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Background

Over the last year, we’ve been experimenting with Huddles as a complementary organising structure within the Wasan Network.

Huddles are designed as a structured process of peer learning for groups of about 8-12 people over four to six months, centred around a shared theme or inquiry. Groups design their own curriculum based on what participants bring, allowing them to pool their resources, learning and action in an emergent and unpredictable way. The potential of running multiple Huddles in parallel behind a shared mission is something we at Huddlecraft are increasingly interested in - testing how impactful they can be when networked, and what kind of support system (or ‘infrastructure’) is needed to make them hum.

Our intention was to bring a peer-to-peer (P2P) learning model to the Wasan network that could:

What we did

Our overarching process is laid out below. I’m aware how this invisibilises a lot of the work underneath these broad headings, but hopefully it serves as a good enough overview… get in touch if you’re a process nerd and want more detail :)

  1. Surfacing themes: we facilitated 2 online sessions to share the project with the whole Wasan network, gauge appetite to participate and surface key themes to Huddle around. Once we synthesised the themes that emerged from these sessions, we opened them back out to the network to invite people to step in to host Huddles on them.
  2. Training hosts: we ran 2 host training sessions with 12 hosts, going into the Huddlecraft methodology, culture and their Huddle design. We went out to the wider Wasan network to seek participation in the Huddles. Thankfully, we had 117 applications to join the Huddles - a sign of the energy in the Wasan network!
  3. Supporting Huddles: We then supported the hosts to host their Huddles, each unique to their own theme and style of facilitation. The process culminated in a cross-Huddle showcase event in April 2025, where we celebrated the rich learning, beautiful connections and emerging actions that took shape through the process.

You can find out more about the Huddles on the Wasan network blog and a resource hub curation of their explorations on this Notion resource hub. Sorry not to get into all the amazing content here; this blog is for the process people out there and will stay focused on that!

What worked well

Before I delve into the more process-oriented stuff, I want to celebrate the Huddles that happened and the hosts that made them happen. In our shared showcase, we heard about how the Huddles fostered a strong sense of community, described as soft, powerful, deep and unexpected - there was rich personal exploration and connection that emerged. We heard how trust developed quickly in many groups, even among participants who didn't know each other beforehand. The experience also fostered surprise, bringing knowledge not easily found in literature and showcasing diverse, fresh perspectives. People also spoke about how the process allowed for more emotions and fun than other spaces - combining lightness and depth.

We heard a number of metaphors for Huddles emerge, which give a flavour of the experience. We heard them described as a "lamp with a flickering flame"- allowing people to engage, warm themselves, and trust that outcomes would emerge without feeling forced to produce them. One was also described as a garden picnic, creating micro-spaces for exchange, and another host described theirs as when a butterfly emerges from the cocoon, allowing a safe and brave space for transformation.

People really appreciated some core components of Huddles, for example: