About the Transition Bridges Project
The Transition Bridges Project (TBP) is an initiative focused on building bridges towards more regenerative and caring ways of living together, both in our neighbourhoods and communities, as well as with the land and our ecosystems, through the perspective of systems mediation. Rooted in the principles of inner work, systemic thinking and mediation, this initiative seeks to address transitional and transformational challenges that individuals, organizations and institutions are facing in today’s rapidly evolving world. It also addresses the underlying racial and gender inequity through the prism of a healing-centered systems lens.
TBP is now hosted at the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR), providing an institutional home for continued research, practice, and field-building in systems mediation.
The Transition Bridges Project originated from the acknowledgement that transitions are complex, especially in the context of multiple crises. We also recognize that transitions are occurring simultaneously on a personal, organizational, and societal level. “What must be changed must first be faced”, as James Baldwin says. Therefore, our journey in systems mediation involves facing (up, in and out) these realities to encourage the deeper shifts required to create transformational change.
We are currently exploring collective sense-making. At the centre of this inquiry is the question: “How is systems mediation showing up in our work and communities?” Through this inquiry, we are seeking to develop a clear pathway towards systems mediation, bridging between scales of work, diverging perspectives, and geographic and cultural differences.
What is Systems Mediation?
We are living through intersecting crises such as climate change, ecological degradation, inequality, and democratic strain. These conditions are often described in terms of breakdown. But they are also moments of reconfiguration, where new forms of coordination and meaning-making become possible.
Systems mediation emerges from this in-between space.
It is the practice of acting across actors, scales, and systems to:
- support dialogue across differences.
- surface hidden assumptions and tensions.
- strengthen relational and institutional coordination.
- enable collective sense-making in complex environments.
- help align action across individual, organizational, and systemic levels.
Rather than treating complexity as a problem to be eliminated, systems mediation works with it as a condition to be navigated.
Transition Bridges rejects one-size-fits-all solutions and the consultant’s expert posture. We prefer to adopt an approach that is to consult as co-creators and collaborators and not as experts. Through this immersion in collective contexts, we hope to support and empower collaborators working to untangle intricate systems, help identify interdependencies, forge new collaborative pathways forward, co-facilitate transformative change and foster sustainable community and multi-stakeholder outcomes.
Where This Work Comes From
TBP began with a simple question:
Who helps build the bridges between systems?
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of practitioners, researchers, and community leaders across Canada began meeting informally to explore how transitions actually happen in practice. Over time, this inquiry evolved into a shared space of experimentation across sectors, institutions, and communities.
We are deeply grateful to the first circle of co-stewards that founded this initiative : Louise Adongo, Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed, Patrick Dubé, Lara Evoy, Stéphane Guidoin, and Jean-Noé Landry.
What emerged was not a single model, but a practice shaped through doing and was refined through collaborations, learning cycles, and real-world engagements.
Areas of practice
We are currently exploring eight Areas of Work (AOW) that we envision in the realm of systemic mediation — however, this work is ongoing, so we anticipate an evolving framework.
These AOWs are more than theoretical concepts; they are practical avenues where the principles of systems mediation can be applied to address specific types of challenges and opportunities.
Each AOW represents a unique type of situation or context where systems mediation can play a transformative role.
Systems Mediation in Practice
TBP has worked with partners across public, community, and philanthropic sectors to explore how systems mediation functions in real world contexts.
Coastal Resilience Communities
A Natural Resources Canada - funded multi-stakeholder coastal resilience initiative involving municipalities, engineers, and community actors working across scales of governance and technical planning. The collaboration revealed how governance itself functions as a system-wide coordination challenge, requiring ongoing mediation across institutional logic, timelines, and decision structures.
Stories of community capacity for working in current poly-crises
A United Way/Centraide (Greater Montreal) - funded community-based capacity-building initiative exploring how nonprofit organizations and leaders navigate complexity under increasing pressure. The work combined in-depth interviews, field sensing, workshops, and iterative learning cycles to surface relational, structural, and resource tensions at the local level, with the goal of fostering collaborative approaches and building resilience.
Equitable Adaptation
The FCM-funded Equitable Adaptation Workshop Series acted as a systems mediation platform, bringing together municipal staff from across Canada to exchange knowledge, identify shared challenges, and co-develop practical resources for integrating equity into local climate adaptation. By fostering collaboration across jurisdictions, the workshops strengthened collective capacity and supported more coordinated, equitable adaptation efforts.
Together, these initiatives present case studies to illustrate systems mediation not as theory, but as lived practice across institutional and community settings.
Join the Conversation
The Transition Bridges Project welcomes collaboration with researchers, practitioners, students, community organizations, public institutions, and philanthropic partners interested in advancing the emerging field of systems mediation.
Whether you are exploring systems change in your own work or looking to collaborate on research, practice, or learning, we invite you to join us in the systems mediation inquiry.