Our Programs
A 12-Week Guided Online Course | Influence at the Edge of Chaos
The Complexity Code
Currently Enrolling:
From the Archives:
Positive Deviants Cascadia
We open the application/nomination portal once every year.
Positive Deviants is a practice community dedicated to systems artistry and the deep work of cultural transformation.
Fellowship can mean many things. Companionship. Some kind of congregation. An elite or prestigious network. A professional or academic award. A band of mythical beings on an almost hopeless quest to save the earth.
But Positive Deviants isn't really any of those things. You don't get a certificate. Almost nobody in the world will know what it means if you put it on your resume. And there’s nothing prestigious about it! We have sometimes described it as a cross between a dojo-temple, a graduate course in complexity and systems hacking, and a really great underworld dinner party with a group of delightfully strange, weirdly geeky and inspiringly committed fellow travellers.
But above all, it's an invitation. To step more boldly into the heart of your calling and longing. To sharpen your curiosity and deepen your inquiry. Because without learning, connection and commitment there can be no change, adaptation or evolution.
The Café at the Edge of the World
A series of beautiful and surprising virtual learning experiences that offer a multi-cultural and multi-modal inquiry into decolonizing systems thinking, honing wicked questions, mapping visible and intangible systems, and understanding ourselves as integral to systems.
The Black Changemakers Systems Studios
Hosted in partnership with Black Lives Matter Canada, the studios explore complexity principles and the tools of systems change while centring the life experience, expertise and community strength of Black Canadians.
The Complexity Code
November - February 2026-27
Influence at the Edge of Chaos with Dr. Julian Norris and Special Guests
A 12-week guided online course that builds the perception, presence, and practical strategies to lead effectively when problems resist simple solutions. Led by Dr. Julian Norris with faculty including Dr. Frances Westley, Dr. Melanie Goodchild, Dr. Jean Boulton, Joel Glanzberg & Tuesday Rivera.
The Indigenous Changemakers Systems Studio
A six-month initiative that brings together Elders, storytellers and changemakers from the Treaty Three region in northern Ontario looking bring a culturally-centered systems lens to the opioid crisis.
Be the Ground - FULL
October 28th - November 2nd 2026 | Stowel Lake Farm, Salt Spring Island, BC
A highly practical, place-based, and ecologically-informed certificate program designed to cultivate capable, connected, adaptive humans for a reality defined by compounding crises.
Be the Ground offers both the hard skills and the relational infrastructure (sexy life skills) required to respond intelligently, compassionately, and effectively to disruptions in our communities.
The Wealth Dojo
Currently Open to Register Interest
The Wealth Dojo is a rigorous and relational practice ground for Wealth Stewards to develop the inner, relational and systemic capacities needed for this era of upheaval. To stay present inside complexity, uncertainty, and consequence — and to practice new rhythms of response. Philanthropic foundation staff and advisors, wealth holders, wealth managers and family office professionals are all positioned to redirect capital flows, storylines, and possibilities—moving wealth wisely in a time between worlds.
In Session (Ongoing):
The Imaginarium
Part art studio, part petri dish; this is a practice space for building our complexity muscles. We combine creative practice and creative constraints (pressure makes diamonds!). We open different vantage points and lean into what we call “embodied imaginings” to access different kinds of intelligences.
Eldering in Times of Transformation
With Cheryl Rose, Zhiish McKenzie and Juana Berinstein
Hollyhock | October 2-7 Cortes Island, BC
After decades of initiation through life’s triumphs and losses, what are our most pressing questions, our strongest intuitions, and our boldest desires for our world as we journey into our 60’s, 70’s, 80’s? And how might exploring those offer us insights into contributions that we might still make, that we must make, as systems of all kinds collapse and are reimagined?
Coming Soon:
Wolf Willow Partnership Initiatives
Participatory Futures Project - Centre for First Nations Governance (CFNG)
Beginning November 2025
The Nation-to-Nation-to-Nation Participatory Futurisms project will explore what the future of the confederation would look like if Indigenous governments implemented the inherent right to self-government, as a route to deep and genuine reconciliation. To explore this question, the project will use participatory and future-facing methodologies to both envision and illustrate a completed Confederation. The process will include a series of participatory workshops with First Nations leaders, elders, knowledge keepers, Medicine People, youth, artists, thought leaders, and non-Indigenous allies. These sessions will generate collective visions of the future; imagining a “practical utopia” for Indigenous–federal–provincial relations. Ultimately, the Participatory Futurisms project will produce a short collaborative film about the future of the confederation, serving as an inspiration and mobilization tool for CFNG and its partners.
SALT (Sensemaking Action and Leadership Training) for Climate
SALT for Climate supports climate leaders, policy makers, organizers and activists to build the social, emotional, and sensemaking competencies to effectively engage around climate change. We build capacities and mindsets to transcend polarized social discourses on climate, as well as the network and resources needed to carry out new approaches to the climate challenge. Our programming translates and applies relevant climate psychology and sociology research, trains climate actors using integral facilitation and mindfulness-based group learning tools, and fosters breakthrough initiatives for leaders to apply learning in action. The project’s ultimate goal is to build a movement of climate actors equipped for collaborative, empathetic climate engagement across sectors.
Niigani Minigowiziwin Learning Journey (NMLJ)
Canadian Association of Science Centres (CASC) | A Presencing Institute & Wolf Willow Institute Collaboration
The Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab (IKSL), CASC and Wolf Willow aim to work in partnership with the Presencing Institute, along with other collaborating organizations, to deliver on CASC’s goal of advancing Truth and Reconciliation in informal STEM education and engagement. This partnership will serve CASC’s national network of organizational members (Science Centres, Museums, Zoos, Aquariums and STEM Engagement Organizations across Canada). This partnership will deliver the Niigani Minigowiziwin Learning Journey, an accelerator program for CASC members who are somewhere along their journey of strengthening relationships with local Indigenous communities and have started down the path of braiding Indigenous Wisdom into their operations, outreach and education initiatives. Invited CASC members will join Systems Changer in Residence, Dr. Melanie Goodchild (IKSL), in a multi-year program that explores how to forge right relationships and invite an Indigenous world view from the periphery to the core of operations within their organizations.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig (University)
A Mobile Story-Telling Teahouse Trailer
Inspired by mobile arts initiatives like the Tin Camp Studios in Tasmania, the mobile teahouse will bring together partners to explore traditional storytelling and community tea ceremonies for community healing. The one-of-a-kind mobile teahouse trailer will be part of the toolkit for community building and systemic transformation, led by Dr. Melanie Goodchild, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab, at Shingwauk University. This creative project aims to make connections between people and organizations and activate new collaborations that lead to healing and resilience, as well as greater innovation and collective change making. It builds on the successful Indigenous Changemakers Systems Studio hosted by Wolf Willow in the spring of 2023, led by Dr. Goodchild in partnership with Binesiwag Center for Wellness. The studio identified storytelling methods at the nexus of truth telling by Indigenous peoples and the opioid crisis, bringing together front-line social workers with Indigenous artists.