Unearthodox

This holiday season, we celebrate the beauty of curiosity, the transformative power of connection and the shared hope for regenerative futures. From all of us at Unearthodox, warmest wishes for joy, peace and inspiration to you, your community and your loved ones. 🌲 🎊 ✨

🌱 A highlight of this year: the Regenerative Futures Retreat 🌱 A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of joining the Regenerative Futures Retreat organized by Unearthodox. Set in a fairytale castle in northern Italy, the retreat promised to take us out of our comfort zones and into the "stretching zone." They weren’t kidding! Over five transformative days, my assumptions were confronted, and my reductionist ways of viewing the world were challenged. Together, we laughed, cried, danced, healed wounds (and opened new ones), shared pains, joys, and—most importantly—hope for regenerative futures. Through this process, we wove invisible ties—the seeds of a community deeply committed to regeneration. I found my tribe: a space where I no longer feel alone on this transformative pathway toward a regenerative future. Here are 10 powerful insights shared during the retreat that deeply resonated with me: 1️⃣ Regeneration is about healing—of the land and ourselves. 2️⃣ To heal, we must confront harm: both historical harm and the persistent injustices of today. 3️⃣ Safe spaces are essential to tackle harmful actions, foster openness, embrace differences, and allow for disagreement. 4️⃣ Transformation begins with small gestures and grows from within ourselves. 5️⃣ Solutions often carry the logic of the problems they aim to solve. 6️⃣ Systems operate within specific logics. Sometimes, letting go of privileges within those systems is necessary for transformations. 7️⃣ The current system that we are trying to change is like a building. We do not build regenerative futures from within elements that were planned in the system. In order to be disruptive we need to look for the cracks. 8️⃣ Understanding regeneration is like gazing through a telescope—you see parts of the universe, but never the whole. 9️⃣ Liberation cannot be built within systems of oppression. 🔟 Regeneration is about slowing down to be able to accelerate, focus on the small gestures for achieve large scale changes. I’m incredibly grateful to Anca Damerell and Anaïk Anthonioz Blanc for inviting me into this transformative journey 🫶. Special thanks to the amazing "Hazelnut team"—Lucia Nader, Lakshmi Venugopal, Lorenzo Costanzo, PhD, O'Shannon Burns, Melany Poppe, and the Ginkgo tree 🌳 —for creating such a safe, supportive, and caring environment. Thank you, Marika Heinrichs, for the beautiful body healing sessions, Jan van de Venis for sharing his healing meditation, Lua Couto and nisha mary poulose for curating such an inspiring retreat, and Bill Sharpe for introducing the 3 Horizons model. Finally, heartfelt gratitude to my fellow participants for sharing your brilliant minds and beautiful souls. 💚 Let’s keep nurturing the seeds of this regenerative community. 🌍✨ #Regeneration #Regenerativefutures #Transformativechange Last, sharing the wonderful video from Unearthodox about the retreat https://lnkd.in/e8TxdZVG And some wonderful mementos:

What if we dared not just to imagine a better future, but to create spaces where it could come alive? This November, I collaborated with Lua Couto to design and facilitate the Regenerative Futures Retreat for Unearthodox. Hosted in a stunning castle near Milan, the retreat brought together about 40 participants spanning a spectrum of professions: Artists, lawyers, researchers, planners, thought leaders, and visionaries. Over five transformative days, we became a community of courageous imagineers—daring to dream of a better world. I am super excited to share this video by Unearthodox that sums up the retreat so beautifully and share some reflections of my own. It's been a month since I returned home, but my heart and mind are full and I am continuing to process, recharge, heal and grow. As co-lead, designer and facilitator my vision was to create a space for people to lean into their own power, to access their intuitive abilities and open up their hearts and minds to listen to the Earth, to each other and to the call of the future. The retreat was a brave space, and one that had room for courage, hope and determination. Bayo Akomolafe blew our minds and imaginations wide open with his brilliant keynote that took us to places known and unknown and opened up questions we didn't dare touch, while we flirted with discomfort and abstraction. Marika Heinrichs brought us back into our human bodies re-igniting the connections in the embodied realm. Lua and I spent the next 2 days taking the participants on a journey from abstraction, to exploration, to play and then back to the intellectual realm. Bill Sharpe dived into the powerful 3Horizons process with the group to create desirable scenarios and the pathways towards them. Amidst all of it we ate, we danced, we cried, and we laughed as the group transformed from individual participants to a community. For me, this retreat was a profound experience that extended far beyond those five days. It represented the culmination of two months of meticulous strategy, design, and planning—but also decades of engagement with ancestral and indigenous wisdom, continuous decolonisation, and a deeply collaborative relationship with the Earth and its beings. Reflecting on this journey, I see the countless moments that have given me the courage to take on the immense responsibility of dreaming about the future alongside prodigious visionaries from across the world. I invite you to stay curious and explore the possibilities of regeneration. How can we collectively cultivate spaces that inspire such transformation? If you're intrigued by the retreat, have questions, or are curious about what regeneration could mean for your work or community, let’s connect! This is just the beginning—stay tuned for reflections, insights, and our upcoming report. Let’s spark more courageous conversations about the futures we desire. #RegenerativeFutures #Collaboration #SystemChange #Facilitation #Unearthodox

