Announcing our gathering: Cultivating Wildness in Hazel Hill Wood

Join us for a 2-day convening and exploration on Cultivating Wildness - in ourselves and our organisations hosted in collaboration with Patrick Andrews in Hazel Hill Wood on 3rd and 4th October 2023

Come and join me, the Imagination Activist and Patrick Andrews, the Barefoot Lawyer, in the forest in Hazel Hill for two days exploring Wildness in Organisations.

We have both worked with organisations large and small across the public sector and corporate sector on embedding the perspective of nature into governance, and will create a space for people to bring their problems, ideas and case studies to work on together.

My journey with nature and what I call 'wild governance' started in 2017 when I was in New Zealand on a month-long trip to work on new forms of governance with the Enspiral network. While I was there, I took part in the Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) launch where we discussed the River Whanganui being granted personhood, something that had just made it into legislation that year. The gathering was co-facilitated and hosted by Maori elders, and the Maori worldview was at the heart of our conversations.

In the closing session, an insight was shared with the group: if rivers can have personhood, why can't they sit on the board of organisations? A group of us came together to explore this concept, and how we could make it a reality. We worked together over the year of 2017, fleshing out the idea, with some of the group taking forward thinking about nature based tokens and economics and currencies, and others more focused on the cultural and governance aspects (like myself and Moral Imaginations!).

Various projects and organisations emerged from this moment and thinking: Moral Imaginations was one of them, Earth Equity was another, and on the ground work with Maori communities and organisations in the region of Whanganui and Mount Taranaki. Since then, I've seen more and more 'nature in governance' thinking sprouting around the world. I met Paul Powlesland, the 'tree lawyer' and Brontie Maria Ansell here in the UK who started Lawyers for Nature and worked with Faith In Nature to appoint Nature onto the board. And out of that came the new organisation Nature On The Board which is helping other organisations follow their lead. There is a bigger group in the UK popularising and spreading 'Rights of Nature' thinking which we are a part of, and slowly, culture is shifting and the movement is growing.

How do you bridge the wildness that exists in nature with the ways of being and doing and leading inside organisations? What are ways you could shift your practice, and your leadership, now?

What can I expect?

This two day, one night event is for anyone interested in exploring the space where governance and organisation dynamics meets indigenous wisdom. Held in a wild wood near Salisbury, it is a chance to step out of our comfort zone, beyond the rational, and to open up to intuition and imagination.  

WHAT: a playful exploration into our own inner nature, the nature of organisations and the nature of life. We aim to connect with each other, the wood and with a deeper part of ourselves;

ENJOY: inspiration from fellow travellers, experienced guides and the wood.

LEARN: how innovative organisations are responding to the ecological and spiritual crises by changing their structures and habits.

LEAVE: with deeper understanding of yourself, your organisation and the journey we are all on together, and insights that you can take back out into your organisations and daily life. 

The event is hosted by Patrick Andrews, Barefoot Lawyer and Phoebe Tickell, founder of Moral Imaginations. We share an interest in how to bring the more-than-human perspective into organisational decision making.  Patrick helps embed holistic thinking into the architecture of organisations through innovative ownership and governance design.  Phoebe is a systems thinker, renegade biologist and social entrepreneur, working with governments, local councils and organisations to introduce 'moral imagination' into how they are run through experiential, imaginative practice.  

Find out more and book your place here: https://lnkd.in/gvE3S_Re

#ImaginationActivist #Organisations #Nature #Wildness