Learning to weave: reflections from the WEAVE Place Clinics
What happens when place convenors come together to learn from each other about the real, lived complexity of organising for regenerative economies?
What is this article about?
Over the past 12 months, Regen Labs has been leading an action learning journey for place-based convenors of economic transitions, and a series of peer learning clinics as part of WEAVE: Regen Economy Systems Lab.
These clinics targeted key areas of capability development identified through the action learning journey. We brought together place convenors and intermediaries from across regional Australia - the Hills and Southern Coasts (SA), Southern Highlands (NSW), Northern Rivers (NSW) and the Pilbara (WA), and invited our learning partner, Regen Melbourne, to dig into two of the most persistent challenges in this work: How we organise and convene in place, and how we fund it.
This article is a reflection on what we learned together through the clinics. With the benefit of transcripts from both sessions, we've tried to capture the ideas and the voices.
Prepared by Nicole Barling-Luke (Regen Melbourne) and Dr Dimity Podger (Regen Labs)
What is WEAVE and why do clinics matter?
WEAVE Regen Economy Systems Lab is a 12-month place-based innovation and learning community, exploring what social enterprises need to lead the transition to a regenerative economy. It sits at the intersection of social infrastructure, business model innovation, and finance - learning in real places, with real people, doing real work. Learn more about WEAVE here.
The peer learning clinics emerged from a simple observation during the action learning journey facilitated by Dimity Podger, Director of Regen Labs and lead convenor for WEAVE:
Everyone in WEAVE is learning how to catalyse economic transitions in their communities through experimentation and learning. Coalitions are forming. Food systems are being activated. Community leadership programs are emerging. Enterprise cohorts are being convened. However, for the most part, each place convenor is figuring things out largely on their own.
We asked: Whatperspective might we gain about our convening practice from tailored clinics?
The clinics were designed to create a shared learning commons where convenors could exchange practice, test ideas, and build field knowledge together around two topics: organising and convening in place, and experiences with finance and funding. Regen Labs co-designed the clinics with Regen Melbourne (RM), who shared their experience from an urban vantage point as a generous learning partner. And we deliberately kept them small: 90 minutes, online, with space for both insight-sharing and honest conversation.
Clinic 1: Organising and convening in place
The first clinic, held on 9 February 2026, took on the question that is perhaps the most foundational to all our work: what does it mean to organise and convene for systems change in a place?
Regen Melbourne's Nicole Barling-Luke shared two stories from five years of place-based organising in Melbourne that cut to the heart of this question.
Story 1: The role of collective visions in activating civic agency
The first was the story of the Melbourne Doughnut, a vision-setting exercise that began as an idea planted into a network during the crisis years of 2020, and evolved, through hundreds of hours of research, engagement, 1:1 interviews, roundtables, and community workshops, into a landmark report: Towards a Regenerative Melbourne, a bold articulation of what a regenerative, wellbeing-focused Melbourne could look like. We discussed how the purpose of the convening evolved along the way, from community connection in lockdown, to legitimacy-building, to a fully articulated civic vision.
Story 2: Earthshots as an approach to organise at multiple scales and entry points
The second story was about Nourished Neighbourhoods, one of Regen Melbourne's Earthshots, an architecture for organising around nested food system challenges at multiple scales simultaneously. Rather than organising around pre-existing solutions or single sectors, the Earthshot model provides a declaration of intent that becomes a new purpose to organise around which creates coherent entry points for actors across neighbourhoods, city, and national scales.
Both stories illuminated something important about convening: it is not primarily about formal authority. It is about building social licence slowly, relationally, and with a genuine commitment to listening to what a place needs.
Reflections on experience
In the conversation that followed, convenors reflected on their own experiences:
Legitimacy is earned, not granted. Working without a formal mandate is the norm, not the exception. Social licence accumulates through relationship, inclusion, and the quality of listening rather than title. Several convenors spoke of "borrowing legitimacy" from trusted partners and funders in the early stages, before their own authority to convene had been established. Reece Proudfoot, from Regen Labs, spoke of their intentional approach to community organising and socialising the Highlands Homegrown Economy initiative with all levels of government.
Language matters. The words we use shape who comes into the work. Convenors spoke about the shift from "advocacy" language toward the language of possibility, opportunity, and action. Framing the work in ways that build teams people want to belong to was recognised as a real skill, one that takes time to develop.
