Wild Design Book ClubFrom Factory to Forest
Read Wild Design for Learning with fellow educators, try one nature-inspired idea in your own work, and talk through what happened.
Join the book clubWhat could be different if we designed learning and change the way a forest grows, instead of the way a factory runs?
Wild Design for Learning: Moving Mental Models from the Factory to the Forest
Most of us grew up inside a factory model of learning: linear, packed, and the same for everyone. Gwyneth turns to the natural world for ways of learning, leading, and working together that are adaptive, sustainable, and deeply connected.
Routledge, November 2026
Gwyneth Hagan
Gwyneth is a poet, educator, and designer whose work draws on the patterns and rhythms of the natural world. She has worked with learners from early childhood through adulthood, and partnered with organizations such as EL Education and Transcend Education on place-based learning and community-based redesign.
Today she leads Design to Learn Consulting, helping leaders and teams think and act “more like the forest than the factory.” She joins the book club for our opening and closing live gatherings.
How the book club works
The book club runs as four sideby sessions, each paired with a section of the book, and you’ll meet a different fellow reader each time, so you hear four new perspectives along the way. Between sessions, you read, try something small, and notice what happens.
From Factory to Forest: Where I’m Starting
Name a learning experience that felt factory-like, and set a Wild Design goal for one real meeting, workshop, class, or change effort.
Read: Part 1, Chapters 1–2Spirals, Waves & Starting Small
Connect a passage to a moment from your week, work through a shared scenario, and leave with a small pattern-inspired experiment.
Read: Chapters 3–5Small Wins in the Wild
Replay a moment from your experiment, name what it led to, and get a partner’s help planning your next try.
Read: Chapters 6–9Weaving My Wild Design
Tell the story of your journey, from goal to experiments to what happened, and name what you’ll keep tending.
Read: Part 3, Chapter 10Optional live gatherings on January 19 and March 24 open and close the club with the author herself.
What you’ll leave with
Fresh language
Words for the factory-shaped habits in the learning you design or lead, and a picture of what a forest-inspired alternative could look like.
A real experiment
At least one natural pattern, like spirals, waves, or fractals, tried in your own setting, plus what you learned from it.
A badge, and a community
A sideby badge for your work, and a small group of fellow readers to share Small Wins with along the way.
Joining takes one link
The book club runs inside sideby. The same link works whether you’re new to sideby or already learning with us in another crew.
Click the link
Use the Join button below. It’s the only way into the book club.
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You’re in the crew
You’re added to the Wild Design Book Club crew automatically, ready for the January kickoff.
This is a closed crew. Only book club members can see, share, and exchange ideas inside it, so you can think out loud with people reading alongside you.