Organisations—corporations, non-profits, and political parties—need to understand the perspectives of their stakeholders, including employees, customers, or citizens. Traditional survey methods rely on structured responses (e.g., Likert scales or multiple-choice questions), which often fail to capture the richness of human perspectives. Open-ended responses provide deeper insights but are costly and difficult to analyse at scale. The increasing complexity of the world demands better tools for integrating diverse narratives into decision-making.

Effective mapping requires specialised expertise, integrating data collection with thoughtful structuring and communication. Studio members have been involved in ecosystem mapping and field-building for more than two decades across a variety of domains. We have deep multi-disciplinary expertise across all elements of the process from data collection and visualisation to analytics and communication. Recent work has included several mapping projects in the polycrisis and metacrisis space incorporating collaborations with partners such as Commonweal, Post Carbon Institute and Cascades Institute.

The word ‘resilience’ is often used as if it has a universal meaning, but its definition varies across disciplines and approaches. A broad distinction can be made between its application in psychology and its application in systemic disciplines like disaster management or sustainability science. Funded by the Garrison Institute International, a global leader in both psychological resilience programmes and complexity thinking about planetary wellbeing, the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio conducted a programme of research, made recommendations for field building efforts, developed a wiki site and engaged in sector outreach to bring these two worlds closer together.