 2017; Alexander, 2017).
A mid- or post-pandemic world offers an opportunity to rethink interactions – in workplaces,
educational settings, and social movements – towards these more beneficial outcomes, particularly to
harness collective knowledge for socially- and ecologically-minded innovation. Liberating Structures
offer one pathway for reimagining the processes of gathering people together for learning, planning,
exploring, or creating. Liberating Structures (LS) are a set of 33+ methods for inclusive, engaging and
even fun practices that unleash group creativity and shared ownership; champions offer LS as
alternatives to conventional meeting formats that effectively retain agenda-setting and decision-making
power among few people (Lipmanowicz & McCandless 2013). LS in effect reorganize key elements of our
convening systems – namely, participants’ time, attention, and energy – in subtle but simple ways
towards emergent purposes and actions. LS can further scaffold our work in dismantling oppressive
dominant systems and reassembling elements into the new worlds we seek: ones where everyone is
collectively engaged in designing the future.
We draw on our own practical experiences with Liberating Structures in classes, meetings and
workshops, to convey guiding principles and potential applications for designers and changemakers,
recognizing the central function of facilitation in their work (Manzini, 2015). Although certainly new
tools are needed for transformation, our goal is to recognize the value and amplify what already exists
by helping to disseminate easy-to-access-and-apply approaches for pluriversal world-making. We show
how these tools can support building pluralistic, dynamic communities for learning, design and social
change. We include visuals throughout, recognizing multiple languages and ways of learning among
readers.

1.1 Author Positionalities

Our perspectives in this paper – namely, our support of Liberating Structures and their value
in convenings for the pluriverse – reflect tensions in how our evolving identities as scholars and citizens
intersect with the realities of our livelihoods and institutional environments. We are both white, able-
bodied, cisgender American women with doctoral degrees in the social sciences (planning; international
development). We jointly have decades of experiences studying and practicing development and social
change in the Global South and our home state of Louisiana. We currently work in a social innovation
center in a private research university in the Southern United States, where enduring white supremacy,
indigenous genocide and legacies of slavery and segregation uphold current structures of wealth and
political power. Day-to-day, our university positions entail a lot of convenings, including research
presentations, classroom teaching, capacity-building sessions and participatory feedback sessions. Our
privileged identities can provoke or elicit both authentic respect as well as undo deference, authority

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and presumptions of expertise, whether in our roles as professors guiding students in the US or guest
trainers in a Kenyan non-profit.
Our personalities, values and brain chemistries further complicate these situations. As an introvert,
Laura finds that group meetings can be exhausting and that she needs time to herself to process her
thoughts during gatherings and recover afterwards. Máille finds that the entitlements learned through
her whiteness and professional affiliations are exacerbated by neurodivergence, such that she can be
either overly dominating or disengaged in conventional meeting structures, even while aspiring to more
power-sharing collaboration. We have both committed the errors of espousing participation or inclusion
while failing to give time to others’ voices or worldviews. We have also both sat by, frustrated, watching
unsatisfactory gatherings unfold: faculty meetings where only senior members speak, conferences
where presenters read their articles, classrooms where the same student rambles on while others nod
off or roll their eyes. From American higher education to community-based development in the Global
South, we have found the same dynamics of endless, long meetings. The agendas, the unspoken rules,
the power dynamics – all functioned to curtail participation, creativity, and collaboration.
We are constantly seeking more methodologies for inclusive, dynamic and emergent co-creation. As
scholars of social innovation (see Murphy et al., 2021), we incline towards transdisciplinary action
inquiry to address wicked problems, from children’s access to play to global climate change. We see
problem-solving as a relational process that requires healthy, interdependent social structures. Yet
dominant academic and professional paradigms offered us few good models for how to work better
together for the just, equitable and ecologically sound futures we desire. Over time, we learned what
meaningful interactions felt like to us by seeking out and orchestrating more unconventional gatherings
such as creative design sessions, relational meditations, group inquiries, and empathetic learning
communities. We realized that the good work at conventional gatherings happened in the coffee breaks,
outside the formal agenda! It is in that spirit that we both found Liberating Structures appealing. When
Laura learned about the menu of LS methods around 2013 grounded in complexity science, it made
sense to her. She introduced the approaches to Máille, then her graduate student. We have found LS a
welcome addition to our facilitation toolkits ever since.

2. Background on Liberating Structures

2.1 The Origins of Liberating Structures
Our current use of “liberating structures” refers to interactional methods popularized by
Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless in the early 21st century. However, LS has a deeper lineage.
Current scholarship attributes the concept to American action researcher William Torbert (Kimball,
2012). Through experiments in educational settings in the US in the 1970s, Torbert (1978, 1991)
advanced a theory of “liberating disciplines” as a mode of organizing, indicative of higher-order
organizational action logics that enable transformative inquiry. McCandless and Lipmanowicz,
innovation specialists with deep global experience, began giving shape to this praxis after bonding over
mutual interests in practical uses of complexity thinking. They worked with many others to field test
protocols in US healthcare and Latin American business contexts, eventually curating a menu of 33
liberating structures with detailed protocols available open-source and in a field guide. Along with
creating entirely new microstructures, their protocols build on recognizable design and collaboration
methods, including World Café or Positive Deviance (Kimball, 2012). Figure 1 depicts the full menu of
methods with titles, icons and brief descriptions. They selected these 33 for their power in re-designing
how people can come together for more engaging, playful, inspiring, purposeful, and innovative
sessions.

