Navigate complexity to shape better futures.

Panoramic is a research & storytelling lab generating the cultural and ecological insights that shape effective solutions and help them scale responsibly.

Close-up of a mushroom gill underside, showing detailed, radial lines and wavy edges.

OUR MISSION

Strengthen the innovations, organisations & systems shaping a livable future.

Today’s social and environmental challenges are deeply interconnected. Interventions only succeed when they fit the realities they aim to transform. Too often, promising solutions falter because they overlook the cultural, ecological, or organisational forces shaping real-world adoption, or because their stories can’t build the trust needed to scale.

Panoramic combines deep insight and strategic narrative to help teams understand the systems they operate in, anticipate risks, design resilient and context-aware solutions, and craft narratives that mobilise people, partners, and resources.

CASE STUDIES

Our Expertise

The analyitical brain of the anthropologist thinking about solutions to the climate and biodiversity crisis.

Systemic &
Cultural Insights

We apply ethnographic and ecological research that reveals hidden dynamics, reduces risk, and improves real-world adoption of solutions.

The observational eye of the ethnographer generating qualitative data to solve climate and nature-related problems.

Narrative Strategy
& Production

We craft strategic narratives and cinematic storytelling that build trust, move stakeholders, and communicate impact with clarity and depth.

Organisational transformation workshop with a corporate, NGO or statup team working to evolve team dynamics.

Organisational
Transformation

We facilitate deep design that strengthens structures, practices, and behaviours, enabling teams to operate effectively within complex systems.

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Our Context


  • 1. Field Research & Qualitative Data

    We generate deep cultural, organisational, and ecological intelligence through interviews, participant observation, and field research. This gives you the knowledge and insight to navigate complexity with confidence.

    2. Systems & Strategic Analysis

    We map behaviours, hidden incentives, and complex relationships to identify risks, adoption barriers, and strategic opportunities. This identifies blind spots and leverage points so your solution can adapt and operate more effectively.

    3. Narrative & Change Support

    We create cinematic films, immersive content, and written narratives that build trust and clarity while fostering stakeholder alignment. This supports fundraising, adoption, partnerships, and internal cohesion.

    • Climate-tech founders & innovators
      Building solutions that need early adoption, deployment optimisation, cross-cultural cohesion, and narrative clarity.

    • Tech accelerators & networks
      Looking to optimise innovation ecosystems, knowledge transfer, and cultural integration for better outcomes.

    • Carbon market actors
      Developers, buyers, and intermediaries seeking to strengthen integrity, trust, and real-world impact.

    • Impact investors & venture funds
      Looking for deeper insight into people, contexts, and systems to inform due diligence and portfolio strategy.

    • Environmental NGOs & foundations
      Working to understand communities, behaviours, and ecosystems to design more effective interventions.

    • Research institutions & public agencies
      Exploring complex socio-ecological systems, in need of grounded insight to guide policy and practice.

    • Consultancies & mission-driven organisations
      Seeking cultural and ecological intelligence that complements quantitative analysis and strategic planning.

    • Community organisers & activist groups

      Advancing community-led knowledge and collective action to shape more just, equitable futures.

  • 1. Insight Reports & Briefings

    Clear synthesis of cultural, ecological, and organisational dynamics revealing context, risks, and opportunities that might otherwise be missed.

    2. Frameworks, Tools & Strategic Models

    Practical structures that help teams interpret complexity, improve internal dynamics, refine strategy, and strengthen solution design.

    3. Films, Media & Narrative Assets

    Cinematic storytelling and communication tools that build trust, mobilise partners, and share your impact with the audiences who matter.

    4. Workshops & Design Sessions

    Facilitated sessions helping teams interpret insights, align around strategy, and embed new practices shaped by cultural and ecological understanding.

Case Studies

Assessing Innovation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Ethnographic research in the Kew Gardens Fungarium, where innovators in sustainability are using fungi and mushroom enzymes to help build sustainable solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss.

In 2025, Panoramic Founder Tristan Copley Smith conducted ethnographic fieldwork and on-site filming at Kew’s Jodrell Laboratory to better understand how the organisation’s mission to ‘stop biodiversity loss and develop nature-based solutions’ is enacted in practice. Tristan interviewed senior scientific leadership, observed experimental work, and documented DEFRA-funded genomic sequencing inside the world-leading Kew Fungarium.

