Learn how to facilitate the Three Horizons framework to reveal and enact transformation in your context in this online course led by ‘Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope’ author Bill Sharpe and IFF Director Rebecca Ford

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What is Three Horizons?

Three Horizons is a futures and systems change framework for exploring transformation and how to bring it about.

It can be applied to any context or complex challenge, and is a powerful way of engaging different perspectives in mapping the landscape of change you are navigating – generating insights, strategic opportunities and pathways for shared action.

Three Horizons enables us to see challenges in the present (H1), aspirations for the future (H3) and the kinds of innovation creating change in the transition space (H2).

These three patterns of activity are all visible today, in the present – and how they interact and play out over time creates the future.

Why Participate?

This training  will equip you with the skills, confidence and resources to facilitate successful Three Horizons workshops and processes in diverse contexts. 

It will also focus on cultivating the awareness and enabling conditions to realise the potential of Three Horizons to:

  • Diagnose complex challenges – mapping change dynamics and seeing the patterns in complexity. Generating strategic insights. Identifying the types of innovation that could be more or less transformative.
  • Engage different perspectives – hosting effective conversations in multi-stakeholder organisations and systems. Opening up a space for equitable participation.
  • Work productively with disagreement and uncertainty – building a shared picture of the landscape of change.
  • Develop future consciousness – growing our awareness of the future potential of the present moment, and how to put that awareness to work to create the future we aspire to.
  • Generate hope, agency and collective action – collectively envisioning hopeful futures and enrolling others in your vision. Revealing opportunities and strategic pathways for action, starting immediately.

 

This course is delivered by the International Futures Forum (IFF), co-originators of Three Horizons practice and host of Future Stewards.

Who is this for?

This training is for people whose work involves bringing people together in conversations and/or processes (at any scale, from small teams to large multi-stakeholder collaborations) and who want to design and facilitate Three Horizons workshops and processes with confidence and impact.

If you are working in and/or with organisations, communities, and initiatives committed to creating a better future, Three Horizons is a powerful way to reveal and enact transformation. It can be adapted and applied to diverse contexts.

The Three Horizons Facilitator Training has been designed to work well if you’ve had no or little exposure to the Three Horizons, or if you have some experience you would like to build on to lead others.

Learning Experience

Our participatory approach emphasises interactive, experiential learning, and sessions will include:

  • Learning through modelling and application – demonstrations of how to facilitate Three Horizons processes and specific activities, plus dedicated space to try them out yourself in small groups, reflect with the cohort, and ask questions of the facilitators
  • Tuning up our awareness of our ways of knowing, doing and being as facilitators
  • Developing practical skills for capturing live input that deepen team participation in Three Horizons and other methods
  • Examples of how Three Horizons has been facilitated and applied across different sectors, scales and challenge domains
  • Time to connect and learn with and from your cohort of people working to create change in a diverse range of professional contexts
  • Dedicated time for questions – within the sessions, plus two optional drop-in sessions with Bill Sharpe for extended Q&As

 

We will use Zoom and Miro as our digital learning space during the sessions. Ahead of the first session you will gain access to a dedicated participant website with the course materials. At the end of the course, we will provide you with a pack of resources, including workshop templates, guides, scripts and slide packs.

Your Facilitators

Bill Sharpe

Bill, co-founder of Future Stewards, is a regenerative futures practitioner and system thinker. He is co-creator of the Three Horizons framework and author of Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope.

Bill is an advisor to leading figures across the climate, technology and policy arenas. Following a career of innovation in the computer industry, he has focused on pioneering new approaches to futures, systems thinking, and transformative innovation for one planet living. He is now dedicated to bringing that experience to help people and organisations meet the challenges of a complex and uncertain future.

He has been deeply involved in the Three Horizons framework’s ongoing evolution and dissemination, consistently working to expand its accessibility and impact across diverse fields. He is co-founder of Future Stewards and a member of the International Futures Forum and H3Uni, with whom he works to build a global commons of futures practice for transformative change.

