In Planetary Dreaming, we explore new ways to challenge unsustainable systems by asking: How can design and storytelling reveal the underlying dreams and aspirations of these systems, making way for a more sustainable society?

There are countless ways of doing so, but we propose challenging systems by building creative havens, where ideas can grow and be tested before they are released into the larger system.

Inspired by systemic leadership theory, we call the construction of these creative havens container-building. Container-building is the practice of establishing exploratory spaces that can stimulate change in organizations or societies.

The concept was first introduced by management thinker Peter Senge, who traced the practice of container-building all the way back to Medieval alchemy, which produced some of the earliest known theories of transformation.

For alchemists, the container in question was a closed pot that was slowly warmed over the fire, precipitating the transformation of the elements in it.

 

Senge refers to the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who argued that writings on alchemy are as much about psychological transformation as about material transformation, meaning that the concept of the creative container can equally well be applied to social and organizational change.

According to Senge, these kinds of containers can also be found in the natural environment, as for example in the butterfly’s cocoon: within this silky container, a transformation takes place, the organism ‘melts’ into a new form, and a battle takes place between the old and new. The larvae cells actually attack the newly made butterfly cells, until the latter take over and begin to find their form.

The same occurs in the body of a pregnant woman, and most people working with organizational development will know the feeling when ideas hit the organizational immune system.

According to the theory of systemic leadership, containers can be built by anyone in any context. It can be a top-down project, as when politicians establish a taskforce to rethink the economic framework of the green transition, or when a CEO initiates a radical transformation of the company’s work culture.

But creative containers can also be established through a bottom-up or trickle-across initiative, as when an engaged employee sets in motion a larger shift through a series of micro-actions, creating change from within the organization or a group of citizens organize an activist intervention in their local community.

PLANETARY DREAMING serves as one such container, and subsequent activities will hopefully initiate more containers within existing organizations, companies, and industries, thereby testing and nurturing new ideas that can drive the necessary systemic change.

In a broader perspective, container-building can be part of a process of what we call Systems Acupuncture. It is illustrated here as red dots, which can serve as the cradles for new ideas and aspirations, and they can potentially emerge at all levels of organizations and society. They can be created within an organizational pyramid – at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom – or they can form the framework for a given team in a matrix organization or serve to incubate a new venture in a project-based organization. They can form one or more cells in an organization, in civil society, or among groups of engaged citizens.

In a longer perspective such containers can metaphorically be compared with worms in an apple. If successful over time, more containers within the same system will be connected, weaving a new web of beliefs and thereby new systems, practices, and social and cultural settings. Working with system acupuncture therefore not only has to do with the establishing of singular containers that can hatch new aspirations and actions, but also about connecting initiatives and thereby growing ecologies of interconnected interventions.