civic-tech · governance · open-source · design
Many-to-Many
Governance and tools for systems change — a field guide and interactive platform for complex, multi-partner collaborations that need new models of value, ownership, and power.
Some problems are too large for any single organisation to hold, which means the organisations trying to hold them have to learn to hold each other — a different kind of governance than the one most legal and funding structures were built for. Many-to-Many is Dark Matter Labs’ attempt to name that different kind, and give it tools.
The problem
Complex, multi-partner collaborations keep running into the same wall: the deep codes underneath them — how value is counted, who owns what, who carries the risk — were written for single organisations acting alone. Groups trying to work collectively on housing, land, or climate find themselves negotiating governance from scratch each time, with no shared reference for what’s already been tried.
What I built
As lead developer and design technologist, I built the Many-to-Many System: a modular, interactive platform sitting alongside a narrative field guide, developed out of Beyond the Rules Lab through nearly two years of prototyping on Dark Matter Labs’ own partnerships as the test case. Version 1 turns roughly nine months of that work into a living library — practical tools and guidance for practitioners, funders, and legal teams trying to organise collaboration differently.
Where it landed
Built through partnerships spanning Lankelly Chase, We Are Opus, Huddlecraft, Plymouth Octopus Project, and Local Motion, with legal input from Bates Wells, and support from Laudes Foundation.