Rebecca Ford

Rebecca is Director of the International Futures Forum (IFF), stewarding IFF’s mission to develop capacity and release potential in people, communities and organisations to rise to complex challenges and uncertain times. Her big motivating question is: how can the ways we come together, relate and learn create transformative change towards a regenerative future?

Rebecca first encountered the Three Horizons eight years ago when she was at a crossroads in her life and work. She had a personal paradigm-shift moment in a workshop with Bill Sharpe, used the framework to map the change landscape she was experiencing, and was amazed by the transformation it enabled. Rebecca went on to use it extensively in her work designing responses to systemic challenges and growing the RSA’s Design & Innovation function, as well as in trustee roles with community groups and with her own family. She joined IFF in 2024.

IFF is co-creator of the Three Horizons and the framework is used widely in our work in diverse multi-stakeholder settings – healthcare, philanthropy, education, policy, business and more – and with organisations ranging from startups and community groups to national governments and global companies.

Dates and Time Commitment

The training takes place over 4 interactive online sessions from 2-5pm BST / 9-12am EST – you can join from anywhere, so long as you can attend at these times on:

  • Session 1: Wednesday 30 April 2025
  • Session 2: Thursday 1 May 2025
  • Session 3: Thursday 8 May 2025 
  • Session 4: Thursday 15 May 2025

 

Optional Q&A Sessions with Bill Sharpe and Rebecca Ford

  • Friday 9 May 2025 2-3pm BST/ 9-10am EST
  • Tuesday 20 May 2025 2-3pm BST/ 9-10AM EST

 

We will share some brief pre-work (estimated < 1 hour) ahead of the first session. This course is designed for all learning to happen in the sessions themselves – we will provide further readings and invitations to reflect/practice in between sessions for those interested, but there is no expectation other than being fully present at the scheduled session times.

Fees

Tier 1

£ 1,250
00
  • For corporates, public sector, philanthropic organisations, large NGOs and consultants to these types of organisations with significant day rates.
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Tier 2

£ 850
00
  • For small organisations (<20 people) and self-financing individual
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We have a limited number of partial bursary places available for people in need of financial assistance to support their learning. There is more information about bursaries in our FAQs.

If you would like to send >3 employees on this training, please contact us and we can offer a discount.

Contact us

If you have a question that’s not answered in our FAQs below, please get in touch with Hannah Thomson hannah@internationalfuturesforum.com

FAQs

International Futures Forum (IFF) is a charity which enables people, communities and organisations to rise to complex challenges and uncertain times.

IFF is the co-originator of the Three Horizons and host of Future Stewards, the home of the Three Horizons Hub and Commons dedicated to spreading, deepening and evolving this practice in service of a regenerative future.

Founded in 2001, IFF has a long track record in addressing complex, messy, seemingly intractable issues. We develop capacity and enable transformative innovation in diverse contexts – governments, civil society, businesses and multi-stakeholder collaborations – generating hope, agency and collective action.

There are no prerequisites for joining this training, but we have designed it for people whose work involves bringing people together in participatory conversations, spaces and/or larger processes – this can be at any scale, from small teams to large multi-stakeholder collaborations.

Ahead of the training, participants will be invited to share any access needs which we will endeavour to meet, with the option to create an access plan together if needed. Our live sessions will take place via Zoom, using breakout groups and the online collaborative whiteboard tool Miro. 

A good internet connection will ensure the best experience, and there will be the option to turn on live captions during the sessions. We will have breaks and mix things up within the sessions to keep them energising and engaging.

This is an interactive and experiential learning experience, so participants are encouraged to have their camera on and will be expected to actively participate on multiple occasions. There will be a mix of solo, small group and wider cohort interactions throughout – but facilitators won’t make requests of individuals to contribute during conversation spaces unless they signal that they want to.

To get the most out of this experience, we encourage you to attend all four sessions and do all you can to arrange your schedule to be fully present for them. But sometimes clashes can’t be helped, and unexpected things arise – we will record all four sessions, so if you can’t make one, you can access the recording along with the session materials on the course website.

We have a limited number of partial bursary places available for people needing financial assistance to support their learning. These are for people who do not currently have the means to pay for educational or personal development to support their learning and work. Please contact us to discuss a bursary place and we will be as generous as we can.