What are we noticing?
All over the world millions of people are already responding positively to overlapping ecological and socio-economic crises. Despite their extraordinary energy, passion and commitment we are a very long way from seeing proportionate or sufficiently urgent changes.
We believe the interlocking social, economic, and ecological crises of our time (the polycrisis) are relational and cultural crises that require relational and cultural responses. We see them being addressed largely by single-issue movements working on isolated pieces. The scale of mobilisation and action needed to address accelerating unravelling has not been reached and is not, we believe, possible from a position of fragmentation.
Why relational culture?
The polycrisis requires real urgency in tending to the needs of those responding in the present, as well as sowing and tending more relational capacity for the future. Those in the crucible of resistance during unravelling are often those with the least power to change things. Solidary ‘islands of coherence’ are crucial for recharging and retooling emotionally, psychologically and mentally.
Plurality is also crucial – there is no one way of being and doing, and nurturing multiple perspectives, experiences and knowledges will help us find better solutions. Synergistic learning, creativity and opportunities to understand and repair historic and current injustices will emerge. Difference matters and brings ever deeper resilience if we are in relationship with each other.
What’s our response?
We see a clear and urgent need for fostering cultures of solidarity rooted in relationship, compassion and pluriversitality. In synthesising, spreading and accelerating the positive changes already underway at different levels within communities and movements all over the world, nurturing people and communities of practice now and as fractals of the future.
Collaborating with relational practitioners working in different ways in different settings, we are experimenting with a horizontal framework within which those acting in very specific and/or localised contexts can recognise and feel their commonalities.
How are we doing this?
We are collaborating in convening 5 ‘hubs’ of practice, with a collective of relational practitioners. All are organizers, activists, educators, communicators and community-builders. We are seeking to build and strengthen relational culture within their contexts, as islands of coherence nurturing and enabling responses locally, regionally and professionally to the polycrisis.
We work as a collective, nurturing relational tissue as a community of practice. Our shared purpose is to foster the emergence, spread and normalizing of loving and relational ways of being, doing and acting in service of building solidarity for justice and liberation within and between our movements.