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!
!!!! Liberating*Structures*Menu:*Including*and*Unleashing*Everyone***v*2.2*

Impromptu! Min!Specs!! Discovery!&!Action!

Networking!! Specify*only*the*absolute* Dialogue!
Rapidly*share*challenges*and* “Must*do’s”*&*“Must*not*do’s”* Discover,*spark*&*unleash*local*
expectations,*building*new* for*achieving*a*purpose! solutions*to*chronic*problems!
connections!
9!Whys!! Wise!Crowds!! Integrated~Autonomy!
Make*the*purpose*of*your* Tap*the*wisdom*of*the*whole* Move*from*eitherNor*to*robust*
work*together*clear! group*in*rapid*cycles! bothNand*solutions!

What,!So!What,!Now! Wicked!Questions!!! Generative!

What?!! Articulate*the*paradoxical* Relationships!
Together,*look*back*on* challenges*that*a*group*must* Reveal*relationship*patterns*
progress*toNdate*and*decide* confront*to*succeed! that*create*surprising*value*or*
what*adjustments*are*needed! dysfunctions*

TRIZ! Drawing!Together! Critical!Uncertainties!!

Stop*counterproductive* Reveal*insights*&*paths* Develop*strategies*for*operating*
activities*&*behaviors*to* forward*through*nonNverbal* in*a*range*of*plausible*yet*
make*space*for*innovation! expression! unpredictable*futures*
!

Appreciative! Improv!Prototyping!! PurposeJToJPractice!!

Interviews! Develop*effective*solutions*to* Define*the*five*elements*that*
Discover*&*build*on*the*root* chronic*challenges*while*having* are*essential*for*a*resilient*&*
causes*of*success* serious*fun! enduring*initiative!
!

1J2J4JAll!! AgreementJCertainty! Ecocycle!Planning!

Engage*everyone* Matrix! Analyze*the*full*portfolio*of*
simultaneously*in*generating* Sort*challenges*into*simple,* activities*&*relationships*to*
questions/ideas/suggestions* complicated,*complex*and* identify*obstacles*and*
! chaotic*domains! opportunities*for*progress!
!

!User!Experience! Shift!&!Share!! Panarchy!!

Fishbowl! Understand*how*embedded*
Spread*good*ideas*and*make*
Share*knowNhow*gained*from* systems*interact,*evolve,*spread*
informal*connections*with*
experience*with*a*larger* innovation,*and*transform!
innovators
community!

15%!Solutions!! Heard,!Seen,! What!I!Need!From!You!

Discover*&*focus*on*what* Respected! Surface*essential*needs*across*
each*person*has*the*freedom* Practice*deeper*listening*and* functions*and*accept*or*reject*
and*resources*to*do*now* empathy*with*colleagues*! requests*for*support*
! !
*

25JToJ10!Crowd! Social!Network! Celebrity!Interview!

Webbing!! Reconnect*the*experience*of*
Sourcing!!
Map*informal*connections*&* leaders*and*experts*with*people*
Rapidly*generate*&*sift*a*
decide*how*to*strengthen*the* closest*to*the*challenges*at*hand*
group’s*most*powerful*
network*to*achieve*a*purpose! !
actionable*ideas!

Troika!Consulting!! Design!StoryBoards!! Helping!Heuristics!

Get*practical*and*imaginative* Define*stepNbyNstep*elements* Practice*progressive*methods*
help*from*colleagues* for*bringing*projects*to* for*helping*others,*receiving*
immediately! productive*endpoints! help,*and*asking*for*help!

Conversation!Café! Open!Space! Simple!Ethnography!

Engage*everyone*in*making* Liberate*inherent*action*and* Observe*&*record*actual*
sense*of*profound*challenges! leadership*in*large*groups! behavior*of*users*in*the*field!

Keith*McCandless*&*Henri*Lipmanowicz***www.liberatingstructures.com**
*

Figure 1. Visual menu of liberating structures Source: Lipmanowicz & McCandless (n.d.), Liberating Structures website.

This LS origin story is a partial account that credits mostly white, Western men with creating and
disseminating these methods. Many other individuals of diverse backgrounds have been instrumental in
developing and scaling this school of thought, such as Indian American communications scholar Arvind
Singhal (pictured with Lipmanowicz and McCandless in Figure 2 below), who has popularized LS in
education. We need a deeper genealogy for LS that traces their likely culturally diverse, non-industrial
influences. As a start, for example, Singhal et al. (2020) link LS’s theoretical groundings to many dialogic
and constructive pedagogies, including Paulo Freire’s “liberating education” for the poor. Torbert’s
(2021) more expansive view of “liberating disciplines” includes “trans-paradigmatic” spiritual practices

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like Christian prayer and Hindu yogas; he credits the Chinese divination text, I Ching, for example, with
helping him discover new modes of inquiry that balance intuitive and scientific ways of knowing (p. 153).
We also recognize that a global and diffuse community of practice is continually shaping and owning
liberating microstructures praxis. A decentralized network is using wiki-pages, Google documents, Slack
teams, virtual events and open-source materials to adapt, invent and diffuse practices.

Figure 2. LS menu creators Henri Lipmanowicz (left) and Keith McCandless (middle) with LS scholar Arvind Singhal (right).
Source: Lipmanowicz & McCandless (n.d.), Liberating Structures website.

