Speakers
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Daniel Christian WahlAuthor of 'Designing Regenerative Cultures'Daniel Christian Wahl originally trained as a biologist, and holds degrees in Biology (BSc. Hons., Univ. of Edinburgh), Holistic Science (MSc.,Schumacher College) and Natural Design (PhD., Univ. of Dundee). He was the director of Findhorn College between 2007 and 2010, is a member of the International Futures Forum and H3Uni, an advocation partner of r3.0, and on the advisory councils of Ecosystems Restoration Camps, Commonland, the Ojai Foundation, Future Planet Europe, the Centre for the Future and the Overview Institute of Australia, as well as, a Findhorn Foundation Fellow. Daniel lives on Majorca where he helped to set up SMART UIB and works locally and internationally as a consultant, educator and activist. Among his clients have been Ecover, Forum for the Future, Camper, Balears.t, Save the Med, Lush, UNITAR, UK Foresight, Cloudburst Foundation and many universities and N.G.O.s. He is on the academic working group of the Global Ecovillage Network and has been linked to GEN for almost 20 years. Daniel has worked closely with Gaia Education sine 2007 and contributed to the development of their Design for Sustainability online course and co-authored the current versions of all four dimensions of the curriculum. He also wrote the content and developed the concept of Gaia Education’s SDGs Flashcards which with the support of UNESCO are now translated into 7 languages. Daniel teaches regularly on the the MA in Ecological Design Thinking at Schumacher College. Daniel’s 2016 book ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ has quickly gained international acclaim, his Blog on Medium is followed by over 20k people and his social media advocacy has a combined audience of over 450k people around the world.
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Douglas RushkoffMedia Theorist, Author & Host of Team HumanNamed one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His twenty books include the just-published Team Human, based on his podcast, as well as the bestsellers Present Shock, Throwing Rocks and the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Life Inc, and Media Virus. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and the Media Ecology Association honored him with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.
Rushkoff’s work explores how different technological environments change our relationship to narrative, money, power, and one another. He coined such concepts as “viral media,” “screenagers,” and “social currency,” and has been a leading voice for applying digital media toward social and economic justice. He a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics. He is a columnist for Medium, and his novels and comics, Ecstasy Club, A.D.D, and Aleister & Adolf, are all being developed for the screen.
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Ruth AndradeRegenerative Impact, Earth Care & GivingOriginally from Brazil, Ruth grew up in a concrete jungle, amidst high-rise buildings, asphalt and pollution, witnessing first hand the destruction of the natural environment which prompted an early interest in the environmental issues and fueled a great passion for driving change. Ruth started working for Lush in 2004 and soon became the head of environment at Lush, inspiring many environmental initiatives during that time. After a long hiatus, Ruth is now back to mainly work on three aims: lead brand strategy on regenerative impact, support organisational development based on living systems and help evolve our charitable giving strategies. She is passionate about how to transform business into a force of regeneration and to leverage the power of a global brand to do good.
Ruth has a masters in Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies. She is a Trustee and co-founder of Re.Alliance, a collective of practitioners bringing regenerative design to the humanitarian sector, a co-creator of Regenerosity, an initiative for finding, funding and learning from the planet’s most regenerative projects.
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: May 24 2020
- Time: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Regenerative Cultures
“Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.”
Native American Proverb (Lumbee Tribe)
After the post-war Baby Boomers came Generation X, followed by Generation Y – the Millennials — and Generation Z — the iGeneration. So what’s next? Creating a viable future for humanity on an overpopulated planet in crisis requires us to collaborate across generations, ideologies and nations. We all need to join the re-generation!
Some people are starting to talk about regenerative cultures as possible pathways to a thriving future where people unfold their unique potential within the context of the communities and regions they help to regenerate — cultures that are healthy, resilient and adaptable.
As Conscious Learning Tribe, we decided to learn more about this growing movement and deep-dive into this exciting and interesting topic, starting from the “regeneration” from within, towards regenerative cultures in agriculture, travel & tourism, medicine, technology, business, the economy, our cities and communities.