Each place is unique, and that is the point. One of the most valuable things about learning across places is being reminded that there is no single model to import and replicate. The readiness of a place, the relationships that already exist, the crises and opportunities that are alive in a community all shape what is possible and when. Learning from Regen Melbourne's experience is not about replication. It is about expanding the repertoire.
Peer learning is itself infrastructure. Perhaps the most resonant theme of the whole session was the recognition that having a shared space to learn is itself a form of enabling infrastructure for this work. WEAVE is increasingly functioning as a learning commons. That feels important.
Clinic 2: Finance and funding place-based change
The second clinic, held on 17 February, tackled the question that sits underneath all the organising work: how is this resourced?
It was a more vulnerable conversation. One convenor shared, with striking honesty, that their funding was “coming soon”. The weight of that was held in the room. What emerged was a picture of the real and significant infrastructure gap: funding for convenors catalysing change for more regenerative futures.
Convening is core to transition yet is not embedded in funding models
Regen Melbourne's Kaj Lofgren offered some framing from their experiences. Regen Melbourne is approximately 80% philanthropically funded, with 20% coming from mission-aligned partnerships and project-based funding. And roughly 50–75% of the leadership team's time, at various points, is spent finding that funding. That is the reality of building transitional institutional infrastructure when markets and governments are not yet designed to resource it.
Across the room, convenors described resourcing their work as a patchwork: small grants from local foundations, FRRR funding, Council partnerships, state government contributions, auspicing arrangements with DGR-status organisations, giving circles, and passionate volunteer time. Incredible ingenuity with very little certainty.
The structural challenge is this: convening often falls between categories. It is not quite an organisation or a well recognised public good. It cannot easily be measured against a logic model or a set of deliverables. However, convening is the social fabric that enables everything else to happen. As one participant put it: convening is treated as overhead when in practice it is core infrastructure.
Reflection on experience
Several threads of possibility emerged from the conversation:
Creative approaches to funding convening. Rather than asking funders to resource "convening" as an abstract function, some place convenors have found success in finding ways to wrap the convening role inside a tangible product such as a city portrait, a food system summit, a local economic strategy, a community visioning process. The convening happens, but funders can point to something concrete.
The role of philanthropy in holding long-term purpose. Regen Melbourne's experience points to the critical importance of catalytic philanthropic funders who understand that regenerative economies are built over decades, not project cycles. These funders invest in the institution’s capacity to learn, adapt, and hold long-term vision.
New place-based funding infrastructure. Regen Labs shared it’s experience co-designing the Regen Community Investment Fund, a place-based vehicle to provide both grant funding for developing enterprise cohorts and catalytic finance for regionally significant projects. Several place partners are also developing their own versions of this kind of infrastructure. These experiments are early, but they point toward what a more mature field might look like.
The case for a stronger pitch. Kaj offered a provocation that we need to move away from the implicit assumption that this work should be funded by anything other than philanthropy and instead make a much clearer and more compelling case that resourcing the social infrastructure for economic transition is one of the most important investments a philanthropist, a government, or a corporation can make right now.
What we are learning, overall
Across both clinics, some clear themes ran through the whole conversation.
The work of convening is under-recognised. In most funding frameworks, economic transition narratives, and organisational structures, the convening function sits in the gaps. People are doing it everywhere, often without the language, the resources, the impact data or the recognition that the work deserves. Part of what WEAVE is doing and what these clinics are contributing to is building that language and making the work of convening - the type, nature, practice, and value - more visible.
There is no model to copy. There is a field to build. Regen Melbourne’s sharing of their experience comes with a word of caution from Kaj: what RM has built is a product of that place, that time, those relationships, and that context. The value in sharing is not for it to be copied, but to provide an approach that can be drawn on and added to the repertoire of approaches available to each of us, so that we can make better and more creative choices in our own places.
The conditions that enable regenerative economies to emerge are what we are building. We are not just organising for a future regenerative economy, we are, in how we organise and fund ourselves, either embodying or contradicting the principles of that economy. The relational, trust-building, long-horizon quality of good convening is the work.
What’s next?
WEAVE as a learning program is coming to the end of its twelve month learning process and Regen Labs is harvesting insights from the journey now. If you are a place convenor, intermediary, or funder interested in this work, we would love to hear from you.
Reach out to Dr Dimity Podger, Director and lead convenor for WEAVE with the Regen Labs team at dimity@regenlabs.au.