Hello.

My name is Ian McClelland. Adjacent Possibilities is a newsletter about global development within planetary boundaries and the dynamics of cultural and technological change. It’s also about falling public trust in institutions, and what we can do about it. I’m interested in how good ideas take root and spread, and the underlying patterns and regularities of complex systems that shape our future.

I studied for a masters in Globalisation and Development in the mid 2000s, not long after the “Battle of Seattle” anti-globalisation protests put cracks in the facade of the post-Cold War consensus. My first career job at Oxfam coincided with the 2007-2008 financial crash when those cracks widened. In the UK, the following decade of austerity and the upheaval of Brexit led to increased internal division.

I have seen how the breakdown of the international order, combined with political polarisation and further fuelled by social media and rapid technological change, has eroded the legitimacy of international organisations and domestic public bodies. In the aid sector, this has coincided with a fraying of the political consensus around official development assistance, and a collapse in funding.

Throughout this period, my work has mostly focused on supporting social innovation and community-led development, two themes which speak to the possibility of building more resilient, equitable futures from the ground up. I left full-time employment in 2024, and since then I have been conducting research, evaluating programmes, developing toolkits, and providing strategic advice as a consultant.

I started this newsletter to explore the sciences of complexity and cultural evolution, and their relevance and application to the challenges of public and nonprofit management. I want to understand why things feel stuck, and how they might be unstuck, so that we might restore a sense of collective agency and public trust in institutions. I also want to have fun, so things may go a bit off topic. If you would like to join me, please sign up below. 👇