Transcription: In this episode, we take a moment to step back from our usual in-depth storytelling and instead, marvel at the framework that has allowed us to observe the ongoing exploration of resilience, adaptation and transformation in a >+2.5 degrees global warming scenario.
This June, more than 20 members of our Community of Practice, along with the project stewards, will gather for a reflective wrap-up and celebration of our accomplishments, marking the end of the Ecovillage Resilience Chapter and looking ahead to the next phase of our journey.
Together they will explore some of the key findings and the resources that will be offered to the network. This will include a synthesis on the best practices of Resilient Communities, an online course, refined ecovillage design cards, and more.
The discussion and digestion of the key learnings expressed live during this event will feedback into the designed materials to help more communities to navigate this journey.
We will also nurture the personal bonds that have formed during the Ecovillage Resilience project. It’s about closing this chapter consciously, tending to the connections we’ve built.
Throughout the project, a lot of our efforts have been grounded in community workshops. But now, we’re gearing up for something unique – participants from all corners of the globe, spanning various time zones, will come together for a collective gathering, a special opportunity for us to unite despite our geographical differences.
If hearing that makes you wish to witness this inspirational celebration and enriching conversation, then you can already mark your calendars for the 24th of June at 11:30 UTC when all of this will be released to the wider network in the live Open Celebration and Public Launch! (Join us here!)
Representatives from all participating communities will join, along with their family and friends, the wider GEN network and you, our listeners, if you like. You’ll have the joy of connecting, virtually face to face, with some of the voices you’ve heard in this podcast. We’ll hear more of the stories we’ve tuned into here, though this time in a more weaved tapestry, through the lens of what this journey of exploring resilience really means for them, their communities, the ecovillage network, and the world. We’ll balance the view of understanding the data and giving voice to the stories that gathered the informaiton. We’ll remember the calling question which sparked this participatory action research 2 years ago: What can ecovillages nurture today to be more resilient tomorrow?
Building on that, we will begin to deepen the reflection of how ecovillages can enhance and strengthen their practices to prepare for potential climate change scenarios while amplifying their collective impact and transformative capacity.
Hear what’s next for some of the communities. How have the other members of the communities resonated with the workshops and activities they’ve been invited into? What will they do now in order to nurture more resilience to climate change and increase their abilities to navigate the polycrisis? How can they retain the transformative capacity that was sparked on this journey?
And hear what’s next for GEN as the stewards of this work. which I am excited to share a bit more about this with you today. With words from Anna Kovasna who you met at the begining of our listening journey, let’s take a look at the next phase that is taking shape – Keystone Communities project.
The Keystone Communities Project will build on the insights, tools and capacities created through the Resilience project and reflect the ecovillage network’s ongoing commitment to scale and amplify the capacity of local communities to be resilient resources for wider transformation, able to function also when larger systems falter or collapse.
In this next phase, we will widen the scope of action, addressing some of the needs discovered through the previous work. And build upon our commitment and hunger for deeper and wider impact.
The ecovillage network is committed to navigating the polycrisis not only to survive, but to safeguard and nurture human dignity, the more-than-human world, and the base conditions for life to thrive.
This is inspired by two concepts from indigenous scholars which point the way to this life-affirming vision of humanity’s future. It also provides the ethical framework for our activities:
Firstly, keystone species. These are species who are able to uphold entire food webs and play a powerfully positive role in the ecosystem – they live lives that enable other life to thrive. When used to describe a type of human existence, it points to civilisations, persisting for millennia, whose sub-sis-tence, institutions and beliefs stem from a lived realisation of reciprocity, mutuality and interbeing-with-the-more-than-human world. Places where, as Lyla June Johnston says, humans are ‘architects of abundance’.
Facing mass extinctions, pollution, and the unravelling of ecosystems as well as global injustice and the crumbling of dominant economic systems, we urgently need to return to life-centred design and become architects of abundance again.
The second concept is survivance, as articulated by Gerald Vizenor. Vizenor speaks about survivance in the context of native american cultures after the genocide of settler arrival. He says – ”Survival is a response; survivance is a standpoint, a worldview, and a presence”. He points to indigenous ways of life and self expression as resistance to dominant paradigms. Others speak of survivance as a combination of survival and resistance. In learning to navigate crisis for the benefit of all life, the idea of survivance can point us to the potential for liberation, transformation, resistance and the beauty inherent in human imagination, creativity, and culture. It also points to the powerful way in which story shapes human existence.
Ecovillages know that narrative and story also have the power to shift the way we relate to place and each other, and impact our capacity to take action, sustain, heal from trauma and keep going through hardship. Facing societal collapse, totalising dystopian scenarios, and hopelessness, we need cultural expressions that support reconnection to the more than human world and provide pathways towards meaning, resistance and regeneration.
So from this, we arrive at the concept of Keystone Communities as life-affirming and locally appropriate responses to worsening polycrisis.
A Keystone Community plays a powerfully positive role in safeguarding life-affirming conditions in its local social-ecological system. It is based on values that encourage long-term thinking and solidarity, leverages culture to craft meaning, resistance, recovery and regeneration in the face of crisis. And it is able to do so while absorbing shocks, avoiding tipping points, and retaining capacity for system transformation.
Closing
Are you intrigued by what you’ve heard? Learn more about the details of this event and the Global Ecovillage Movement by subscribing to our newsletter at ecovillage.org/newsletter. If you can’t make it in June, or you’re listening to this episode later, the newsletter will also be your source to access a recording of the session, or reach out to me directly.
You are also warmly invited to follow the movement on social media. You can find us on instagram at @ecovillage, or search the Global Ecovillage Network on Linkedin & facebook. Help us rebuild our facebook audience as an act of resistance after being taken down due to “violating community standards” and stay connected to the powerful work of this growing movement.
Once again, thank you for listening. I hope you have enjoyed today’s mini episode. And stay tuned, next week we will be back with another full-length episode.
GEN Staff
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