Furthermore, systematized LS methods are not automatically critical or decolonial. Lipmanowicz and
McCandless (2013) advanced their protocols working in public, private and citizen sectors; their book
features applications of LS in reforming courts for child welfare alongside inclusive decision-making in
corporate contexts. Yet the extent to which innovations within mainstream institutions can subvert the
divisive and destructive logics of global capitalism or settler-colonialism is uncertain (Escobar, 2018). LS,
like any tool, can be used uncritically to uphold harmful systems. For example, Lipmanowicz and
McCandless (2010) used LS to foster bottom-up creativity in a global pharmaceutical company – an
industry that at best leverages the market and public funding to produce medicines for customers, and
at worst withholds life-saving drugs through price gouging for profit, neither of which constitute social
innovations that are just or sustainable (Phills et al., 2008). We also respect Tuck and Wayne Yang’s
(2012) assertion that “decolonization is not a metaphor” automatically commensurate with liberating
social change. LS can even be used for radical social justice aims without actually working to repatriate
land to indigenous peoples (though they could be used for that agenda). It might be difficult to
disentangle LS completely from Euro-modernity, a dominant worldview associated with exploitative
development and representative democracy alike (Kothari et al., 2019). In Section 4, we revisit this issue
of liberating structures and pluriversal thinking.

2.2 Complexity Thinking Underlies Liberating Structures

The potential of LS for pluriversal aims begins with its underlying framework, which is based on insights
from complex systems thinking that recognize the interconnectedness of elements, feedback loops, and
non-linear changes (Boultan et al., 2015; Escobar, 2018). Complexity thinking suggests that innovations
do not arise from careful planning or individual heroism, but instead emerge from the interactions of
people, other actors, and dynamic environments. Small shifts in variables within complex systems can

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have powerful impacts over time leading to regime change via “tipping points”. Drawing from these
principles, LS methods attend to the relevant details of interactions that can enable systemic shifts, not
only within a group but also in the wider environment.
Applying this ontology of complexity to meetings promotes ways of engaging outside of common top-
down, centralized, return-to equilibrium management styles. Lipmanowicz and McCandless argue that
organizational change strategies too often focus on difficult, costly and time-consuming alterations to
macrostructures such as office buildings or organizational charts. Instead, they advocate for bottom-up
change through easily-manipulated “microstructures” – a term they coined to render visible the small
factors shaping interaction, such as a meeting location or format. Unfortunately, conventional
microstructures such as presentations, status reports, brainstorming sessions, and open and managed
discussions tend to become the routine, even though they limit dynamic participation (Lipmanowicz et
al., 2015). The matrix in Figure 3 illustrates how these conventional forms lack structure for large-scale
engagement of all actors in a system, while providing either too much or too little regulation of content.
Liberating microstructures, on the other hand, employ just enough structure for self-guided group
learning; the structures serve as enabling foundations, rather than constraints (Torbert, 1978).

Figure 3. Liberating and conventional microstructures: levels of control and engagement. Source: Lipmanowicz & McCandless
(n.d.), Liberating Structures website.

Thus, liberating microstructures enable what the US-based pleasure activist and emergent
strategist adrienne maree brown (2017) calls “intentional adaptation”. Brown likens collective
leadership to the murmurations of starlings where groups move together in a purposeful but
decentralized way. The flocking of birds is an oft-cited example of a complex adaptive system that
produces sophisticated patterns of movement based on simple rules of synchronicity and adjustment.
2.3 The Simple Rules: Microstructure Design Elements
Including everyone in reflecting, learning, envisioning and sharing together requires careful attention to
the characteristics of all microstructures (whether liberating or conventional) such as intentionality,

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spatiality, and temporality. These design elements can function as light “guardrails” for improvisation,
such as we might hear when jazz artists use simple rules to play new music together (Kimball, 2012). For
each of their LS protocols, Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2013) identified design principles, or structural
elements, that shape the right amount of control for the group. These five elements help distribute and
contain content while expanding power to all participants to influence events:
1. Structuring an invitation to participate with a thoughtful, welcoming question or prompt that
orients the group around their purpose – the how and why of gathering
2. Arranging space and outlining materials needed for creative,
inclusive engagement, through formations like circles or materials like post-its, to organize
energy and attention for the purpose
3. Distributing participation thoughtfully, to avoid top-down or didactic approaches, so
that everyone present shapes the agenda and contributes (as opposed to a presentation where
one person gets most of the time)
4. Configuring groups in smaller or changing formations (as opposed to one large group), to
maximize interactions and opportunities for connection to many people and ideas
5. Outlining the sequence of steps and time allocation to allow for clear processes and iterations
that more effectively include everyone in generating ideas (rather than one linear program)
Identifying these microstructure elements can create a “pattern language for engagement” that we can
manipulate to “fuel interactions of a certain quality”; identifying these principles invite us to understand
this language and experiment with it intelligently to meet our needs (Kimball, 2012, p. 3). Just as with
any language, mastering these principles allows us to have increasingly complex conversations with
deeper meanings and outcomes (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2013). This mastery could take the form
of new LS methods and adapted applications for different group sizes and purposes (Kimball, 2012).
Another form of mastery can include “strings” that combine multiple LS methods for more elaborate
purposes such as identifying system behaviors, prototyping new solutions, or catalyzing frontline action.
New adopters with concrete short-term goals might begin with simple strings, such as when leaders of
the American Psychiatric Nurses Association employed Impromptu Networking, 1-2-4-ALL and Crowd
Sourcing at a conference to collectively determine new priorities for research (Mahoney et al.,
2016). More advanced practitioners can combine these simple warm-up methods with more elaborate
methods for organizational needs, such as Purpose-to-Practice, Open Space Technology, and the
Ecocycle framework. These combinations can support complex, multi-day processes, like strategic
planning retreats and global conferences.

3. Liberating Structures in Use (in an online world)

Here we share examples of facilitating LS from our own classrooms, meetings, and workshops. We also
include examples shared with permission by colleagues. We hope to illustrate both how one might use a
range of liberating structures and how we have adapted the five microstructure design elements to fit
different situations.

3.1. Troika Consulting

The purpose of Troika Consulting is to create a reciprocal space for peer advising on practical and urgent
issues. In a quick exercise, everyone can give and receive help on a compelling challenge or problem, no
matter the size of the group. Here is the original protocol for this microstructure:
1. The Structuring Invitation: “What is your challenge?” and “What kind of help do you need?”

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2. How Space Is Arranged and Materials Needed: Any number of small groups of 3 chairs, knee-to-
knee seating preferred. No table!
3. How Participation Is Distributed: In each round, one participant is the “Client,” the others
“Consultants”. Everyone has an equal opportunity to receive and give coaching.
4. How Groups Are Configured: Groups of 3 - people with diverse backgrounds and perspectives
are most helpful.
5. Sequence of Steps and Time Allocation:
a. Invite participants to reflect on the consulting question (the challenge and the help
needed) to ask when they are clients, 1 min.
b. Groups have first client share his or her [or their], 1-2 min.
c. Consultants ask the client clarifying questions, 1-2 min.
d. Client turns around with his or her [or their] back facing the consultants. Together, the
consultants generate ideas, suggestions, coaching advice, 4-5 min.
e. Client turns around and shares what was most valuable about the experience, 1-2 min.
f. Groups switch to next person and repeat steps. (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2013, p.
194)
Tweaking tiny details in these design elements matter for facilitating desired outcomes. Laura uses this
method regularly in the classroom with graduate students working on course projects. She created the
visual instructions in Figure 4 to help students understand the design elements for one round. In this
diagram, the purple figure is the Client; the Green and Red figures are Consultants. The graphic primarily
demonstrates steps for an in-person setup, with the trios sitting close together at first and the Client
turning around during consulting. Laura consulted the LS Slack community for ideas on adapting the
method for a virtual meeting space such as Zoom, where trios could gather in private breakout rooms.
The blue text boxes demonstrate these adjusted instructions. A key modification for remote
engagement involves the Client turning off their camera for the advising portion (shown in the middle
box), which mimics the cues of the Client turning around in their chair. Avoiding eye contact allows for
the Client to listen but not engage with the Consultants. By completing another two rounds, everyone
gave and received advice in under 30 minutes, no matter the size of the group. Playing both the Client
and Consultant role enhanced student learning outcomes from the projects.

Figure 4. Visual instructions for One Round of Troika Consulting; prototype visual was created for an online graduate class.

Another implementation of Troika Consulting features a “string” of methods used in an organizational

context. Samantha Fleurinor, our colleague in the center where both authors work, was tasked with

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facilitating monthly 2-hour team meetings to enhance collaboration among our members (who tend to
work independently on different projects) in alignment with our adoption of a multiculturalism
framework. Samantha turned to Troika Consulting to show the value we can bring to each other’s work.
However, Samantha started the meeting with another method she encountered in an online learning
community: Spiral Journaling (Barry, 2014). Figure 5 demonstrates the template for this exercise, which
involves solo journaling to help prepare each Client for the consulting session by identifying the areas
where they want to ask for support. Following the virtual adaptations of Troika outlined above,
Samantha created breakout groups, paying close attention to group configuration by matching up team
members who work together infrequently.

Figure 5. Visual template for Spiral Journaling exercise from team meeting. Source: Adapted from Barry (2014) by Samantha
Fleurinor.

We see value in Troika Consulting beyond simple and practical problem-solving. For students, Troika
helped build community and support systems and tapped into the collective wisdom of peer learning.
For a team, Troika revealed different challenges they faced under the same mission or project. In a
conference or global convening, Troika can be used to build new relationships among activists around
the world needed to sustain and envision future world-weaving. Furthermore, Troika can help balance
power dynamics through mutual reciprocity. It provides everyone an opportunity to offer their advice
and help with each other’s problems, as opposed to the typical one-way exercise of capability often
present in service provision.

3.2. Drawing Together

Where Troika Consulting employs verbal processing for pragmatic solutions, drawing taps into
unspoken, or unconscious, thought processes to reveal unexpected meanings and patterns. It starts with
silent, solo reflection on a challenge or situation using five easy-to-draw symbols, depicted in Figure 6,
which were field-tested in different cultural contexts to confirm their universal meaning.

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Figure 6. Visual vocabulary of Drawing Together symbols and meanings. Adapted from Lipmanowicz & McCandless (2013).

