Problematique Dialogue 2026
Co-organized by sLab 
in partnership with
Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute
Method Collective
Contexture Design
Systems Changes Learning Circle

We are grateful for the support of
SGS • School of Graduate Studies
FOD • Faculty of Design
OCAD University, Toronto, Canada

A legacy of design with dialogue

Banathy Conversation Methodology saw its formal inauguration with the IFSR Conversations, held in Austria in 1982. Systems thinkers and practitioners continued to test, extend and deepen the methodology. In tandem with the highest level of scientific commitment, they continued to interrogate, model, and test their ideas against complex social dynamics and the real lived experience of socio-technical systems. As the approach continued to hold the attention of systems scientists, proponents of Banathy Conversation Method reconvened biannually through 2018 in the idyllic and isolated environs of Tyrolean former monasteries. 

More recently, 2024 Banathy Conversation in Lugano, Switzerland, and 2025 Banathy Conversation in Fairfield, Iowa, were convened in relatively calm and expansive settings, privately supported by the generosity of their respective hosts' rural, residential compounds.  

When the 2026 Problematique Dialogue organizing team embraced our first Banathy Conversation event, we began not with a medieval or rural retreat, but something closer to its opposite — an urban campus in the specularly diverse city of Toronto, Canada. Motivated by a blend of respect and curiosity, we sought to uphold core dimensions (and underlying purposes) such as:

• Thirty-six participants ~ four teams of eight (close to prior events) 
• Five full days' timeline ~ maintaining this important ask (and no significant drop off) 
• Early evening gatherings ~ enabling ongoing co-learning (across teams and within)

sLab will continue to evolve the Problematique Dialogue format, based on experiences from this inaugural event.