Earlier this year, a cohort of more than 100 people from the Cascadia bioregion joined a global course offered through the Design School for Regenerating Earth, How to Organize Your Bioregion. After six months of making connections, collective wisdom sharing, seeing models from other bioregions, and building the bioregional infrastructure we want to see in the world, here are some reflections.
By the Numbers
We had more people join the course this year than last by about 40 participants. The desire to engage in bioregionalism is spreading! We had more people respond to the poll this year than the previous year, which was helpful in terms of understanding the data.
During the course of the learning journey, we had four landscape groups come on as part of Regenerate Cascadia. While many of those groups were already in the works prior to the learning journey, it is our impression that the learning journey helped to reignite that energy and inspire other landscapes to start following suit.
Additionally, the Cascadia Regional Calls, fortnightly calls aimed to focus on skill-sharing and local updates specific to this bioregion, started with around 20 people and kept up a steady participant group, with many people watching the recording later. The group even grew by the end of the six-months, which was a great testament to the value of the space.
What Did We Learn?
As we explored ways that culture needs to shift alongside regeneration work, listened to real-world stories of people building models to create design immersions and community engagement in their landscape, and spoke about the barriers we are experiencing in our bioregional work, we made connections and became more well-rounded people as a result.
We created and are living into a shared vocabulary of regeneration. We have been weaving the network we need to practice mutual aid and resilience together. We were vulnerable about our mistakes so others could learn from the stumbles along the way.
Compared to the data from the 2024 learning journey, this year’s participants reported that they learned a lot more about healthy group dynamics and grew as community leaders much more.
See the charts below to understand in more detail how participants transformed over the course of this journey.
What Impact Has This Had on the Land? On the Community?
This course not only taught participants how to engage with regeneration work in their landscapes but encouraged them to get involved with existing community efforts to begin weaving together organizations doing work in categorical silos so we can create a regenerative world together.
As the result, the network is stronger and individual communities have more resourceful people who are dedicated to creating the models needed to move forward in this work. As such, this experience will ripple out into local communities for many years to come.
Participants joined and/or started regenerative groups at more than 1.5 times the rate of the participants from last year.
See the charts below for more details.
Cohort Coordinator – Did Having This Position Help?
One major difference between the learning journey that happened in 2024 and the one from this year is that we had a Cohort Coordinator who was the point person for any technical issues the participants were having and helped facilitate the Cascadia Regional Calls.
In addition to helping everyone more successfully access the content in both the Design School for Regenerating Earth and the Regenerate Cascadia website, the Cohort Coordinator brought in their own knowledge of sociocracy and encouraged skillsharing across the bioregion. They also helped learning journey participants get into contact with each other and begin to form their own landscape groups.
This support made a dramatic difference in participants’ reported sensations of welcome, support, and understanding, as demonstrated by the charts below, especially compared to last year.
What’s Next?
After having completed such a rich and transformative learning journey, a period of rest and integration is needed. As that happens over the next month, the Design School is busy reorganizing their content for usability and setting up communities of practice to support on-the-ground work in the coming months.
From permaculture design courses to inner work sessions, the Design School is far from dormant, and there are many ways for learning journey participants to deepen their knowledge and practice going forward. And, of course, Regenerate Cascadia has their Landscape Group application ready to go for any group of two or more people who are ready to amplify bioregional organizing in their own communities.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates!