Ada Parris.
Artist · Futurist · Author.
We don't have a technology problem. We have a listening crisis.
We built systems that forgot how to listen — to soil, to body, to those who came before, to the more-than-human world. This is the work of remembering.
SOIL is a practice of deep listening — four movements that help a room, a question, or an institution truly hear itself before it decides what to do next.
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.
First, we stop. Soil before the seed goes in — not empty, just waiting. Compressed information, not silence. Held, not gone. SOIL dinner salons, private convenings, one-table gatherings where the question matters more than the agenda.
A room where you recognise yourself — seen, heard, with a voice and a choice in what happens next.
Enter Stillness →Keynotes · Foresight — Past
Back to the source — where the question actually comes from.
Once you've stopped, the root goes looking. Down, not out. Not the trend. Not the headline. Whose knowledge is this — and what was already growing here before the framework arrived? This is where the thinking enters a room — forums and gatherings built around questions that haven't found their language yet.
Enter Origin →
The inherited maps stop describing the territory.Threshold Coaching™ · Source Patterns Intelligence™ — The Hinge
A current you cannot swim back against.
Once you know where it came from, the seed cracks. There's no putting the shell back together. The biodiversity crisis and the intelligence crisis are not two problems — they are one listening crisis, at different scales. For people who've already felt this happen once, in passing, and want to go further. For humans recognising each other — complexity, vulnerability, power, and all.
Enter Irreversible →“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 is never only kept — some of it goes back in the ground. Connection to each other and to something bigger than yourselves — the people who felt the same thing in the same moment, and the ancestors, human and planetary, now in conversation with you. The book and the artistic research project are the long memory underneath the work — and the seed for whatever grows next.
Not a line with an end. A field that gets planted again.
Enter Lineage →Or just tell me what stayed with you. That's enough to start.
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.
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?