🌿 Unearthodox’s Regenerative Futures Retreat 🌿 As we close out 2024, we're reflecting on the moments this year that brought us together to reimagine a future where all life flourishes. In November, we hosted a retreat in northern Italy, gathering 40 global thinkers and creatives to explore regeneration and connection. This retreat focused on social innovation, creating a safe, inclusive space for diverse minds to come together, share ideas and imagine better ways of living. Highlights included: • Shifting economies from profit-driven to life-enhancing • Decolonising our systems • Reparations and empowerment for the Global South • Integrating ancestral wisdom into modern education Participant Charly Karamanian shared, “I found my tribe 11,000 kilometres from home; a group of personalities and dreamers from different cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives, united by a shared purpose.” 📽️ Read the article and check out the accompanying video to see what made this time together so special: https://lnkd.in/ewJ5mjrw Ryna Sherazi Anca Damerell, nisha mary poulose, Lua Couto, Sarah Queblatin, Bill Sharpe, Fabio Pianini, Shweta Srivastav, Bayo Akomolafe, Laura Peña Zanatta, Marika Heinrichs, Anaïk Anthonioz Blanc

What would happen if human innovation and nature's processes became one? 🧑🎨 🪴 This week, we've asked Nadja Skaljic, a legal executive working across the green, financial and tech industries, for her insights on this topic. Nadja is one of only two lawyers admitted into global systems change think tank The Club of Rome. She shares her powerful way of viewing nature as having a voice in processes. "Some time ago, I committed to holding myself to a standard of accountability that surpasses legal requirements by asking, ”If nature held this board seat instead of me, how would it vote? Would it approve this investment of our foundation's capital?” Read our full insight interview with Nadja here: https://lnkd.in/eraJPe5J #SystemsChange #Regeneration #RegenerativeThinking #SystemsThinking #ClubOfRome

Incredibly joyful to be part of this collective reflection on hope, resilience and regeneration, through art and science interwoven, recreating meaning in human and non-human relationships on Earth * Thank you Unearthodox for the opportunity to participate in this cycle of inspiring work 🌿

Unearthodox is proud to present Cycles of Hope: reflections on regeneration through artwork and writing. 🎨 🖼️ 🎥🎶✍️ Earlier this year, we called on creators of all stripes to make the idea of #regeneration their muse. We wanted to know what regeneration meant to people of diverse backgrounds and practices. More than that, we wanted to know how regeneration felt, looked and sounded. The result is an interactive publication of writing, poetry and artwork along with a short film (preview below). The work of unpacking and curating these pieces and presenting them together was done by Cían McAlone. ➡️ The publication, Cycles of Hope: http://bit.ly/cyclesofhope ➡️ The full-length film, Questions of Regeneration: https://lnkd.in/g2rzvn2H 🌱🌿🌹🌞🌍 Imagine regeneration as something woven into each breath, seen uniquely through every set of eyes. For one person, it’s in the everyday tending of a small garden, feeling the soil warm between their fingers. For another, it’s in the stories of their ancestors, told and retold, each repetition breathing new life into old wisdom. Cycles of Hope presents a curated selection of the many works that were submitted across a variety of mediums. With it, we hope to inspire innovators not only to develop a more regenerative practice but to weave stories of justice, ingenuity and creative relationships with the natural world into their desire for change. Many people contributed to this effort, especially Sasha Sebright, Sudha I. and Ruth Guerra. The publication was edited by Megan Eaves, proofread by Beth Byrne and designed by Claire Pauchet, with web design and creation by Karen Eicker and John Cooper. The title comes from the poetry of Taís Sonetti-González and the cover image is by Niels Devisscher. #regenerative #regenerativeliving #regenerativedesign #regenerativeculture Iryna Dihtiarova-Deslypper, Rahel K., Sian Meades-Williams, Arowah Cleaver, Bodhi Shola, Vanessa Hites, Libby Gallagher, Fen Hsu, Melany Poppe

