Our Story and Origins so far
2015 — Beginnings in Scotland
H3Uni began in Scotland in 2015, growing as a special educational initiative out of The International Futures Forum (IFF), in which Dr Anthony (Tony) Hodgson, our President, had been a notable founding participant. Tony was supported by Ian Kendric, a former colleague in the Metabridge consultancy, Bill Sharpe, co-developer of Three Horizons, and David Adams, a consultant with recent training in traditional wisdom practice. Graham Leicester, then Director of IFF, helped us to incubate H3Uni until we could obtain our charity registration, key to our mission and a gateway, we hoped, to philanthropic funding.
Origins in Earlier Futures Work
Our origins, in the work that came together as early Three Horizons practice, go much further back, to earlier studies about futures. A shared need to map out qualities of futures understanding and rigour for effective futures practice led to the creation of IFF. For its first ten years it convened many futurists and luminaries in a futures think tank. Tony was at the core of this, along with Graham, Bill, and many notable others. Tony has always said that he had the good fortune to be able to refine, build on, and integrate his development of the insights of others. He forged the ideas he had and the material he practiced into a coordinated synthesis of transformative methods. Methods which offer hope and agency for collective practice in the face of the compounding complexity of modern polycrises. Three Horizons work provides the spearhead, the opening insight and the gateway to effective action for a worthwhile future. A future that is regenerative with nature that forms us and all life.
A Vision for a New Kind of University
The idea of founding a radically new kind of university – one that enables a truly universal holistic education – was Tony’s long held dream. With no funds to speak of, we had to do everything online. Bill and Tony took the early initiative to create the Resource Library of collaborative multi-disciplinary methods that is the core of all H3Uni’s teaching. From the start this material was to be placed in the creative commons, freely available, with acknowledgement, to all who need to use it.
The First Lean Years
We began a great adventure. A university needs a teaching faculty; it needs research facilities and codification of research findings; it needs an accumulating reference library; and it needs a lively campus and learning community. All of these functions have been enacted in smaller rather than larger ways over these past ten lean years. Tony himself has undertaken most of the teaching (including four of the five courses of Facilitating Transformational Journeys that H3Uni has run) as well as leading research. Administration, like everything else, has been accomplished on a shoestring. And, despite every privation, H3Uni receives international recognition.
Global Project Work
Project work and assignments of wide variety, fascination and geographic spread during these years have produced vital earnings to keep this enterprise afloat. H3Uni has worked in Silicon Valley, Costa Rica, Turkey, Singapore, Scotland, Ireland, and England on projects that have been essential to H3Uni’s progress.
2017 — Transformations Conference
In 2017 Ioan Fazey, then a professor in Dundee University, ran with Bruce Goldstein and Karen O’Brian an international Transformations Conference that was focused on the future requirements of knowledge systems to support the necessities of anticipated transformational change. It attracted 300 delegates and Ioan asked H3Uni to help run the whole conference as a Three Horizons workshop. 30 facilitators were recruited and trained, each taking 10 delegates through the whole Three Horizons process, to which all the conference presentations were also linked. The findings were gathered and posted step by step on a very long wall and condensed overnight to summary findings for each Horizon. Tony delivered the concluding narrative in the final session, which closed with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’. Afterwards, the findings were edited into a published paper [link] which named all the facilitators and presenters among the 50 contributing authors.
2019 Courses & the Lighthouse Café
H3Uni ran courses for a variety of participants in Three Horizons, the Wheel of Wisdom, Qualitative Systems Thinking, Cosmic Ecology, the Enneagram, Holistic and Hexagon Mapping, Dilemma Resolution, Generative Thinking and more. In parallel, we ran a series of informal Lighthouse Cafe dialogues convened by David and then by John Hicks. Each with a topic, some had prepared input; all ran on the open sincerity of those present. All were always fully subscribed.
Volunteers & the Pioneers Community
Throughout this time, we have also enjoyed and honoured the cheerful hard work of a loyal band of volunteers, including Adrienne, Stephan, Maureen, John and David B in the early days, with Dimitra, Maija, Josh, Christina, Phil, Frances and Don more recently. Our volunteer community accelerated in 2022 when we formed the Pioneers for Third Horizon Learing and invited people from our whole network to join. Maija Grudule took up work on our systems, infrastructure, costs and communications, which made a huge difference to our capacity and activities. Phil Tate (in New Zealand) prepared and delivered, with Wendy Simpson, the fifth Facilitating Transformational Journeys course in January 2023, an exceptional achievement. This brought Trace Gale (in Chile) into participation, who, with Andrew Curry, is currently leading the preparation of a major survey of Three Horizons practice.
2023 — International Caravanserai
In June 2023, H3Uni held its first in person international Caravanserai in Tony’s hometown of Pitlochry. People from 14 nations came to learn together and celebrate our shared appreciation of Tony’s work and all that H3Uni stands for.
2026 - Looking Ahead
It’s a challenge to do justice to everyone and everything that has played a part in H3Uni’s story in this very brief survey. We will no doubt revise and add to it as time moves on. Course alumni, participants in our series of Lighthouse Cafe dialogues and people who signed up for interest now number some 700, to whom we send newsletters and invitations to events. A new phase of H3Uni is beginning with opportunities for volunteers in every facet of our potential for contributing to a worthwhile regenerative planetary future.
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