At a moment when continuing ecological crises and social inequities converge and manifest themselves at nearly every turn as are more insistent calls for systemic reform, it is heartening to see the convergence of innovative practices in education as we recognise the role of learning in identifying, exploring, trialling and implementing powerful new initiatives for driving forward change.
Recognising the limitations of current educational frameworks to meet the evolving demands of learners, human and more-than-human communities and our shared socio-ecological systems, there is an ever more urgent need to fundamentally reimagine and reshape an approach to education through a collaborative and regenerative approach. Following UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ plea for urgent collaborative action at COP28 — to ‘reject incrementalism. . . . One thing is for certain: “I win, you lose” is a recipe for collective failure‘, meaningful collective action is imperative.
Over the past two weeks, I was privileged to join conversations at several organisations and events, including the new International Centre for Sustainability and the Independent Higher Education (IHE) Annual Conference, both in London; at the Knowledge Cities World Summit (KCWS): Adapting to Climate-Change through Regenerative Transformation of Cities and Regions in Lindau, Germany; and at MOME, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, in Budapest. Although distinctive in their missions and approaches, all four of these organisations are fully committed to testing and pushing innovation at the intersection of education, economics, technology, ecology, social justice, knowledge exchange, living-systems design, sustainability and regenerative practice.
Central to my engagement was a focus on regenerative learning — particularly as a way of reimagining education in a non-linear and living-systems design framework. The panel I was invited to join at the IHE annual conference was titled ‘Building sustainable independent higher education’ and included co-panelists Kirsten Scott, Head of Research at Istituto Marangoni and Jess Neil, Chief Executive of the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation. Our focus was multi-fold, from a broad overview of the possibilities of regenerative framing to examples of participatory organisational structures and collaborative initiatives linking social justice and socio-ecological sustainability to asking ‘How might the Earth want us to design?’ Throughout the session and in the conversations that followed, it was clear that although our stories were different, we shared a commitment to co-creating and cultivating a thriving learning ecosystem that empowers all participants — students, teachers, directors, trustees, communities and more-than-human stakeholders — to flourish together in an evolving regenerative paradigm.
Building on the IHE event, KCWS brought together sessions on Educational Futures and the need to transform learning with shared my perspectives along with those of Keri Facer Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol; Chrissie Sorenson, Head of the Bavarian International School, Haimhausen; Cathy Garner, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Lancaster; and Monika Schröttle, Political and Social Scientist at RWU. With threads of innovation from participatory student governance and decision-making to practice-led learning to decentralised university models, we again shared both our concerns for a wholesale transformation of higher education as well as compelling examples of what is already possible. For many of us, a key challenge is scaling this much-needed transformation so that innovation becomes foundational and sustainable for the long-term — all through an authentic process that draws from regenerative principles including:
- Ecological Design and Living-Systems Thinking
- Agency, Empowerment, Engagement
- Adaptability and Resilience
- Restoration and Renewal
- Social and Ecological Justice
- Distributed and Decentralised Networks
- Diversity and Cultural & Historical Contexts
- Reflection, Regeneration and Continual Feedback
- Interdependence, Integration and Interdisciplinarity
- Co-creation and Collaboration
- Adaptation
- Community, Bio-regional and Global Perspectives
- Practice, Action and Impact
These two wonderfully generative panels at IHE and KCWS were prefaced for me by a visit with Sachin Nandha, Director of the ICfS, where I serve as a Fellow, during which we explored the applications of regenerative thinking in educational systems in (and across) the UK and India and considered places and partnerships to effect transformational regenerative change at scale. I immediately recognised in our discussion an aligned desire to build profound cross-sector collaborations (my bias being that education undergirds everything else!), and I am very excited to begin collaborative work with the Centre’s other Fellows and researchers as we start to move forward.
Finally, in my two days at MOME in Hungary, I met with several colleagues working at the forefront of European arts and design education who are already looking to a reimagined learning paradigm in arts, ecology and community from a bioregional perspective including deep cultural, agroecological and socio-ecological connections with the nearby Lake Balaton. The projects underway at MOME are themselves a significant leverage point at the transdisciplinary intersection of arts, ecology and democracy that are already beginning to move along an authentically regenerative pathway.
As Halla Tómasdóttir recently said about the ongoing COP28 on Outrage and Optimism with Tom Rivett-Carnac, ‘we all know, and have been saying for a while, that the solutions are there. This is not a question of us not having solutions. We also know there is plenty of money in the system. The missing piece is courageous leadership from all of us’. For me, the events of the past two weeks illustrate just this: innovation is certainly prevalent — particularly in small and often fragile and unconnected initiatives — leveraging the power of co-creation is what can be the catalyst for substantive transformation.
The past fortnight has been for me a testament to the growing recognition of the need for a transformative shift in education at all levels. From London to Bavaria to Budapest, the common thread weaving through my conversations has been the urgency to reshape learning in a way that moves us beyond simply sustaining an inadequate status quo and toward an approach that reimagines learning as practice-led, community-focused and ecologically-centred — an intersection where I have spent much of the last 20 years of my professional career.
Being part of these conversations has further solidified my belief in the power of collaboration and collective action and the immense possibilities inherent not only in individual innovation but in weaving together these many approaches to craft a fabric fit for our next generations of learners: It is time for us to reimagine, realise and regenerate — together.
Ecologies of Knowing 