Menu
It can be easy to feel paralysed in the face of climate and ecological breakdown.
What if everyone knew the science-based root causes of all environmental problems? We could use a shared understanding of their positive opposites as guidelines. We could design things together so that we don’t cause these problems in the first place.
Learning the RoundView helps us all to ask questions about the likely impacts of our actions, and to think of creative solutions. The RoundView can be applied to projects and programmes at any level of scale.
It gives us the power to see our local places through a new lens, developing a narrative of hope from our shared global story. The RoundView has already proven to promote sustainability learning from primary to PhDs to policy.
Our aim is to create a future where sustainability becomes as fundamental to everyday life as the three Rs. In this future, the RoundView becomes the fourth R (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic and RoundView), increasing our skills and capacity for positive change.
The positive view is why I’ve been so interested in the RoundView, because everything about sustainability is usually being told what we should stop doing, not what to do. As human beings we rile against that. This can be very powerful, especially as it says we can carry on living and enjoying ourselves but in a better and more clever way.
The RoundView builds upon existing approaches to sustainability, in particular the scientific rigour and systems-approach of The Natural Step. From the beginning, the RoundView has been seen as an open framework, and it has incorporated the feedback and ideas of a wide range of people. We are looking forward to working with many more people and partners in taking this work further.
To meet the objective of fostering shared dialogue through clear guidelines grounded in science, it is essential to ensure that the integrity and clarity of the guidelines are maintained over time. The RoundView is stewarded by the ThinkingWare Community Interest Company.
Developing The RoundView has involved work with scientists, action-learning experts, artists and thousands of workshop participants and students applying the guidelines in their communities and organisations.
The RoundView builds on Dr Joanne Tippett’s development and ESRC-funded research from over two decades. The framework was consolidated and named during research funded by the Sustainable Consumption Institute at The University of Manchester and Tesco in 2009, by Joanne and Fraser How, with support from the research team.
The RoundView has benefited from working with a range of amazing artists, supported by Creative Manchester, Countryscape and FutureEverything. Many of the graphics on this site have been created by himHallows.
Development of the RoundView has been funded and supported by:
Joanne is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Environment, Education and Development, at The University of Manchester and Founder of Ketso , a social business that makes hands-on tools for engagement and learning. She began working in the field of community participation and ecological planning in the mid 90s in Southern Africa, and has won numerous awards for her innovation and the social impact of her work.
Her research is driven by two questions:
She was awarded a British Academy Innovation Fellowship with the UK National Commission for UNESCO to develop the RoundView for UNESCO-designated sites in 2023.
Fraser How is a permaculture designer and teacher, and also a facilitator and trainer with Ketso. He has run visioning workshops for a wide range of organisations – from small team meetings, to major workshops with hundreds of people. These include strategic planning and stakeholder engagement workshops for a wide range of organisations such as: Amey, Tesco, Hull Business School, HMP Leeds, North West Commissioning Support Unit, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Wheatley Group, Surrey Wildlife Partnership, and Dementia Action Alliance North West.
He led on community engagement with the RoundView for the 5-year, £3.2 million Carbon Landscape Programme.