A transformative leadership development programme
Building the next generation of landscape leaders through immersive residential experiences, digital learning, and real-world action projects.
Photo: Saya Rose Naruse / Nature Calling
Duration
November 2025 – March 2026
Location
Hawkwood, Stroud, UK
Format
Cohort-based learning
Blend
Residential + Digital
The learning journey
The programme follows a carefully designed arc, building from understanding place and purpose through to envisioning and creating futures. Four residential modules at Hawkwood are woven together with six digital sessions, all running alongside an Action Project that each participant develops throughout.
Residential Modules
The programme begins with Power of Place, a three-day intensive residential that grounds leadership development explicitly in place and introduces regenerative principles. Participants explore regenerative approaches to creating places for life, re-inhabiting place as a living system, shaping relationships with stakeholders, designing strategy for systemic change, and exploring leadership for transformative change grounded in place.
Facilitators
- Jenny Andersson
- Dr Al Mathers
Learning Outcomes
- Consider the interrelation between people, place and systems in a landscape context
- Understand how regenerative design helps realise the evolutionary potential of place
- Navigate the challenge of place-sourced transformative change
- Build capabilities across inner, relational and systemic dimensions
As part of the Centre for Future Thinking, this module positions Futures Literacy as a core leadership capability. Participants experience a full Futures Literacy Laboratory exploring how perceptions of the future shape present-day decisions, behaviour and individual bias. Content includes theoretical foundations of futures literacy, storytelling for communities, reframing and collective intelligence processes, understanding agency in relation to past, present and imagined futures, and ways to integrate futures thinking into strategy and leadership.
Facilitators
- Loes Damhof
- Alex Lambie
Learning Outcomes
- Understand how assumptions about the future shape actions today
- Expand agency rather than create anxiety through future thinking
- Lead confidently when certainty is no longer possible
- Integrate futures thinking into strategy and leadership
A hands-on session designed to build shared understanding and explore diverse viewpoints on how Artificial Intelligence impacts individual, collective, organisational and societal work and lives. The module explores creative, historical, current, ecological, ethical and practical perspectives on AI, helping leaders engage with AI through critical thinking and reflective practice while supporting informed, ethical and practical understanding.
Facilitators
- Tim Davies
Learning Outcomes
- Understand how AI can support or undermine landscape stewardship
- Identify where AI adds value and where it should be avoided
- Use AI tools to support work with ethical and environmental considerations
- Engage with both beginner and experienced perspectives on AI technology
The programme concludes by exploring creativity in leadership to balance delivery-focused content with inspiration. This module is explicitly designed to challenge 'thinking-as-usual' and position creative capacity as essential for leadership to support adaptation, innovation, reframing and renewed energy in work ecosystems. Content includes radical imagination practices, reframing challenges through positive thinking, generating bold ideas, and moving from 'Yes, but' to 'Yes, and'.
Facilitators
- Rob Hopkins
Learning Outcomes
- Embed creativity as a core leadership capability
- Reshape leadership practice through imagination
- Discover what becomes possible when we let go of constraint-based thinking
- Sustain creative energy in complex systems
Digital Learning Sessions
Between residentials, digital sessions deepen the learning, introduce new ideas, and keep the cohort connected. All sessions are held online.
Leadership 101
Exploring what leadership means to each participant and building shared understanding within the cohort.
Doughnut Economics & Long-term Thinking
An intensive digital session introducing the economics of place and long-term thinking about resource use through key components of doughnut economics and long-term thinking frameworks.
Solving Complex Problems
Designed to build confidence in navigating VUCA environments (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) and strengthen systems thinking. Draws on systems leadership and reflective practice to explore practical techniques for working with complexity.
Reflection and Evaluation
A final closing digital session for participants to reflect on their learning from the programme and share feedback to inform improvements to the programme design and content.
Running Throughout
Action Projects
Alongside the taught programme, each participant develops a live Action Project — a real leadership challenge or opportunity from within their own organisation or landscape.
Action Projects serve as live leadership laboratories: a space to test new thinking, experiment with different approaches, and put learning into practice in real time. They are supported by coaching, peer learning, and reflection throughout the programme, and shared with the full cohort at the end.
Who is this programme for?
The Landscape Leadership Academy is open to people working across the National Landscapes network in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland — whether in conservation, recreation, communities, communications, or organisational management.
Participants are selected through an expression of interest process. We are looking for:
- 1Working within or closely with National Landscapes in England, Wales, or Northern Ireland
- 2In a leadership role, or on a clear pathway towards leadership
- 3Motivated to invest time and energy in personal development
- 4Committed to contributing to the wider cohort learning experience
- 5Supported by their organisation to participate fully in the programme
There is no cost to participants. Places are fully funded thanks to the support of our programme partners and funders.
Interested in joining the programme?
Expressions of interest for future cohorts are now open. Get in touch to learn more about how to participate.