Acknowledgements

Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless spent over a decade in consulting and coaching, discovering and refining one Liberating Structure at a time. Influenced by complexity science scholars and a community that formed around the Plexus Institute, they began testing rough prototypes in healthcare settings around 2001–2002, followed by more serious field testing in Latin America and the US in 2002 and 2003. From a series of hunches and iterative tests came thirty-three practical methods grounded in ten core principles, published in 2014 asThe Surprising Power of Liberating Structures, making the methods widely accessible for the first time.

Co-Developers

Keith and Henri

Photo credit: unknown

The Liberating Structures Fieldbook: Flipping the Script on Meetings, Planning and Progress was written by Keith McCandless and Nancy White. The “remastered” Liberating Structures website was built from the ground up, primarily populated by material from the 2026 book.

The 2026 Fieldbook

There is a deep well of people who have shaped the development and evolution of Liberating Structures. It would be impossible to name everyone individually and so we bow in the direction of the many generative, lively, and easy-to-overlook contributions people make everyday in maintaining the vitality and adaptability of the community, methods, and principles.

As far as this website, many people came together to make it possible:

  • Volunteers Ann Blocker, Anna Jackson, Fisher Qua, Keith McCandless, and Nancy White designed, populated, and continue to develop the website. The content in the website is based on the Fieldbook published in 2026 and written by Keith and Nancy. 

  • Barry Overeem and Christiian Verwijs of The Liberators for permission to use the illustrations created with Thea Schukken and which were featured in the Fieldbook. Other illustrations are individually credited where necessary throughout the website.

  • Photos are credited individually throughout the website when available.

The Website & Beyond

Global Gathering 25/10 Crowdsourcing card exchange.

Photo credit: Lisanne Lentink.

Liberating Structures Global Gathering attendees, Seattle, March, 2019.

Photo credit: Lisanne Lentink