In March of 2021, Laura posed the following structured invitation to her social innovation graduate
students: “Draw a journey of your world beyond the Covid pandemic … “. She adapted the standard
steps from the field guide protocols (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2013). She shortened the timing to
reflect the limitations of a short class period and the comfort level of a group that had already spent two
months together expanding their creative skills (including drawing):
1. Review the meanings of each symbol with the group, 1 min.
2. Warm up with practice drawing the 5 simple shapes, 2 min.
3. Solo: Sketch out your “journey of working on ___using only the shapes, and no words” 5 min.
4. Solo: Do a second draft of this journey. Add color, move/adjust shapes, 3 min.
5. In pairs: Share with someone else who will interpret what the drawing means, without the
Drawer explaining anything or providing verbal commentary (swap drawings, read them), 5 min.
6. As a whole group: “What do our drawings reveal?” 5 min.
The four drawings in Figure 7 show the range of paper and digital sketches. Since the class was being
held remotely on Zoom, students posted drawings on the digital whiteboard platform, Mural. Therefore,
everyone could read and make sense of others’ journeys. Students reported that it was restful, spiritual,
and team-building pause in their frenetic online spring semester. It helped them understand their own
personal growth during the pandemic and their aspirations for changing societal structures.

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Figure 7. Examples of student journeys beyond COVID-19 pandemic from Drawing Together exercise in Laura’s class

We like Drawing Together as a microstructure for accommodating different styles of thinking and
learning. It plays with different forms of processing and communicating, allowing, for example,
introverts to recoup energy and explore their ideas through solo reflection. It can also be useful for
asserting the value of “affective perspective-taking” or intuitive, right-brain processing in cultural
contexts where cognitive or analytical thinking styles are venerated (many university classrooms and
professional contexts) By using Drawing Together, in under 15 minutes, a group of any size can have a
profound moment of introspection and connection.

3.3. What, So What, Now What (W3)

While the previous two liberating structures are more individually-focused, the “What, So What, Now
What” method (W3) emphasizes group-level processing of a shared experience to evaluate progress and
consider next steps. Figure 8 adapts the standard design elements for W3 into a visual template (except
for space and materials, which involve separate instructions for different settings). The invitation is for
groups to move along a ladder of inference in three stages of processing after a shared event, each
involving three steps of individual, small grouping, and whole group work.

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STAGES: Move along a INVITATION: After a shared STEPS: Complete all 3 stages, following 3
ladder of inference experience, ask…. repeating steps/stage
What happened? What did
1. WHAT: Collecting all you notice? What facts or
salient observations observations stood out? What
do you know? STEP 1 à STEP 2 à STEP 3 à
Why is that important? What Individuals Groups of 5-7 Group of 10+
2. SO WHAT: Sense-making patterns or conclusions are
to develop insights emerging? What hypotheses Record initial Share & add Highlight key
can you make? thoughts ideas points

What actions make sense? 2 min 7-10 min 7-10 min

3. NOW WHAT: Planning What should we do next?
to suitable response What steps can build on this
learning?
Figure 8. Diagram of design elements for What, So What, Now What. Source: Adapted from Lipmanowicz & McCandless (2013)
p. 197

Another colleague, Rebecca Otten, used W3 in a string during a workshop with a local youth advocacy
board. The board wanted Rebecca’s help mapping resources and relationships in their networks (to
better support other youth navigating foster care systems). Rebecca wanted to facilitate a working
session that balanced the board’s interpersonal tensions with productive design. Máille recommended
liberating structures generally and W3 (a personal favorite) specifically so as to attend to both session
process and content. Using the virtual software ConceptBoard for remote collaboration, Rebecca led the
group through a mapping exercise to identify where a young person in foster care might tap into existing
resources. She then used W3 to debrief the act of mapping itself. To stimulate reflection on new ways of
working together and create accountability, she added prompts to the invitation around participants’
feelings, take-aways and commitments. Figures 9a and 9b show highlights from the three stages of
WHAT/SO WHAT/NOW WHAT. Responses indicate that participants felt empowered and connected by
sharing and documenting their siloed knowledge. They also envisioned individual and collective actions
around both the content and process of the project, such as finding new resources and taking/making
space in interactions.

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Figure 9a. Advocacy board’s responses to W3 prompts of “What?” and “So What?”. Source: Rebecca Otten.

Figure 9b. Advocacy board’s responses to W3 prompts “Now what?”. Source: Rebecca Otten. Names redacted.

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In general, we see W3 as most useful for consensus-building and course-correcting for a group of people
that will continue working together over time, such as the board members in the example. Much is at
stake in such collectives, where disparate interpretations of the past can complicate decisions about the
future. This exercise helps to ground action plans – a speculative endeavor – in actual observations and
the meanings we ascribe to experiences. The iterative steps of individual work with small groupings in
each stage help surface many more observations, insights, and ideas in a short time than conventional
methods might allow. Participants can see how even the “facts” result from our biased and partial
viewpoints, and that surfacing these different perspectives can lead to a more holistic strategy.