And how to do this better than to invite one of its thought leaders, Daniel Christian Wahl (author of Designing Regenerative Cultures), together with Ruth Andrade (Regenerative Impact, Earth Care & Giving @ LUSH), in a unique combination with Douglas Rushkoff (Media Theorist, Author & Host of Team Human).
What Is a Regenerative Culture?
Regenerative cultures are unique expressions of the potential inherent in the people and places of a given bioregion. They add value and health to the nested wholeness from local, to regional, to global, in the understanding that whether humanity thriving critically depends on healthy ecosystems and a life-supporting biosphere.
In strengthening regenerative economic activities, we need to learn balance. Between efficiency and resilience; collaboration and competition; diversity and coherence; organizations of all sizes and needs.
Regenerative economics is an economic system that works to regenerate capital assets: assets that provide goods and/or services that are required for – or contribute to – our wellbeing. We need to recognise the earth as the original capital asset. Without trying to reduce the intrinsic value of life to only utilitarian value to humanity, nor trying to make living capital convertible to financial capital, which would enable the most dangerous form of enclosure to the remaining ecological commons!
Regenerative leadership is a process of personal development that aligns one’s own way of being and actions with the wider pattern of life’s evolutionary journey within the communities, ecosystems, biosphere and Universe we participate in.
We need to search for new ways to restore ecosystems, celebrate cultural diversity, initiate a worldview change, and facilitate the transition towards diverse cultures that regenerate not just vital resources and community resilience, but contribute to the health and vitality of nature’s life support systems. Such cultures will assure the future of life as a whole and not merely sustain a humanity divorced from its roots and alienated from the ground of its own being.
Transformative innovation and design
In the face of multiple converging crises, mere sustainability is no longer enough. Too much damage has already been done. We need to restore ecosystem and community health, and create regenerative systems that allow us to face uncertainty creatively.
To do this we need to go beyond “sustaining innovation” and “disruptive innovation” — as described by Clayton Christensen (1997) — and effectively engage in “transformative innovation”. Any proposed innovations should be evaluated based on their potential capacity to serve as a stepping-stone towards regenerative cultures.
Transformative innovation requires integrative whole systems thinking. We can innovate win-win-win solutions and design for systemic synergy. To do so, we need to understand the interconnected nature of the converging crises and respond with an integrative and participatory approach to this complexity. If we pay attention to the appropriate scale, we can create solutions where the individual, the community and the ecosystem benefit.
Design as nature!
The false dichotomy between nature and culture is the root causes of many of the converging crises we are facing. Applying the lessons of eco-literacy and engaging in nature-inspired innovation and design (biomimicry) drastically improves our capacity to meet human needs while re-designing the human presence on Earth.
We can do more than simply learn from nature. We are capable of designing as nature: maintaining ecosystems integrity, nurturing systemic health, and strengthening the planetary live support system we depend upon! We are already designing as nature. There are inspiring examples ranging in scale from green chemistry, product design, sustainable architecture, community design, industrial ecology, to urban and regional planning.
A culturally-regenerative response starts from potential
Working regeneratively means not falling into a quick-fix, piece-meal, techno-centric mindset of problem-solving in the face of converging crises. We have plenty of evidence that inadequate interventions in complex systems can have many unforeseen consequences. The problem-solving and scaling-up-solutions mindset can be part of the problem.
Are you as excited as we are to learn and explore together how “Regenerative Culture” can become the new “Exponential Technology” paradigm?
Hosted by Conscious Learning Tribe founders Canay Atalay, Rudy de Waele, Yuri van Geest, and by Primavera Salva & Michael Lane.
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OUR WEEKLY PLAYLIST
SENSORIAL EXPERIENCES presented by our MEDIA PARTNER: OPENLAB.FM
Our weekly non-conformist playlist is curated by OpenLab.fm, especially for our tribe based on our weekly topic. Expect the sound of Regeneration under your skin before, during and after the event with their visual art.