Learning & skills

We’ll do most of the learning we need to face current challenges in practice. We need the right tools for that job.

Open Learning

Flexible, low-barrier learning that meets people where they are and relates ideas to practice.

Place-based learning

Experiential, community-based and contextual to share know-how and drive real-world change.

Open Learning builds the capabilities we need

Our changing context requires new capabilities; to navigate uncertainty and complexity, to collaborate and work systemically, to imagine alternative futures and innovate and adapt towards them.

These capabilities, known as transformative green skills and green competencies, are best built together, in practice.

  • Green skills are most often understood as instrumental, technical and ‘green job’ related, like heat pump installation.
  • The green skills which will help us innovate and adapt our lives and our economies are known as ‘transformational green skills’.
  • You might recognise these as soft, generic, transversal or transferrable skills.
  • They are central to the challenges we all face.

  • Green competencies, also known as sustainability competencies, are the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to imagine and create a sustainable future as well as to adapt to a changing present.
  • The European Sustainability Competence Framework (GreenComp) outlines four key competence areas:
    1. Embodying sustainability values: valuing sustainability, promoting fairness, and respecting nature.
    2. Embracing complexity in sustainability: understanding interconnected systems, recognising long-term impacts, and thinking critically.
    3. Envisioning sustainable futures: using creativity to imagine future scenarios, adapting to change, and developing futures literacy.
    4. Acting for sustainability: collective action, political agency, and individual initiative to drive positive change.
  • Examples of green competencies in action:
    • Policymakers developing regulations that support a green economy. 
    • Businesses implementing sustainable practices in their company.
    • Community members participating in local environmental initiatives.
    • Educators integrating sustainability into their curriculum.

As a council officer and food network coordinator, my most immediate takeaway was the model of how my team and I might support the system to learn better together.

  • First Hand Walking Tour Participant, May 2025

The only way is open

Well‑designed open‑learning initiatives and learning ecosystems are not nice-to-have. If we are to translate the global sustainability goals into local, business and sector‑wide practice – rapidly, inclusively and at scale – they are the new business essentials.

Meaningful learning experiences

Penny drop moments to remember and talk about

Capability over awareness

Practical skills, tools and mindsets for change

Stakeholders in the room 

Cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral exchange

Delivery capacity & skills

Pooling resources and collaborative working

Measurable outcomes at pace 

Increased connections and confidence to act

One good way to learn something new is through specific examples rather than abstractions and generalities.

  • Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems