The 2026 Systems Innovation Learning Partnership (SILP) Festival will take place on the 10th and 11th of March. It is a collaborative learning space hosted by Climate KIC and Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), created for people working in the messy reality of systems change.
It exists because many of the challenges we face (climate, social, economic) are complex, relational, and constantly shifting, while the way we often fund, organise, and measure change still assumes certainty, control, and linear progress.
Sessions will take place online from 10:00-12:30 on Day 1 and from 10:00-12:30 on Day 2.
You can register for either one or both days via the following link.
Day 1: Climate narratives in action: Attention, trust, and imagining alternative futures
Day 1 centres on analysing climate storytelling across sectors. Participants will examine:
- Where dominant climate narratives originate
- How they influence public attention, trust, and political will
- How they shape (or limit) the range of futures people consider possible
Bringing together perspectives from fields such as comedy, film production, economics, and other disciplines, the session will explore how different storytelling formats and inherited narratives are used to:
- Capture and retain public attention
- Influence attitudes and behaviour
- Make abstract climate futures tangible and relatable
- Build collective momentum for climate action
The goal is to move from abstract discussion to a clearer understanding of how narrative strategies can be intentionally designed to support meaningful climate engagement.
Day 2: In-between Spaces: Intermediaries rethinking funding practices
Day 2 marks the launch of the Rethinking Intermediaries Series report (premiering at the festival) — a futures-oriented learning paper shaped through shared inquiry with intermediary funders and ecosystem support organisations navigating this liminal space.
Together, we will explore live cases of experimental funding and relational practice, opening generative conversations around:
The friction and possibility of working across worlds
What experimentation looks like when outcomes are emergent
How intermediaries are developing new capabilities for stewarding complexity
This is not a space designed to eliminate tension.
It is a space to sit with it, sense into it, and deepen our collective understanding of how to move within it.