The Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) is pleased to welcome the Transition Bridges Project (TBP) as its new institutional home, marking a new chapter in the project's ongoing inquiry into systems mediation. The affiliation creates a formal research platform for advancing systems' mediation; an emerging practice that helps actors across sectors navigate complexity, bridge divides, and catalyze collective action on interconnected crises including climate change, democratic erosion, and rising inequality.
"It is a deep privilege for WISIR to serve as the home for the next incarnation of TBP. In times of multi-system collapse and undulating changes, the practice of systemic mediation shows immense promise for supporting resilience and adjacent possibilities, including the co-creation of islands of wisdom and coherence. We are thrilled to co-steward this meaningful work."
— Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed, Director, Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR)
“We have been learning by doing. We chose not to overbuild structures, but rather to feel our way into the work, creating ‘just enough’ form for life to flow through it. Over three years, in projects of different contexts, in place and scale, we have seen that the work is as much about practice, pacing and presence as it is about outputs.”
— Louise Adongo, Co-steward, Transition Bridges Project
"I think WISIR is a good fit for the Transition Bridges Project, and will support sharing and learning about systems mediation with a broad community of practitioners. I am excited to be a part of the next stage of work!"
— Lara Evoy, Co-steward, Transition Bridges Project
Background
Founded in 2023, the Transition Bridges Project emerged from a simple question:
Who helps build the bridges?
This project encouraged a growing circle of practitioners, researchers, community leaders, facilitators, and systems thinkers to explore that question together. What began as a series of conversations evolved into a collaborative inquiry into the emerging practice of systems mediation.
Over the last three years, TBP has collaborated with organizations including Centraide, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), and the AIM Network to test and refine the concept of systems mediation through public presentations, writing, partnerships, learning circles and practical experimentation. While people are already doing the work of building bridges across actors, scales, and systems, there is little shared language for understanding, supporting, and strengthening these practices.
Systems mediation is one way of naming this in-between work. Practitioners of systems mediation help people navigate complexity, engage in collective sense-making, find common ground across differences, sense tension or stuck flows, name the unintended and create the conditions for dialogue, collaboration, and collective action.
Why WISIR?
After several years of experimentation, partnership-building, and collective inquiry, finding a home at WISIR feels like a natural next step.
For more than a decade, WISIR has brought together researchers, practitioners, students, and communities to explore innovative responses to complex social and environmental challenges. As the project enters its next phase, WISIR provides an institutional home where research and practice can continue to inform one another, creating opportunities to deepen the inquiry, strengthen partnerships, and contribute to a growing field of work focused on systems mediation and transformative change.
An Open Invitation
TBP and WISIR are actively seeking collaborators in the form of researchers, practitioners, community organizations, public servants, philanthropists, and students who are interested in the emerging field of systems mediation and transformative social change.
The challenges of our time cannot be addressed alone. They call for new relationships, new ways of working together, and new capacities for navigating complexity. We invite you to join the conversation.
About the Transition Bridges Project
The Transition Bridges Project explores and advances the emerging practice of systems mediation. It builds bridges between actors, scales, and systems while supporting collaborative approaches to navigating complexity, strengthening relationships, and fostering regenerative transformation.
Read More: https://www.transitionbridges.net/en
About WISIR
The Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) brings together researchers, practitioners, students, and communities to explore innovative responses to complex social and environmental challenges.
Acknowledgement
TBP is also deeply grateful to the first circle of co-stewards who helped bring the Transition Bridges Project into being between 2023 and 2025 and laid the foundation for the work that continues today.