In this phase, we open space for ideas. Teams explore different possibilities, connect and combine them, looking not for one “right” solution, but for multiple ways to respond to the challenge they have chosen. The focus is on imagination, curiosity, and the willingness to try something new.
Permaculture principles help ensure that ideas are not only creative, but also aligned with people, place, and natural flows within the community. Participants learn to value diversity, small steps, and solutions that serve multiple purposes at the same time.
Throughout this phase, a clearer picture gradually emerges: what a solution might look like, how its elements support one another, and where natural connections exist between people, needs, and resources.
By the end of the phase, a first draft of a coherent approach takes shape — a design that makes sense, sees the bigger picture, and leaves room for further development.
Tool 10:
Problem as a Seed of the Solution
This tool helps the team see the challenge as a signal from the system, rather than a mistake to remove. Instead of focusing on symptoms, participants explore what function the problem serves and which needs or values it protects.
The team identifies the qualities they want to cultivate instead of the current strategy and formulates a design intention for further work.
In this way, the problem becomes a source of insight — and the challenge a seed of regenerative change already present in the system.
Tool 11:
How Might We Questions (HMW)
This tool helps the team translate their design intention into questions that open a field of possibilities. Starting from the values and needs identified in the challenge, participants explore how the desired quality could gradually emerge in the system.
Instead of searching for quick solutions, the team learns to ask questions that support a shift in patterns — not only isolated situations. The focus moves from “What should we do?” to “What do we want to grow?”
Well-formulated How Might We questions create a space where the regenerative potential of the challenge can be explored through different possible directions for action.
Tool 12:
Brainstorming with Ethics and Principles
This tool helps the team move from exploratory questions into the field of ideas, and then deepen those ideas using permaculture ethics and principles.
The process unfolds in two phases: first, ideas are generated freely and without evaluation to open the widest possible space of possibilities. Then the ideas are observed through the three ethical pillars and selected principles to strengthen them and make them more sustainable.
Ethics provides the value framework, while principles help ideas become feasible, gradual, and multifunctional. In this way, ideas evolve from isolated solutions into part of a wider system of relationships and resources.
Tool 13:
Designing Ideas as Living Systems
This tool helps the team shape the selected ideas into a connected and meaningful solution that functions as a whole. Instead of creating a list of activities, the team explores how the elements build on one another, who participates in the process, and how change develops over time. Ideas are observed as parts of a living structure — where each element has multiple roles and influences others.
Through mapping relationships, flows, and feedback, the team gradually moves from the level of “what we do” to the level of “how this works.” The goal is to shape a solution that is not a short-term intervention, but a pattern of action that can grow, adapt, and simultaneously bring multiple benefits to the community.
Download the full DLAG toolkit! The DLAG toolkit includes a complete overview of the methodology, all phases, tools, supplementary materials, and additional resources.