Spaces for Growth

Graham Leicester is Director of International Futures Forum. Graham previously ran Scotland's leading think tank, the Scottish Council Foundation, founded in 1997. From 1984-1995 he served as a diplomat in HM Diplomatic Service, specialising in China (he speaks Mandarin Chinese) and the EU. Between 1995 and 1997 he was senior research fellow with the Constitution Unit at University College London. He has also worked as a freelance professional cellist, including with the BBC Concert Orchestra. He has a strong interest in governance, innovationand education, and has previously worked with OECD, the World Bank Institute and other agencies on the themes of governance in a knowledge society and the governance of the long term. He is author of a number of books on themes including transformative innovation and the 21st century competencies.

We live in powerful times. A rolling crisis that is both real (there are consequences), conceptual (horribly complex to grasp in its multiple dimensions)and existential (shaking the inner foundations of our worlds).


These emergencies are not distinct: they are all connected and now hunt in packs. But it is the existential emergency, the human consequences of living in powerful times, that now dominates the scene. That is the subject of this booklet. For it is in the boundless potential of the human system, the ways in which we choose to live our lives in patterns of relationship with other lives, that our hopes for recovery and renewal ultimately lie.


'Spaces for Growth' is both a manual and a rallying call. It explores the settings and the environments we need to discover and to create, as hosts and guides, to enable individuals, groups, organisations, communities, institutions, human beings in all formations to expand, to develop and to grow. In this way we will, together, rise to the occasion.