Ada Parris.
Artist · Futurist · Author.
A pattern you already know.
You've built rooms where consequential decisions get made. Lately you've noticed they aren't working. The frameworks are sophisticated. The people are serious. Something still fails to arrive.
You're not looking for a new framework, you have too many already. You're looking for someone who can hold the complexity with you.
We don't have a technology problem. We have a listening crisis.
We built systems that forgot how to listen. This is the work of remembering.
SOIL is a practice of deep listening. Four movements, for the moment something in the room hasn't been said out loud yet.
Ada Parris · Artist · Futurist · Author · Founder, The Presence Lab™
Klosters Forum 2026 (invited delegate) · IEEE AI Systems Global Flourishing Initiative (co-deputy chair, Planetary Subcommittee) · Arts Council England — application submitted · Honorary Fellow, Arts University Plymouth · Author, Leadership Legacy (Wiley, 2026)
Four movements, one practice.
Stillness. Origin. Irreversible. Lineage. What brought you here, where you stand, what carries on after.
Salons · Convenings — Present
The conditions that let us stop before we begin.
We create the conditions to stop before we begin. Not silence for its own sake, the kind of stillness that lets something underneath become audible. SOIL dinner salons: one table, a handful of people, the actual question mattering more than the agenda.
Keynotes · Foresight — Past
Back to the source — where the question actually comes from.
Where the question actually comes from, not the trend, not the headline. The research starts here, as maps and material, before it's a keynote. The Paradox Oracle, twenty-six questions pulled from that same research, sits here too.
Twenty-six questions from the same research.
One card at a time. Same argument as everywhere else on this site, a different door in.
The inherited maps stop describing the territory.Threshold Coaching™ · Source Patterns Intelligence™ — The Hinge
A current you cannot swim back against.
Some things, once you see them, you can't unsee. That's the hinge this movement is named for. It splits two ways from here.
Coaching is personal: your own threshold, your own next chapter.
Advisory is institutional: your organisation's bid, or its transformation work, needing a credible human voice on AI.
Genuinely not sure which is you? Email me, I'll tell you straight.
“Adah has helped me navigate complex personal and business challenges with her unique blend of creativity, foresight, and deep wisdom. Through our regular sessions, I gained clarity and breakthroughs that transformed my approach to decision-making.”
Tanja Gihr · ex-Head of Sustainable Banking Group EMEA, Barclays
A current you cannot swim back against.Leadership Legacy · Cartography Is Not Home — Futures
Recognition, not networking.
What's harvested doesn't stay harvested, some of it goes back in the ground. The book and the ongoing research live here. Not a line. A circle: this feeds the keynotes, the keynotes feed the coaching and advisory work, and it comes back here again.
The people who introduce you to the next room, not the procurement department that books a slot.
Forthcoming · Facilitation
Facilitating an upcoming session — Ancestral Intelligence, AI Ethics and Living Systems: reading what inherited maps cannot show. A practice for leaders, artists, and institutions at the edge of existing frameworks.
Institutional · Governance
Klosters Forum 2026 — panel: “In tackling the ecological crisis, have we overlooked culture as a system-level lever for change?” With Dr. Lewis Akenji (Hot or Cool Institute), Lucy Stone (Climate Spring), and chair Dr. Genevieve Guenther (End Climate Silence).
IEEE AI Systems Global Flourishing Initiative — Planetary Subcommittee, chaired by Caro Ames with co-deputy chairs Dr Heather Wade and Ada Parris.
Member of Hatch — a global community of founders, creators, and changemakers convening around long-horizon questions of leadership, technology, and impact.
Education · Practice
Deep Listening / Somatic AI — a session for LIS MBA students. Feeling AI differently, not only understanding it.
Ideas · Convening
TED, Vancouver — attended 2019 and 2024.
Co-guest creative director and co-host alongside founder Jimmy Kyriacou — the 5th-anniversary event at Alexandra Palace, London. Sound art and spatial audio as somatic foresight, against the listening crisis.
Leadership Legacy, Wiley 2026 — the advisory thinking, in book form.
Immersive · Experiential
Kinnernet Europe, Avallon & Estonia — futures shared in conversation, not on a stage.
College of Extraordinary Experiences, Poland — a medieval castle. Experience design, participant-led.
What if intelligence is not something we possess, but something that arises through relationship?