Announcing the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio

A new multidisciplinary consultancy in service of inner + outer systems transformation

We are delighted to announce the launch of the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio: a new multidisciplinary consultancy in service of inner + outer systems transformation. The Studio helps foundations, institutions, and conscious enterprises to make sense of – and act in – emerging systems and novel cultural landscapes.

More than just research and analysis, the Studio works with clients to develop the shared, multiperspectival understanding that informs wise action. As a multidisciplinary collective, the team specialise in combining structural conditions with psycho-social factors, honouring the interdependence of our inner and outer worlds.

The approach marries intellectual rigour with soulfulness and creativity. From data analytics to narrative crafting, relational insight practices to ecosystem mapping, the team combines diverse tools to render the world intelligible in an age of complexity.

The founding members of the Sensemaking Studio are: Sylvie Barbier, Rosie Bell, Jamie Bristow, Boaz Feldman, John Oliver, Rufus Pollock, and Catherine Tran.

To find out more about the Sensemaking Studio team, areas of work, and opportunities for collaboration, visit the website or join the Welcome Event on 21st May 2025, 5pm CEST.

Why the Studio?

In an era of accelerating change and entangled crises, organisations are being asked to make sense of an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, while regular approaches to analysis and decision-making fail us. Twenty-first century challenges demand transdisciplinary collaboration, systems thinking, the integration of “inner” and “outer” approaches, and adoption of emerging tools, like AI.

Transdisciplinary collaboration

The rapidly evolving challenges we face in the 21st century defy the neat categories of traditional academic and professional disciplines. A world defined by complexity, ambiguity, and information overload demands a new transdisciplinary approach to sensemaking, drawing on the skills of diverse collaborators and embracing different ways of knowing.

Thinking in systems

Wise decision-making also requires the capacity to think in systems, and to treat these as complex and adaptive wholes. A shift in thinking towards greater complexity is a strategic imperative for any organisation that seeks to remain agile and effective in the face of accelerating change, or for catalytic organisations wishing to fund, build or shape a sector.

Integrating inner and outer

One of the biggest blindspots in siloed and reductionist thinking is the unavoidable interplay between our interior lives and the external systems within which we’re embedded. Our politics, social structures, and built environment cannot be fully understood without also considering the messy worlds of neurobiology, psychology, and culture.

Embedded interveners

Those seeking to reshape systems are beginning to recognise that they are not external architects but active participants in the systems they aim to transform. Our cognitive and emotional tendencies — marked by biases and conditioned reactivity — play a critical role in both constraining and enabling change. As such, the ability to intervene in systems hinges not only on external strategies and knowledge but also on self-awareness and personal development.

Emerging tools

Thankfully, as our challenges have evolved, so too have the tools at our disposal — particularly in the domains of information technology, communication and psycho-social development. AI allows us to digest and interrogate qualitative data at a scale previously unimaginable. Meanwhile, a deepening understanding of psychology underpins evidence-based capacity-building methods, such as leadership education about cognitive bias combined with self-awareness practices, supporting better-informed decision-making by better-resourced decision-makers.

The Role of the Sensemaking Studio

The Sensemaking Studio is designed to facilitate the integration of knowledge across traditional disciplinary boundaries. It acts as a collaborative hub where experts from diverse fields come together to synthesise data, explore new ecosystems of theory and practice, and develop strategic foresight.

The Studio consists of a core team and a satellite system of expert associates, allowing us to draw in the skills and experience that most fit the brief at hand and very consciously combining contrasting specialisations. For example, facilitation practices and principles from the arts can support "sensing the whole", whilst not at all rejecting the timely application of analytics and engineering approaches.

With a finger on the pulse of emerging trends using AI-powered narrative tools, we enable organisations to adapt their activities to better fit the world they operate in. In essence, a sensemaking studio acts as both interpreter and navigator of complexity, transforming disparate data points into wise, coherent, actionable strategies.

Find Out More

On Wednesday 21st May, we’re pleased to invite you to an interactive Welcome Event — a chance to meet the Studio team and explore how sensemaking can support your work.

You can also read more about the Sensemaking Studio, the team, and its work at the website: https://studio.lifeitself.org.

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