3.4. Simple Liberating Structures for Everyone

The above examples demonstrate a few extended applications of LS methods that we adapted using
appropriate digital platforms and visual instructions as well as strings of multiple methods. This is just a
sample of methods we use regularly. Our facilitation toolkits include many other LS methods that we
deploy for classroom teaching, design workshops, and discussions with colleagues and community
groups. A few others from our repertoire that we recommend for “getting your feet wet” with LS
include:
• 1-2-4-ALL: Considered a “gateway” method, this basic LS bounds and balances discussions with
a simple progression from solo reflection (1 minute) to paired (2 minutes), two pairs (4 minutes),
and ALL (whole-group discussion). This scaffolding gives all individuals space for reflection, gets
people sharing with each other, and consolidates ideas and questions.
• Impromptu Networking: When convening many new people, this LS offers an alternative to
awkward cocktail hours or instrumental schmoozing. Participants move around a room for one-
one conversations fast three-minute rounds, around two questions: “What brings you here?”
and “What can you offer this room/group?” An online version has two people in break-out
rooms (add time), then moving one participant randomly to another room (think digital musical
chairs).
• 25/10 Crowd Sourcing: This alternative to classic group brainstorming supports buy-in and
dissemination of new ideas. Participants write their most daring ideas on index cards then
engage in iterative rounds of randomly passing and scoring cards with the whole group. By
gathering and discussing the highest-scoring proposals, large groups can quickly and collectively
wade through a plethora of solutions to elevate the freshest and most popular ideas.
• Open Space Technology: Through principles of self-organization, Open Space can focus a group
while freeing and motivating individual action. Participants come to a gathering, such as an
organizational retreat or professional conference, to deal with an overarching challenge. There,
they co-create and enact the agenda by proposing, leading, and joining concurrent topical
breakouts. The “law of two feet” encourages participants to wander among breakouts to find
where they are best contributing and learning.
The methods we favor tend to reflect our roles as educators, trainers, and facilitators rather than project
managers or community organizers. Even so, we aim to highlight methods valuable for individual
learning and group sense-making required of ongoing teams.

4. Liberating Structures for the Pluriverse

As mentioned, LS can be applied in settings such as university classrooms and non-profit meetings. We
also see possibilities in liberating microstructures for remaking everyday experiences to challenge unjust
equilibria and catalyze small steps towards radical action. LS can serve a spectrum of political goals, from

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moderate aims of cultural relativism within a one-world system to transformative philosophies of

pluralism where many ontologies thrive (Escobar, 2021). In this section, we scaffold these pluriversal
objectives. We outline key considerations for applying LS for inclusive gatherings, for challenging
conventional behaviors and norms in modern institutions, and for embracing and imagining new
coexisting worlds.

4.1. General Principles for More Inclusive Convenings

The most direct contribution of liberating structures for challenging universalism and embracing
pluralism is to enhance inclusion. Inclusion refers to how people (assuming different identities are
represented) are accepted, appreciated, and involved equitably in organizational life (Bernstein et al.,
2019). LS can serve these goals by liberating the inherent creativity and wisdom of our crowd and
promoting ownership and connection among participants, including marginalized voices. The utility of LS
for more inclusive convenings, however, requires not just rote application, but wise adaptation to
particular audiences, objectives and purposes, and relevant constraints. Therefore, we present
considerations in using LS for inclusivity.
First, consider who is in the room: LS design elements help include everyone who is “already in the
room” – who attends the class, meeting, conference, etc. This “room" can be large: facilitators can use
LS with groups of any size, from 10-1000 people. But who gets that opportunity? LS design principles
do not provide sufficient guidelines for who should be in the room. Our examples featured students in a
class, staff in a university department and “stakeholders” for a planned retreat: a biased/partial role
predetermined by official affiliations and organizational boundaries. Are these the “right” participants?
This consideration is crucial given that members of social groups marginalized by variables such as race,
class, ability, nationality, and more are systematically denied access to design, learning, higher
education, and decision-making environments. Diversity is a necessary (albeit insufficient) condition for
spurring innovation because it brings people together with different situated perspectives. One strategy,
then, is getting beyond the view “from the top”. For immersive learning workshops, Lipmanowicz and
McCandless (2013) recommend including participants from multiple levels of an organizational chart to
maximize adoption of the LS methods. This same approach may be useful for organizational change
initiatives; members of a manufacturing firm noted the importance of bringing diverse employees from
across hierarchies and silos into ongoing LS facilitations, to generate holistic learning and transformation
(Allen, 2018). Furthermore, any invitation needs specific and thoughtful attention to language, script,
timing, cost/access of an event. Facilitators might consider how potential participants’ identities
shape their perception of the invitation itself.
Second, modify methods for your audience: Facilitators need “personal knowledge of the ongoing
dynamics of attention and empirical knowledge of the particular setting in question.” (Torbert, 1978, p.
130). In choosing and deploying methods, facilitators will likely need to adjust elements to ensure
microstructures remain truly liberating, rather than inadvertently oppressive. The design element of
step sequencing and time allocation offers a good example for adaptation. Standard LS protocols
recommend quick steps and rapid iterations. However, pluriversal facilitators may adapt timing to
ensure equitable access to meaningful participation. Adjustments may vary depending
upon individual or group tendencies, such as participants with a stammer or limited literacy. Cultural
speech patterns or beliefs about time may also affect participants’ ability to interact, especially
in intercultural situations. Another example lies in the element of space arrangement. Though LS were
designed for in-person gatherings, a community of practice began developing online applications (see
the Slack channel) long before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. For virtual gatherings – since remote
engagements can mean stilted communication, dropped calls, small screens, etc. – facilitators should
take extra care to model the method to ensure prompts and steps are understood. To that end, we offer

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prototypes of visual directions (i.e., for Troika, Drawing Together and W3 in Figures 4, 5 and 8,
respectively) developed over the last year of remote work.
Finally, stick with it for longer term culture shift: McCandless and Lipmanowicz (2013) advise that those
who want to catalyze shifts towards a more participatory and innovative organizational culture must use
LS consistently over time, not just ad hoc. This consistency strengthens relationships among parts of the
system (e.g., the people) and stimulates behavior change through repetition. Longer-term applications
link LS to organizational development. One US nursing school used a variety of LS over a two-year
period to focus on challenges, appreciate effective practices, and design new forms of
interaction (Mallert & Rykert, 2016). Stakeholders found that even though old patterns of conflict
sometimes surfaced, the organizational culture was becoming healthier and would continue shifting.
Multiculturalism trainings in American workplaces may echo these patterns: shifting norms towards
inclusion likely requires “a set of sustained practices” that go beyond one-off “diversity trainings”
(Bernstein et al., 2019, p. 397).

