U.LAB: Transforming business, society and self
We believe in the power of social change through entrepreneurial action, and see the potential for locally-rooted, globally connected communities of changemakers to catalyze systemic change with the support and learning available through the U.Lab course.
Participates of the free course had the opportunity to learn the basics of Theory U, a process for connecting to the more authentic aspects of who we are. The course ran from September to December 2015.
What did this U.LAB entail?
U.Lab: Transforming Business, Society, and Self is an online course with the ambitious aim of addressing the multiple problems facing society and the planet by approaching these issues from new and different perspectives.
This course asks the questions:
- Why do our actions collectively create results that so few people want?
- What keeps us locked into old ways of operating?
- And what can we do to transform the root problems that keep us trapped in the patterns of the past?
The answers this course provides lie in unconventional methodologies of suspending our habitual ways of thinking and acting, letting go of preconceived concepts and learning to listen to “what wants to emerge”.
From September to December 2015 a group of 15 people met regularly in Impact Hubs Islington and King’s Cross to follow the online course together, in person and meet in coaching circles to work on our individual projects.
By the end of the course, a number of us were deeply moved by the level of connection and community that the U.Lab practices, had produced.
On top of this, a group of participants felt that they would like to continue their connection and go deeper by working on co-creating a self-organised prototype.
So on the 14th January our new group of approximately 10 U.Labbers from Impact Hub King’s Cross and Impact Hub Westminster reconvened with the shared intention of working on a project together.
They then met regularly here at Impact Hub King’s Cross with an idea to develop a further project. At the time they did not know what this would be, but it later transpired to involve a further reiteration of U.LAB on reinventing democracy.