Theory of Change
A successional approach to bioregional regeneration
A Successional Approach to Bioregional Regeneration
Wilderculture works to regenerate the UK's upland, marginal, and island landscapes—land, livelihoods, and culture recovering together. Our Theory of Change sets out the logic of how that happens: not through one intervention, but through a patient, staged process that follows the patterns living systems already use to recover.
Most attempts to fix complex problems work on the outside—new policies, new practices, new schemes. Real regeneration also needs change on the inside: in how people see the land, in the cultures and worldviews a community holds. Our approach works on both at once.
Living Systems Design Principles
Our theory of change is put into practice through the ROOTED Framework, which translates how living systems work into practical design principles for bioregional regeneration. These principles guide our approach at every scale—from individual transformation to landscape-scale restoration.
Natural Rhythms and Patterns
We work with cycles, seasons, and the stages of natural succession—honouring how nested systems sit within one another, and how small, well-patterned actions scale into larger change.
Resilient Diversity
We cultivate diversity and synergy that builds adaptation and antifragility, enabling systems to grow stronger through disruption.
Regenerative Relationships
We foster interdependent reciprocity and dynamic communication networks that create mutually beneficial connections across all elements of bioregional systems.
Emergent Development
We support evolutionary emergence through polycentric self-organisation, creating conditions for novel capacities to arise from dynamic interactions.
Place-Based Adaptation
We attune to unique place-based contributions whilst designing closed-loop systems that turn outputs into inputs, mimicking nature's zero-waste efficiency.
Strategic Leverage
We identify nodal leverage points within "the field"—the relational web of each bioregion—where small, strategic shifts can amplify transformation efficiently. These principles ensure our successional approach mirrors the intelligence of natural systems, creating regenerative outcomes that strengthen over time rather than requiring constant external intervention.
Working With Natural Patterns
Lasting transformation follows the patterns living systems already use to recover. An ecosystem doesn't leap from bare ground to mature woodland—it moves through stages, each one building the conditions for the next. Bioregional regeneration works the same way. We read where a place sits, and sequence the work to match.
Early Succession
Building the cultural soil—the relationships, trust, and shared purpose that regenerative work has to grow from. The least visible stage, and the foundation everything else depends on.
Mid-Succession
Tangible projects take root—community food hubs, cooperative enterprises, apprenticeship pathways—growing from the networks and shared vision built in early succession.
Late Succession Self-organising regenerative systems
A web of interconnected initiatives in which each part contributes to the health and resilience of the whole, and the place increasingly holds itself.
The Thinking Behind Our Approach
Our Theory of Change draws on a set of established frameworks, each doing specific work:
Ecological Succession
The natural process by which ecosystems develop from simple to complex over time. This is our foundational pattern for how bioregional regeneration unfolds.
Integral Theory
Ken Wilber's model for working across all dimensions of change at once: personal, cultural, practical, and structural.
Spiral Dynamics
Beck and Cowan's account of how human values develop, helping us understand how communities mature toward the integrative thinking regeneration requires.
Three Horizons
Sharpe's framework for navigating transition: from the declining systems of today, through innovation, to a regenerative future.
The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth
Joe Brewer's bioregional approach, grounding regeneration in place-based economies and planetary learning networks.
Ecopsychology
Bill Plotkin's work on nature-based human development, informing how we grow regenerative leadership rooted in place.
Change on Every Front at Once
Real transformation can't happen in just one place. It has to move together across four dimensions—inner and outer, individual and collective.
Inner life of the individual
Personal growth through connection with place and natural cycles: wilderness immersion, reflective practice, and the deepening of ecological awareness.
Shared culture
Cultural evolution toward holistic worldviews, and the collaborative capacity that lets communities move beyond polarised thinking to co-create regenerative solutions.
Individual practice
The adoption of regenerative practices on the ground, supported by peer learning networks and ongoing coaching that build confidence and capability.
Systems and structures
Bioregional economies and self-organising governance that keep wealth circulating locally while supporting landscape-scale regeneration.
The six regions
Rather than spreading thin, our Theory of Change prioritises depth over breadth—committing long-term to six UK upland regions across Scotland and northern England, where the conditions for this work are strongest and the methodology has been forged.
- Eastern Highlands — the Cairngorms and surrounding Highland straths and glens
- West Highlands and Islands — the western Highlands and the Inner and Outer Hebrides
- Scottish Southern Uplands — southern Scotland, from the Lowther Hills to the Cheviots
- Northern English Borderlands — the Cheviots, Northumberland uplands, and the North Pennines
- Lake District Fells — the central Lakeland massif and surrounding fell-farming country
- Yorkshire Dales and Bowland — the Yorkshire Dales and the Forest of Bowland
This focused approach lets us develop transferable methodology, tested across genuinely different conditions—and demonstration regions that can inform regenerative work far beyond the six.
A Global Community Alongside the Deep Work
Alongside the place-based work in the UK uplands, we cultivate a wider community—regenerative practitioners worldwide applying the same patterns in their own places.
Cultural change has to accompany ecological and economic change, not trail behind it. By supporting people everywhere to take up regenerative practice, we build the networks, shared values, and practical knowledge that the deep place-based work draws on and feeds into.
Six UK upland regions, worked long-term and in depth.
A global community applying regenerative principles in their own places.
Land, livelihoods, and culture recovering together.
Our Strategic Goal
By 2046, Wilderculture will have catalysed measurable regeneration across six UK upland regions and one million hectares—land, livelihoods, and culture recovering together—while a global community takes the same work into their own places.
This is a long horizon by design. Full bioregional regeneration is the work of generations; 2046 is the point at which catalytic change is visible in pockets within each region, with the most advanced reaching the stage where communities hold the work themselves.
The horizon for measurable regeneration.
Hectares across six UK upland regions—land, livelihoods, and culture recovering together.