4.2. Challenging Conventions in Modern Institutions

Remaking worlds can start with individuals working within formal modern institutions – schools, design
agencies, non-profit charities, UN agencies, government entities, small businesses, and global
corporations. (The authors’ current employment in a university made our learning about LS possible.)
Thoughtful individuals can bring LS principles to guide these convenings away from the default
structures, through shaping the invitation to welcome all staff, choosing and organizing spaces with
flexible seating and room to move; and by structuring prompts around “what is working”. Even these
modest efforts to meaningfully include diverse voices in shaping agendas, if they transcend performative
“participation” metrics, can challenge hegemonic ways of working. We share relevant examples here.
Educational settings: LS are a popular pedagogical tool. Case studies of K-12 and undergraduate settings
offer moderate evidence that consistently using LS can enhance student learning; LS can democratize
participation by creating a relational environment and evenly distributing voices (Singhal, 2016; Singhal
et al., 2020). In our higher education examples, we aim to serve as facilitators of learning vs. “experts”
passing on objective facts. LS guiding principles and specific methods can help bring alive pluriversal
knowledge within a classroom and support non-hierarchical pedagogies of learning that engage students
in multiple ways. By surfacing and playing with many perspectives, LS can help students and instructors
connect better with diverse academic content. A praxis-based form of learning encourages students and
instructors to take these modes of reflexivity, democratic inquiry, and radical action into other
environments, which is part of the culture and aligns with theories of liberating and critical education
(Freire, 2014; hooks, 1994).
Community design practice: Italian design educator Ezio Manzini’s (2015) calls for “expert designers” to
engage with “diffuse designers” to surface insights and co-create solutions, essentially producing the
distributed design knowledge needed for increasingly wicked problems. New roles for professional
designers in creative processes include being a humble and enabling facilitator. Yet we understand that
most (western) university design education lacks exposure to inclusive organizing methods. Training and
academic practices might instead reinforce one-way presentations, patronizing and harsh design
reviews, and/or alienating public charrettes featuring near-final designs for nominal approval. LS
methods can better support including all people as diffuse designers of social innovations. To this end,
expert designers can join online or local LS networks and learn to identify and string together methods
like Appreciative Interviews (with stakeholders), Troika Consulting and Improv Prototyping in community
workshops.

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Social movement organizing: Other schools of thought around non-hierarchical activism also value the
complexity principles underlying liberating structures. LS praxis seems consistent with the Jemez
guidelines for organizing that emphasize inclusivity, personal development, self-determination, bottom-
up organizing, relational justice, and mutuality and solidarity (brown, 2017). Brown sees these as
guidelines key principles for facilitation, a core activity of emergent strategy for movement organizing.
LS can therefore offer concrete protocols for facilitators and organizers to amplify their impact, engage
new members in leading actions, and reach diverse constituents previously excluded from action arenas.
These types of dynamic interactions can help more grassroots organizations shift from dogmatic and
closed-system tendencies towards the more adaptive and collaborative behaviors required for
distributed and localized “design in a connected world” (Manzini, 2015, p. 29). Social movement leaders
could, for example, organize a day-long annual unconference featuring structures like Open Space
Technology, User Experience Fishbowls and Conversation Cafes to build their movement effectively.

4.3. Tools for Pluriversal World-Weaving

So far, we have argued that LS can help creatively and unobtrusively dismantle structures of oppression
within ruling institutional environments through including more voices and challenging default modes.
Yet we recognize that many more institutions, groups, dreams, and creeds exist beyond those
mainstream scenarios and institutions. LS can also help reassemble elements in these systems by
reorienting the fragments – the “waste” of people, ideas, resources --towards inclusive and fruitful
meetings. LS can help cultivate the pluriverse, a world where “many worlds fit” (Kothari et al., 2019 p.
xxviii referencing the Zapatista autonomists). We find pluriversal scholarship on knowledge systems,
design ontologies, and systems awareness to offer rich food for thought that suggests other possibilities
for applications of LS:
Supporting Epistemic Plurality: Pluriversal world-making calls for epistemic justice and valuing
alternative forms of knowing about the world (da Sousa Santos 2014; De la Cadena & Blaser, 2018). LS
methods, since they include and give voice to many, can help align gatherings with political aims of
undoing the epistemic hegemony of European rational models and moving towards valuing local, self,
and relational knowledge. LS protocols can support learning, coalition-building, and designing transitions
from non-western centers. LS methods for facilitation can surface different ways of understanding the
world, such as through experiential knowing, valued traditions, and scientific evidence. Furthermore,
pluriversal organizers can experiment with LS microstructures and methods. The LS global community
can begin enabling adoption by translating existing protocols into other prominent global languages like
Mandarin, Swahili and Arabic (the https://liberatingstructures.eu/ website already has links to Liberating
Structures resources in different European languages). We can envision more adaptations of the visual
alphabet (see Figure 2) for non-dominant language groups, non-literate or oratory cultures, and
multicultural gatherings. Especially for these contexts mentioned, we expect that facilitators have
already created new LS methods already that can be shared more widely. Learning and playing with the
deeper principles of LS also allows facilitators to identify dominant epistemologies in their own
environment underlying default ways of gathering, and to disrupt the notion of one way of doing things.
Convening Multiple Worlds: Pluriversal thinking leads to valuing relational orientations towards nature
and each other, challenging governing notions of western individualism and progress-through-
accumulation (Escobar, 2018). As examples, look to how the embodiment of a caring and generative
natural world in the goddess or concept of Pachamama influences eco-movements, communal living or
feminist thought in the Andean region (Lerma, 2019; Cullinan, 2019). What is the place for LS in holding
such alternative visions? As the practice of purposeful gatherings appears ubiquitous among cultural and
social groups, convening can be an act of constellating many worlds or reaching agreement across them
(Brown, Yarrow & Green, 2017). Indigenous tribes will need to meet with government officials and

