Who We Are
Born in a pandemic and fueled by a resolute sense of optimism and necessity, Wolf Willow Institute is a community of systems educators, practitioners, guides, activists and artists that exists to serve those dedicated to building a flourishing future for all.
Mission & Mythos
We endeavor to be good company for those finding their way – and leading others – across perilous thresholds in liminal times.
The old stories – the oral histories and mythic texts of those that went before us - offer important reminders about navigating perilous thresholds.
They are destabilizing and underworldly places of paradox and transformation. Multiple truths and possibilities exist at the same time and things are seldom what they appear to be here.
We will meet terrifying threshold guardians and seemingly impossible challenges. Our humility, courage, commitment, ingenuity and discernment will be deeply tested.
Significant crossings invariably demand sacrifice and require us to give up something precious; usually that includes our old identities and cherished illusions.
We must look into the mirror and face ourselves – our true nature, our underlying motivations and the reality of our circumstances – with fierce honesty.
We are not the first to walk these paths! Many have gone before us and help will often appear in unlikely forms. Look to the past, stay alert to the present and let yourself be remade.
We are dedicated to cultivating the patterns of consciousness and culture needed to build a flourishing future. We exist to serve leaders of all kinds building viable and compelling versions of the future.
Our History & Lineage
Our work and approach draw from multiple lineages, movements and traditions.
As an organization, we emerged from the work and relational legacy of the Social Innovation Generation, a collaborative partnership that sought to address Canada’s most pressing social and ecological challenges by bringing communities, practitioners, scholars and funders together to establish an enduring culture of impactful social innovation that drew on a systems and complexity lens.
In 2014 the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience team began to collaborate with founding Wolf Willow team members to reimagine their Graduate Diploma in Social Innovation and incorporate transformative learning principles and practices. This resulted in the creation of the Getting To Maybe residency for social innovators in 2015. This intensive, month-long residency ran for four years and, in addition to the more familiar palette of social innovation and systems change theory, tools and methodologies, it included transformative pedagogical elements such as nature-based and experiential learning, psychological depth work and a range of arts-based, somatic and contemplative practices. Residency participants were also profoundly impacted by the pedagogies and practices shared by Indigenous faculty in an era of truth and reconciliation.
External evaluators found that these transformative learning elements were deeply impactful for participants. Many described this form of learning as ‘life-changing’; it helped to reorient their professional practice and catalyzed lasting perspectival and behavioral changes. Significantly, it seemed to have an enduring and cumulative value over time. Participants continued to draw on these experiences for years afterwards.
The Wolf and the Willow.
The name Wolf Willow came about in dream and in relationship with the wild ecology of the prairies and Canadian Rockies. It also represents a theoretical and pedagogical origin story, a place in the Canadian Rockies, and a dance of relational systems that lead to mutual flourishing. It is a reminder that when it comes to complexity, nature remains our greatest teacher.
The Wolfwillow is a plant commonly found in riparian zones in the Canadian Rockies. It is a silver-leafed relative to the olive tree - whose limbs stabilize river banks, whose bark can be woven into delicate fish nets, strong ropes and clothing, and who produces beautiful and nutritious seeds.
The Wolfwillow is a plant.
Wrapped in the English name for the wolfwillow plant also lies the wolf – archetypally wild predator and socially intelligent landscape shaper, and the willow - a transcultural healing medicine, fashioned into baskets, symbol of hope, renewal, nourishment and flexibility.
A Deeper Layer…
The name speaks to the Institute’s location in the Canadian Rockies, in the town of Canmore on the traditional territories of Treaty 7 peoples. Our work is grounded in the ecology and socio-cultural fabric of this place, known in the Nakoda language as Chuwapchipchiyan Kudebi.
The complimentary opposition of the wolf and willow gesture toward a fundamental rhythm we find useful – of gentleness, and ferocity. Of reflection and action. Of an essential pulse between the dying of that which no longer serves, and the birth and nurturance of the new.
A reminder that, as Indigenous scholar Vanessa Andreotti and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective describe it, we find ourselves sitting with open hearts between the deathbed of modernity and the birthing grounds of the future.