Deliberate Dialogue

[Noun] Curated, sustained interaction between multiple actors who recognise the imperative to collaborate to achieve their common ambitions.

The tendency today is to remain trapped in conversations restricted to quickly agreed-on consensus. The limited ability of actors to drive positive change lies in a siloed culture, conflicting interests and entrenched biases. 
Our work is to design and curate multi-actor spaces where collective intelligence is pooled, connections are made, and critical conversations can take place productively, focusing on change rather than on what holds us back.

What makes dialogue deliberate?

Align on shared purpose

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Set transformative ambition

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Build durable relationships

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Align on shared purpose ● Set transformative ambition ● Build durable relationships ●

Make assumptions explicit

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Recruit participants intentionally

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Design with inclusivity and intersectionality

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Make assumptions explicit ● Recruit participants intentionally ● Design with inclusivity and intersectionality ●

Enable active contribution from all

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Ground dialogue in evidence

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Co-develop agendas with intentionality

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Enable active contribution from all ● Ground dialogue in evidence ● Co-develop agendas with intentionality ●

Who We Are

We are a purpose-driven community of conveners, sensemakers and communicators, committed to mobilise our diverse expertise, passion and empathy to unlock the potential of deliberate dialogue for systems change.

Conveners are more than excellent facilitators. Our Conveners are trained practitioners who design, hold and navigate complex dialogues with precision, deep care and subject knowledge. We bring together diverse actors, surface difficult questions, build shared understanding and help groups and communities move from quickly agreed-on consensus to actionable solutions.

Our interdisciplinary, intergenerational and international expertise allows us to engage effectively with a wide range of actors and organisations across sectors and disciplines.  From policymaking to partnerships, sustainable development to food systems transformation, Convene’s constellation of professionals spans five continents, all of whom bring their diverse skillsets, geographical knowledge and networks to strengthen our work.

What We Do

Projects and processes we design include...

  • By supporting organisations, partnerships, and networks to align around common challenges, priorities, and pathways for action.

  • Our team is trained to collect insights from the conversation and connect them in live time, feeding them back into the discussion to harness momentum.

  • We convene global coalitions of changemakers around shared agendas, from food policy to biodiversity and climate resilience.

  • Co-creating high-level convenings, workshops, and dialogue series that generate concrete commitments and next steps.

  • Facilitating organisational strategy development and collaborative roadmapping with research institutions, NGOs, and foundations.

  • Our Listening Sessions and multi-actor consultations create “risky-safe spaces” for local, regional and global stakeholders to voice their diverse perspectives and  inform decision-making.

  • Supporting institutions and partnerships to develop, stress-test, and elaborate theories of change that support internal alignment.

Featured Projects

  • Communities for Action

    Supporting the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy, sustainable, and just food systems, Convene curated dialogue processes for 10 Communities for Action that brought together frontline actors from across food systems to discuss shared challenges, synergies, and action pathways to unlock transformation.

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  • Shared Messages on Biodiversity and Food Systems

    Convene is working alongside the Netherlands Food Partnership and their Biodiversity and Food Systems Community of Practice to co-create shared messages that articulate the interlinkages between biodiversity and food systems, responding to a clear call from members of the CoP for common language, evidence, and narratives that can support more coherent engagement.

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  • IDDRI 2026-2030 Strategy

    Convene worked alongside the IDDRI team as they developed their Strategy 26-30. We designed an inclusive process that aimed to seize the global challenges of today as an opportunity to rethink, reframe and re-energise ambition, direction and approach through internal and external engagements with key partners, co-creating and crafting an organisational Theory of change.

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  • Nexus Action

    Nexus Action is a learning collective, community-owned process convened and curated by an alliance of partners redefining how we model effective, more iterative, and better coordinated Science-Policy-Society Interfaces across scales (global, national and local), across sectors (environment, health, people, agriculture, food) and across knowledge systems. The collective convenes a global community spanning knowledge systems

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Institutional Conveners who trust our track record.

Still Deliberating?

Hear what others have to say about Convene:

  • "Exceptional painter from start to finish in driving deep dialogue on systemic change."

    Senior Scientist and Project Partner

  • "For Convene, your event is just one step in a longer process of deliberate dialogue that engages friends, skeptics, and other experts to frame and flesh out the 'what, so what, and now what' building blocks of success."

    Convener and Collaborator

  • "Consistency, authenticity, and 'the extra mile' brought out participant engagement."

    Collaborator and Project Partner