Building shared understanding in complex systems
Common Field is a studio and consultancy that helps organizations make complex ideas accessible.
We work through learning design, facilitation, visual communication, strategic communications, and systems thinking to help teams find clarity, align around what matters, and build the tools and processes that make good work stick.
Our Process
Make sense
of complexity
We identify hidden patterns, conflicting priorities, and gaps in understanding. This work makes complexity easier to see, discuss, and act on.
Align people
and ideas
We design and facilitate spaces where groups can think together, work through tension, and build real alignment around next steps.
Build systems
that sustain
We build the tools, playbooks, and communication systems that help the work last beyond the project itself.
Complex work creates predictable problems, even for strong teams
We work with public and private organizations, researchers, cultural institutions, foundations, regenerative initiatives, and design-led teams.
If your work sits in systems change, ecology, governance, learning, technology, culture, or AI, some of this may feel familiar:
your team is at capacity
your work is hard to explain across audiences
collaboration feels slow, messy, or stuck
important lessons are not being captured or shared
you need stronger workshops, narratives, tools, or assets, but not a whole new internal team
you are trying to make sense of generative AI and where it belongs in practice
Common Field steps in where you need leverage most: clarity, alignment, and systems that help the work continue.
Core Capabilities
Common Field brings together a broad set of strengths that can be combined and tailored to the needs of each project.
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Guiding groups through reflection, alignment, decision-making, and collaborative movement.
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Turning scattered signals into a shared path
We gather perspectives, surface patterns, and make complexity easier to work with. Through synthesis, framing, and structured dialogue, we help teams clarify what is happening, what matters, and what to do next.
Useful for: strategic facilitation, synthesis, horizon scanning, reframing
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Designing experiences that change how people think and work
We create learning journeys, workshops, retreats, and support structures that help people absorb, test, and apply new knowledge. The aim is not just information, but movement.
Useful for: courses, workshops, retreats, coaching, team learning
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Turning research, strategy, and expertise into forms that are accessible, compelling, and useful across audiences.
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Using horizon scanning, scenario work, and speculative methods to help organizations think beyond the immediate.
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Making complex ideas easier to see, understand, and share
We turn research, systems, and non-linear thinking into diagrams, frameworks, stories, and visual materials that explain and mobilize, not just decorate.
Useful for: visual synthesis, insight translation, narratives, diagrams, storytelling assets
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Helping people shape clearer narratives, stronger thought leadership, and more resonant public language.
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Building the structures that help good work continue
We develop playbooks, toolkits, asset libraries, and digital workspaces that capture knowledge, support collaboration, and make strong methods repeatable.
Useful for: toolkits, playbooks, field guides, Notion and Miro systems, strategic communication infrastructure
Ways of working
Common Field offers four primary ways of working with organizations. Each one can be tailored to your context, goals, and stage of development.
1. Learning Architecture for Organizations
We design the learning systems, experiences, and materials that help ideas take root, allow for collaboration, and compound discoveries.
When organizations need to teach, convene, onboard, align, or build internal capacity, good content is not enough. They need strong learning design. This offer helps teams turn knowledge into workshops, retreats, courses, facilitation flows, and supporting materials that people can actually absorb and use.
This is useful for internal learning, leadership development, programme design, knowledge mobilization, retreats, and capacity-building initiatives.
May include:
Workshops and retreat design, curriculum development, facilitation plans, learning journeys, pedagogical coaching, toolkits, participant materials
2. Strategic Communications for Complex Ideas
Turn research, strategy, and emerging ideas into clear communication.
Many organizations are doing important work that is difficult to explain across audiences. This offer helps translate complexity into language, narratives, visuals, and communication assets that people can understand, trust, and act on. It is especially useful when the ideas are interdisciplinary, technical, systemic, or still taking shape.
This is useful for thought leadership, research translation, narrative strategy, public-facing communications, internal alignment, and high-stakes presentations or publications.
May include:
Insight translation, strategic messaging, visual frameworks, diagrams, reports, decks, articles, white papers, storytelling assets, communication systems
3. Workshops and Learning Intensives
Focused sessions that build clarity, shared language, and new capacity.
Sometimes what a team needs most is a well-designed session, or a short series of sessions, to work through a challenge together. These engagements are designed as high-value intensives, rooted in facilitation, learning design, and systems thinking. They can stand alone or serve as an entry point into a larger collaboration.
Themes may include systems thinking, futures and foresight, storytelling, diagramming, sensemaking, strategic communication, or thoughtful AI integration.
May include:
Half-day and full-day workshops, multi-session trainings, team intensives, retreat modules, custom exercises, facilitation materials, follow-up resources
4. Bespoke / Advisory
Some projects do not fit neatly into a single category.
Common Field also offers bespoke and advisory support for organizations, leaders, and research-driven teams who need a thought partner across learning, communication, systems, writing, facilitation, or AI. These engagements are shaped around the specific challenge at hand and often combine elements from multiple offers.
This is useful for early-stage idea development, editorial and narrative support, strategic reflection, research synthesis, special projects, and hybrid collaborations.
Have a project in mind?
Book a short introductory call to explore fit, scope, and next steps.
Selected Work
Many projects featured here were delivered prior to Common Field’s founding, through prior roles and partnerships. Each case study notes JP’s role and context.
Common Field is new.
The work behind it isn’t.
Founded in 2026 by JP King, Common Field builds on two decades of work across learning design, systems thinking, strategic communication, facilitation, research, and visual practice.
The studio emerged from a long inquiry into how people learn, how ideas travel, and how shared understanding is built under complex conditions. The challenges shaping our world are not only technical. They are cognitive, cultural, and relational. Common Field exists to help organizations meet those challenges with greater clarity, coherence, and care.
About JP King
JP King is a systems thinker, educator, and visual strategist who helps organizations make complex ideas accessible.
His work brings together learning design, facilitation, strategic communications, visual thinking, and systems change. He has designed learning experiences for the University of Toronto, Maven, Nourish, Margaret Atwood’s “Practical Utopias” via the Disco platform, and co-founded Masterful Storytelling with Peabody-Award winner Adam Davidson. Most recently, he worked at Dark Matter Labs on organizational learning, governance, and regenerative futures projects with partners including Fogo Island/Shorefast and the City of Boston.
He has also designed for clients including Fast Company, New Scientist, and Oxford University Press, and his earlier publishing work has been featured through institutions including MoMA. In addition to an MFA, he has trained in Gestalt Psychotherapy and Co-Active Executive Coaching.
He lives with his partner and son in the rural Canadian landscape of the Saugeen Peninsula.
Need focused thinking support?
Book a 1-on-1 Thought Partnership Session to help you think through a complex idea, project, or communication challenge.
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A focused one-hour session with JP King for leaders, creatives, researchers, and teams who need help clarifying an idea, shaping a project, strengthening communication, or thinking through a complex challenge.
Price: $250 CAD
Format: 60 minutes, online -
clarifying something emergent
a brief, intensive dive into a big idea
identifying next steps when feeling stuck or undefined
brief feedback on a workshop, retreat, course, learning experience, communication strategy or narrative
a really good conversation…
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clearer framing
practical feedback
suggested next steps
optional follow-up notes, and/or recording
Read and subscribe
Common Field publishes essays, diagrams, tools, prompts, and reflections on learning, systems, creativity, ecology, waste, AI, design, and the practice of making sense.
Let’s work together
If you need help designing a learning initiative, communicating a complex idea, building a workshop, or shaping a more coherent path through change, we’d be glad to hear about it.
Tell us a little about your project, and we’ll be in touch.