One of the most inspiring undertakings under Unearthodox's Regenerative Futures programme so far has been the Voices of Regeneration creative content call. The Cycles of Hope (http://bit.ly/cyclesofhope) is now available and showcases a collection of the submitted works, curated to guide the reader on a process of creative #regeneration. Essential to this, a beautiful companion notebook: http://bit.ly/3BsWgCT And my personal 'coup de coeur', the short film below. So, what does #regeneration mean to you? 🌱 🌿

Unearthodox is proud to present Cycles of Hope: reflections on regeneration through artwork and writing. 🎨 🖼️ 🎥🎶✍️ Earlier this year, we called on creators of all stripes to make the idea of #regeneration their muse. We wanted to know what regeneration meant to people of diverse backgrounds and practices. More than that, we wanted to know how regeneration felt, looked and sounded. The result is an interactive publication of writing, poetry and artwork along with a short film (preview below). The work of unpacking and curating these pieces and presenting them together was done by Cían McAlone. ➡️ The publication, Cycles of Hope: http://bit.ly/cyclesofhope ➡️ The full-length film, Questions of Regeneration: https://lnkd.in/g2rzvn2H 🌱🌿🌹🌞🌍 Imagine regeneration as something woven into each breath, seen uniquely through every set of eyes. For one person, it’s in the everyday tending of a small garden, feeling the soil warm between their fingers. For another, it’s in the stories of their ancestors, told and retold, each repetition breathing new life into old wisdom. Cycles of Hope presents a curated selection of the many works that were submitted across a variety of mediums. With it, we hope to inspire innovators not only to develop a more regenerative practice but to weave stories of justice, ingenuity and creative relationships with the natural world into their desire for change. Many people contributed to this effort, especially Sasha Sebright, Sudha I. and Ruth Guerra. The publication was edited by Megan Eaves, proofread by Beth Byrne and designed by Claire Pauchet, with web design and creation by Karen Eicker and John Cooper. The title comes from the poetry of Taís Sonetti-González and the cover image is by Niels Devisscher. #regenerative #regenerativeliving #regenerativedesign #regenerativeculture Iryna Dihtiarova-Deslypper, Rahel K., Sian Meades-Williams, Arowah Cleaver, Bodhi Shola, Vanessa Hites, Libby Gallagher, Fen Hsu, Melany Poppe

A few weeks ago, I had the honor of sharing a week with 40 inspiring, compassionate people from around the world engaging in deep dialogues around the state of the world, the persistent harmful actions that keep the status quo, and hopes and visions of #regenerativefutures hosted by Unearthodox. Among the many things that stayed with me, one insight from Ashish Arora summarized for me the essence. Ashish reminded us that we are not responsible for regeneration. Living systems are inherently regenerative, our human systems are choking the capacity of living systems to regenerate. We should be asking - What should we stop doing? Last week in a team meeting I shared some highlights from the retreat with my team at Global Project and Change Management (GPCM) | Windesheim Honours College. A colleague at GPCM asked , so what do you see as a persistent harmful action that we continue in our program that we should stop doing. Half jokingly but perhaps quite seriously, my first immediate response was Assessment. Assessments, I believe are a persistent harmful action in education. Built on the premise of education as the factory and assessments as a way of filtering the 'quality' products that fit into the demands of the global economic machine! At a granular level, I also find rubrics restrictive. I believe they inhibit creativity as students strive to unpack and follow the rubric. This sort of assessment worked well in a world where we believed that we could predict and control. In an increasingly complex BANI world, we need to foster more imagination. That might also mean creating space for students to challenge our ways assessment. Do our assessment frameworks foster failure or challenge? What is the place and form of assesments in the #futureofeducation? How do we unchoke the education system to embrace it's regenerative potential? What persistent harmful actions do you think need to be stopped in your context to unchoke it's regenerative potential?