As we are closing in on the end of the Learning Journey on How to Organize Your Bioregion through the Design School for Regenerating Earth, we’ve had the distinct pleasure of seeing examples of bioregions and bioregional efforts that are well on their way to supporting a nested-scale bioregional vision in their collections of landscapes.
This collective wisdom sharing is so important and valuable on our way toward understanding how to regenerate a culture, landscape, and local economy. With an emphasis on the human element of all these projects, Regenerate Cascadia and r3.0 presented on the models that work for them.
Regenerate Cascadia: BioRegen Landscapes Program
To celebrate the launch of our new BioRegen Landscapes program, which gives a group of landscape stewards access to the nonprofit status of Regenerate Cascadia and the Department of Bioregion, Clare Atwell, Brandon Letsinger, and Andra Vltavín gave a presentation on the history of the organization, the upcoming Landscape Hub Cultivator program, and the Seed and Landscape Group program.
Brandon gave an overview of just how developed and in-depth the Cascadia identity is, from tattoos of the Cascadia flag to music festivals. Clare gave a lovely introduction of the principles of organizing that Regenerate Cascadia operates under, including letting the land organize us and working with people first, then organizations. Andra provided more details about the on-the-ground program for the organizing teams in individual landscapes, going through the benefits that each of the groups receive and the reciprocity agreements involved.
We ended with reassurance that, while all of this may look impressive on paper, we are just people. We are trying to figure out these new models of relating to each other just like everyone else. We recognize that showing our stumbling blocks is just as valuable as demonstrating our successes.
The presentation was very well received by the participants of the Learning Journey, and there was a lot of praise for how much the team at Regenerate Cascadia has accomplished over the years.
r3.0 Conference and Confluences
Bill Baue and Ralph Thurm gave an impressive presentation on the work of r3.0 and their upcoming global conference.
The global conference and confluence that r3.0 is helping to host in 45+ landscapes begins on September 9th, and their lineup of speakers is incredible, including Dr. Lyla June Johnston, Joe Brewer, and many other bioregional organizers from around the globe.
The confluence model allows local landscapes to witness the conference content, either in real time or as recordings. At these smaller in-person events, groups will have the opportunity to add in their own facilitation styles, ways to source wisdom from the group, and reflection moments. For confluences that have registered with r3.0, they can receive funding to support the logistics of organizing such an event.
This confluence model is one of the first steps toward more bioregional congressing efforts, and we are very excited to see how this will develop going forward!
Cascadia Regional Calls
These wisdom-sharing and local update calls have been going very well, with more and more Cascadians joining every time! In these previous two calls, we had Daniel Lindenberger give a presentation about gamifying bioregionalism with the Metachrysalis model, and Drew Alcoser gave a presentation about holding space for climate emotions.
On August 25th, we have Julie Wolf coming to give a presentation on restorative circle facilitation, and then on September 12th, we’ll reflect on the regional call model and decide how we want to transition the space once the learning journey completes.
Thank you for going on this journey with us! We are so grateful to Joe Brewer and Penny Heiple for their part in holding the How to Organize Your Bioregion Learning Journey.