Using these insights, Panoramic is advising Kew Reach on how to position and communicate its commercial sustainability offerings to global corporate partners, strengthening both its narrative strategy and its organisational clarity around innovation.

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Understanding Cacoa Supply Chains in Guatemala

Erthnographic research of cacoa farmers in Guatemala, looking at supply chains, local culture and indigenous beliefe systems and how they interface with the wellness industry.

In 2024, Panoramic Co-Founder Daillen Culver conducted five weeks of immersive field research with cacao farmers, producer collectives and entrepreneurs in Guatemala. Her research explored how the rapidly expanding “ceremonial-grade” market is reshaping local production, cultural narratives, and economic livelihoods.

Findings revealed a booming industry influenced by spiritualised marketing, contested claims of purity and sustainability, and heightened climate vulnerabilities. Panoramic is now advising partners in artisanal chocolate production on how to refine supply-chain practices, strengthen producer-consumer relationships, and build more ethical and transparent market narratives.

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Feral Hacking for Climate Regeneration in India

In 2025, Panoramic Co-Founder Kit Braybrooke conducted research examining how frontline communities in India are using hacking, making, jugaad, DIY fabrication and community innovation to build alternatives to extractive climate technologies. Early work has mapped emerging ecosystem hubs - from biomaterial labs to community aquacultures - that demonstrate new models of regenerative, locally governed innovation. The project began with the “Calling All Hackers & Makers for Climate <3” workshop at What Design Can Do Delhi, followed by a research residency with UnBox Cultural Futures India and Pro Helvetia. It builds on a decade of work with global hacker, maker, and circular movements.

Panoramic uses these insights to inform regenerative innovation strategies across partners working at the intersection of community-led sustainability and design.

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Filmcraft

The Empathy Project: Discovering Inner Worlds

In 2025, Panoramic was commissioned to produce The Empathy Project, a mid-length documentary exploring how deep emotional connection to animals shapes personal transformation, stewardship and activism. Through intimate interviews with twelve senior advocates, the film reveals how empathy can drive social change while also confronting the climate and biodiversity impacts of animal agriculture.

Directed by Panoramic Founder Tristan Copley Smith, the film will be submitted to festivals and private screenings in early 2026. Learn more at The Empathy Project website.

Our Team

Daillen Culver, co-founder of Understory Labs

Daillen Culver

  • Daillen is an anthropologist, nonprofit leader and creative facilitator. She holds an MA in Anthropology of Food from SOAS and an MSc in International Development from the University of Edinburgh. With over a decade of experience leading community-based development projects in Guatemala, she specialises in Indigenous foodways, sustainable livelihoods and ethical supply chains. She also co-founded BeDo, a mental health initiative for impact-driven professionals, delivering workshops for clients including Yale School of the Environment and Canada’s IDRC.

Co-Founder & Partnerships Director

Tristan Copley Smith, founder of Understory Labs

Tristan Copley Smith

  • Tristan is a filmmaker, ethnographer and sustainability strategist specialising in climate and social innovation. He has produced documentaries and research across biodiversity, carbon markets and regenerative science, helping organisations understand complex systems and design narratives that shift behaviour and build trust. He holds a Master’s in the Anthropology of Global Futures & Sustainability from SOAS, has taught climate communications internationally, and co-founded ventures including OSBeehives and Possible Studio. Tristan is an MIT Innovator Under 35 and a passionate advocate for shaping brighter planetary futures.

Founder & Creative Director

Dr. Kit Braybrook, co-founder of Understory Labs

Dr. Kit Braybrooke

  • Kit is a post-digital anthropologist and systems designer. They serve as Professor of Transversal Design at the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), Basel, where they lead an international MA programme exploring community infrastructures for worlds in transition. Their work examines the social, ecological and technological implications of design, drawing on a decade of collaboration with hacker, maker and circular movements across Europe and Asia, supported by institutions including the British Council, TU Berlin and Superrr Lab.

Co-Founder & Strategic Director