Imagine trying to navigate an uncertain future using only evidence from the past. Traditional evaluation and MEL practices provide insights into what has happened, but today's social and ecological challenges also require us to pay attention to what is emerging and what futures are becoming possible.
This session explores why bringing evaluation, regeneration and foresight together can be valuable, and what this could look like in practice. Drawing on insights from our four-part Collective Learning Lab: Sensing What Is Emerging, we share reflections on the changing role of evaluators, the skills needed to enable both regeneration and foresight, and the wider paradigm shift required to support regenerative and future-first evaluation.
Together, we will explore how evaluation might evolve from a practice focused primarily on assessing the past to one that also helps communities, organisations, and institutions shape more regenerative and desirable futures.
The session is structured across two connected arcs:
First 60 Minutes | Bringing Regenerative Evaluation and Foresight together: Reflections around the value of bringing regenerative evaluation and foresight together, and some of the practices, methodologies and tools at the intersection of both.
Extended 30 Minutes | the role, skills and mental models of a future-first regenerative evaluator: A deep-dive dialogue exploring the evolving identity and strategic positioning of our field as measurement shifts from backward-looking accountability into real-time navigation for systems, communities, and funders.
What You Will Walk Away With
In this session, you will gain both practical entry points and strategic perspectives for your practice:
Principles of future-first regenerative evaluation: An introduction to emerging ideas and practices that combine foresight and regenerative evaluation.
Approaches for working with emergence and uncertainty: Tools and mindsets for noticing what is emerging, navigating complexity, and holding ambiguity.
New perspectives on value, accountability, and learning: Insights into how evaluation can shift from being a mechanism for accountability, to becoming a practice of collective inquiry, future-sensing, and change-making.
... and many more questions that our Collective Learning Lab has surfaced!
🕒 A Note on Format: This 90-minute gathering is designed with two distinct phases. The primary harvest and foresight input occur within the first 60 minutes, featuring a natural soft exit before transitioning into the extended 30-minute dialogue on the future of the MEL profession.
Whether you are an evaluator, strategist, or funder curious about the future horizon of measurement and learning, you are wholeheartedly welcome to join us. We look forward to sensing what is emerging together!
Background about the community & event series
This gathering is part of Experiments in Regenerative Evaluation, a public event series hosted by Unity Effect and the global Regenerative Evaluation Community of Practice—an open network of over 250 practitioners, researchers, and network leaders shifting measurement from extractive compliance toward life-affirming learning. Further events of the series include:
Co-Host bios
Mylene Pacot is an evaluation specialist whose work focuses on systems change, equitable and participatory approaches, and collective learning. She has advised public and third sector organisations in the UK and internationally on evaluation, strategy, and learning. Her work spans a range of social and community development issues, with particular interests in tackling inequalities, place-based approaches to social change, and the relationship between government and civil society.
Andrea Esteve Pedró is a social innovator committed to transforming the economy to be more just and regenerative. Her work sits at the intersection of systems change strategy, participatory design, and impact measurement and management (IMM). She is driven by a simple conviction: if we want a different economy, we need to redefine success and how we measure it. She is part of the impact investing team at Oxfam Intermón.
As members of the Collective Learning Lab: Sensing What Is Emerging, Mylene and Andrea have contributed to a collaborative exploration of how regenerative thinking and foresight can help reimagine evaluation in a time of uncertainty, ecological disruption, and rapid social change.
Jannik Kaiser (Unity Effect): Jannik is the Co-founder and CEO of Unity Effect, leading the development of Regenerative Measurement & Evaluation. He bridges complexity science, human sense-making, and ecosystem weaving to advocate for shifting evaluation from a compliance burden into a life-affirming practice.
