The Commons

Open Tools

Not everything should cost something. Some tools belong to the field.

These tools are free, open source, and built for anyone doing community-engaged work whether or not they ever use the rest of the CEnTR* system.

Botanical illustration of basket weaving tools
Why Open

The work comes before the infrastructure.

The CEnTR* system is built on a conviction: before you can identify engagement, map it, or measure its impact, you need to understand the terrain. That sensemaking work is foundational, and it shouldn't be gated.

These tools were built for workshops, classrooms, research teams, and community meetings. They work as standalone practices and as on-ramps to deeper institutional work. Take them, use them, adapt them.

Open source is a values commitment, not just a distribution model. Community-engaged research is grounded in principles of reciprocity, shared ownership, and accountability to the communities it serves. Tools that support that work should reflect those principles.

We maintain these tools as part of a commons: freely available, publicly documented, and open to contribution. If you use them, we'd love to hear how.

Tool One

Apiary: The Sensemaking Canvas

Apiary illustration

Apiary is built on the logic of hexagonal thinking: ideas written on tiles, arranged into clusters, connected into webs. The geometry matters: hexagons touch each other on every side, so relationships between ideas are never forced into hierarchies.

It works in workshops with 5 people or 50. The canvas scales with the conversation, and the output — a visible, negotiated map of shared meaning — becomes the foundation for everything that follows.

Before you can describe what exists or measure what matters, you need a shared language for talking about it.

Participants write concepts, questions, or observations on hexagonal tiles and arrange them into clusters on a shared canvas. As the arrangement takes shape, patterns emerge: where there is agreement, where there is tension, and where the group doesn't yet have language for what they mean.

The result is not a polished deliverable. It is a working document; a record of the sensemaking process that can be revisited, revised, and built upon over time.

Cultural terrainConcept mappingWorkshop facilitation
Try the app → View on GitHub
Tool Two

Understory: The Living Timeline

Understory illustration

Understory is grounded in Peter Taylor's framework for unruly complexity: the idea that the factors shaping any situation are layered, tangled, and unfolding across different timescales simultaneously.

A single timeline flattens that complexity. Understory holds multiple layers at once — policy, community history, institutional decisions, partnership development — and lets you see how they've intersected and diverged over time.

Community-engaged work doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens inside histories of places, institutions, relationships, and power.

The canvas is temporal and multi-layered. Each layer represents a domain; each entry marks a moment or period of significance. As the timeline fills in, it becomes possible to see not just what happened, but what was happening at the same time and how forces in one domain shaped conditions in another.

It is especially useful for partnership history work, community asset documentation, and any context where understanding the present requires making sense of how the past unfolded.

Historical structureMulti-layer analysisPartnership history
View on GitHub →
What's Next

More tools are in development.

The commons grows as the work grows. Additional open tools are planned as part of the broader CEnTR* system, including tools for community asset documentation and engagement pattern analysis.

If you're building something in this space and want to collaborate, or if you have a use case that none of these tools yet address, we'd like to hear about it.

Get in touch
The Bigger System

The open tools are where the work begins. The CEnTR* system is where it goes next.

When your institution is ready to move from sensemaking to documentation, evaluation, and strategic planning, the rest of the system is here.

Explore the System Working Together