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corporate stakeholders/extractivists to manage conflicts, address property arrangements, negotiate

land management, and even rewrite national constitutions. LS approaches can help empower
marginalized voices in these proceedings and help political blocs navigate divergent interests; perhaps
through methods like Heard, Seen, Respected (for improved listening), Social Network Webbing (for
relationship and resource building), What I Need From You (for reconciling needs across system
locations) and Integrated Autonomy (for transcending conflicts to “both/and” resolutions).
Designing for Social Change: “Convening across worlds” implies the necessity of co-design. If the world
is indeed transitioning away from Euro-modernity towards multiple models of living (ideally
sustainable); and if design can help shepherd these transitions through “local cosmopolitanism”
(Manzini, 2015, p.2), then diverse groups must co-create new, albeit distributed, futures. Therefore,
everyone must be capable of imagining worlds into being. Pluriversal thinking recognizes that design is a
human ability found everywhere. Thus, it calls for emancipatory design (Noel, 2016), building design
capabilities for citizens (Manzini, 2018), and expressly not appropriating peoples’ designs for other
commercial ends. Democratizing design capacities frees space for individual expression within larger
designs and allows many solutions to emerge. Challenging a dominant paradigm does not call for
another overarching, hegemonic solution to replace it (such as with Marxism, communism replacing
capitalism), but for a wide range of “alternatives” in the same space. Expert and diffuse designers can
use LS methodologies to support sense-making, creativity and experimentation vital for empowering
designs (Mulgan, 2019). LS themselves exemplify transformative social innovation by creating feedback
loops among dynamic, collective design processes and establishing new social relations of mutual power
(Escobar, 2018).

5. Conclusion
This paper aims to help diffuse Liberating Structures principles and the 33 facilitation methods within
the pluriversal design community. We see LS as a set of useful, tried-and-true tools that scholars,
designers, activists and other changemakers can adapt and augment for diverse needs, in both in-person
and online gatherings, for pluriversal world-weaving.
We shared how Liberating Structures reflect a worldview of complexity acknowledging
interconnectedness, feedback, adaptation and emergence. For these, LS offer new, simple rules of
interaction – the design elements of microstructures – that better organize our time and attention. Our
examples of applying LS illustrate these elements at work. From our experiences within dominant US
cultures and modern institutions of higher education and non-profits, we offer key principles for
enhancing inclusion and challenging default microstructures in similar settings, and with attention to
online gatherings.
We also explored how LS intersects with pluriversal thinking, seeing multiple intersections to support
ways of organizing society beyond hegemonic forms of modernity. LS methodologies can ease the
practical work of dismantling oppressive systems and reassembling those elements
for pluriversal worlds. Learning the principles and specific protocols can energize dynamic communities
of learning, design, and organizing and transform convening patterns away from top-down, one-way
communications towards decolonial and pluriversal values. Small shifts in interaction quality, will, we
hope, lead to tipping points in behavior change among human actors at many levels, offering us more
ground-breaking university seminars and design studios, effective community-based participatory action
research, sustainable and democratic grassroots collectives, and powerfully networked social
movements.

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About the Authors:

Máille Faughnan: I have lived and worked in New Orleans for over 15 years, where I received my doctorate in
International Development. My scholarly work is interdisciplinary and action-oriented, with a focus on the socio-
cultural dimensions of development institutions and organizations. My field research in New Orleans, Central
America, and East Africa spans topics such as gender and social entrepreneurship, cultural development
programs, design thinking for reproductive health, the diffusion of design thinking, and most recently,
university-community engagement. As a lecturer and research fellow in Social Innovation, I focus on capacity-
building in design, systems and multicultural practice for changemakers, whether they be individuals or
organizations and networks. I believe social innovation emerges from constant interplay of praxis and inquiry at
personal, interpersonal, and community levels. Therefore, I often reflect on how my historically included
identities shape my lens on social problems, my desire to solve them and my role in doing so. My teaching and
facilitation likewise aim to cultivate changemakers’ command of their embedded and developing strategies and
mental models for social change.

Laura Murphy: I am fascinated by human-environment-technology interactions and the pursuit of

transdisciplinary solutions to wicked problems. My research and teaching are shaped by living, playing, and
working around the world. I began unpacking my socio-cultural baggage in Jakarta back in the 1980s. I gained
respect for small-scale farmers as ‘aid worker’ in Kenya. I felt that I missed the lives of real people behind the
statistical analysis of Ecuadorian Amazon deforestation I did for my 1990s dissertation in a regional planning
department; that has led me to continue exploring methods for knowledge creation and learning. I am a middle-
class, able-bodied, non-straight, white woman, born and raised in the western USA. I am (still) holding an
American passport and recognize my privilege in being able to travel and live around the world. I am a delighted
parent to a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic global citizen.

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