Our Theory of Change.
Learning is the golden thread that runs through all collective change strategies from Freirean popular education movements to Scandinavian Folk Schools, to participatory action research initiatives to multi-stakeholder social labs. It is learning that enables us to navigate exponential change, systems collapse and accelerating complexity.
We are using the term transformative learning to include a wide array of contemporary and traditional pedagogies and practices that profoundly shift our relationship to ourselves, to each other, and to the more-than-human world.
Every culture retains teachings and wise practices designed to help us enter transformative learning crucibles where we can open ourselves to emergence, the expansion of perspective, and a sense of mystery. When we do, we begin to dis-identify with––and even “die to our familiar ways of being in the world. We awaken from our old stories to new and more complete ones and begin to meet the world anew.
Bringing Wood to the Fire.
We aspire to work like skilled acupuncturists who identify precise points where small, targeted interventions can restore balance to entire systems.
Within a vast global ecosystem of educators, practitioners, communities, institutions, philanthropists, scholars, activists, authors and social movements, we direct our energy to two vital meridians: Visionaries who generate transformative innovations, and Eco-system Builders who connect and amplify patterns of successful adaptation and emergence throughout the network. By doing so, we aspire to catalyze impact at a hyper-local level (like the precise insertion point of a needle), a regional level (like the affected meridian pathway), and at a planetary level (like the overall harmony of the system).
Through participating in a wider field of relationships as respectful co-learners we see an opportunity to create ripple effects far beyond our direct touch.
Our work respects that transformation flows along interconnected pathways of influence, and by sharing freely we seek to encourage a greater focus on the role of human development and whole person pedagogies in cultivating complexity capabilities and consciousness. We trust in social and ecological systems' natural tendency toward emergence and greater wholeness when the right points are activated, helping to catalyze a new kind of social learning movement that can scale earth-centered consciousness and culture.
“Transformative learning is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and irreversibly alters our way of being in the world. Such a shift involves our understanding of ourselves and our self-locations; our relationships with other humans and with the natural world.”
Edmond O’Sullivan