Announcing Energy Systems: Science and Practice for Just and Sustainable Communities

Think of the flows that keep something alive. Blood through a body. Water through a delta. Money through a neighbourhood. Trust through a team. When those flows reach every part, the whole system stays healthy. When they get blocked or pool in a few hands, the parts left out begin to fail. This idea sits at the heart of a new online course we are glad to share with our community.

Energy Systems: Science and Practice for Just and Sustainable Communities is led by Curtis Ogden, and it begins this autumn. The tagline puts it plainly: energy is and always will be the currency of life.

What the Course Is About

Here, energy means whatever flow matters to the long-term vitality of a system, whether that system is a person, a community, an ecosystem, or an economy. Some of these flows are easy to spot, like money, nutrients, or information. Others are quieter, like attention, a felt sense of belonging, or grief moving through a room. The health of a system depends on what travels through the connections between its parts.

A network map can show this as a snapshot, but everything is really in motion. The course draws on flow network science alongside embodied practice, and Curtis is clear about why the second part matters.

What people take from these sessions, they largely make together.

Who Is Teaching It

Curtis Ogden is a network weaver, facilitator, leadership coach, and systems-change consultant. He spent twenty years as a Senior Associate at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, and he co-created the field of energy systems science and practice. You do not need any technical background to learn alongside him. The course assumes only that you care about the systems you are part of and want to understand how they hold together.

The Four Pillars

The course is organised around four qualities that healthy systems tend to share. Each one is applied at nested levels, from the individual to the group, to larger systems, to Gaia, and to the cosmos.

• Regenerative Flows. Resources, energy, nutrients, and information circulating to all parts of a system rather than concentrating in a few.
• Balanced and Resilient Structures. A fractal mix of many small, fewer medium, and a few large entities, like the vessels in a body or the branches of a river.
• Common Cause Culture. Trust, reciprocity, and shared purpose treated as working requirements for long-term health, not as moral extras.
• Collective Learning. Systems that adapt by pooling knowledge and sharing feedback, peer to peer and across generations.

The sessions stay close to lived examples, so these qualities never float free of real places and real communities.

The Practical Details

The course is fully online and runs for seven weeks, starting Monday 28 September 2026. There are six interactive live sessions on Thursdays, 18:00 to 20:00 UTC, with the first on Thursday 1 October. Every session is recorded, so you can join live or catch up later. Expect around five hours a week, with forums between sessions, complementary materials, and lifelong access.

The price is £200. A limited number of partial scholarships are available, with applications open until 21 September 2026. The course suits people working in sustainable community development, social innovators and activists, leaders in NGOs, government, and mission-driven organisations, and facilitators, coaches, and community organisers who bring systems thinking to their work.

An Invitation

What people take from these sessions, they largely make together. If the flows that keep your community alive feel worth your attention, we would love to have you with us. The next cohort begins 28 September, and you can read the full description and dates below.

See the full course and dates