Reflections on the first 3-day immersive food systems learning journey

A couple weeks have passed since hosting 'Cultivating the Future of Food: an immersive learning journey' with 13 food system change agents. There's much to metabolise. Lots of sparks flickering. Here are some impressions and reflections.

It’s feeling like summer here in England. It’s been a rather quick onset, sending everything into full bloom. The petals of the first flowers are beginning to fall and I collect them off the pavement when I go on walks. They come home with me. I pile them up until I have enough to use in some textile dyeing projects. The essence of the flower has captivated me lately. I keep seeing this image of a bud bursting open into a lush pink flower. Just as every flower does – opening up spontaneously, unapologetically, with no set purpose but to simply be. It’s something deeply feminine – not having to do or achieve, but simply express its essence, in all of its beauty. Yet this sort of beauty that we infinitely find in nature can catch us by surprise, whisper words of wisdom in our ears, and fill us with a sense of awe. It’s a special moment when I witness such occurrences in nature -- a glimmer of something magical.?

Magic. We can spend endless days seeking it. Two weeks ago I didn’t need to search anywhere for it. It was all around me.?

June 6-8th: On the lands of 42 Acres, ‘Cultivating the Future of Food’ was held. A three-day immersive learning journey that served as a special gathering ground for 13 inspiring change agents working to create a brighter food future for the UK.?It was the first prototype of a multi-day immersion for food industry where equal emphasis was placed on understanding our outer nature as understanding our inner nature.

I arrived a few hours before we were due to begin. Walking the land, I took in the scene of life blossoming open through my senses. The last time I walked this land was last January. The ground wore a blanket of snow. I remembered the twigs, appearing dead, encased by a glistening layer of glass-like ice. It was winter then. The season of death and dormancy. Now, the place was beaming a soundtrack of life. It felt natural to be hosting this gathering – one of creation, ideas, and hope – in the middle of spring. The season of New becoming.

I hoped to craft an experience that would allow each participant to step more and more into their unseen potential and reimagine today’s food systems. Hosting food system workshops and farm visits, even residential board retreats, wasn’t new to me. But doing it in a way that integrated the parts of myself into an authentic expression that offered a truly whole-human approach to change, was. In previous ‘work’ events, I had programmed myself to hold the role of the ‘knower’, carry a rolodex of hypotheses to test, and orient everything towards goals and actionable outcomes. This time, it was about trusting the principle of emergence. It was about showing up fully, allowing myself to be seen, and embodying the principles of regeneration myself. It felt a bit scary to lean into the unknown in such a lack-of-control kind of way. The art of surrendering. It's a constant practice, as I'm told. The heavy lifting had been done to get everything in place for the gathering, now it was time to let things flow.?

“And the Day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ? -Anais Nin

Soon, everyone arrived. We settled into our opening circle. Leaving the job titles behind, we got to know each other as fellow human beings, understanding what lights us up and where we’re channelling our energy these days. This set the tone for everything else that would unfold in the following days together. We set off on a guided foraging session where we discovered the wild foods and medicines we could harvest straight from the land. As we sunk into nature and came into connection with the place under our feet. It’s a skill I often neglect – to listen to the land. It may sound crazy, but when we open our senses and receive with all our faculties, the land generously gives us answers to guide our relationship with the living systems surrounding us. It's so easy to get caught up in the 'global changes' needed that we lose touch with our own relationship with the place right under our feet.

We harvested mushrooms that became ingredients for our dinner, packed with nutrient-dense foods from 42 Acres and the local foodshed the kitchen sources from. During each meal, we reconnected with eating as an act of life. Through our plate, we got in touch with the elements – rain of water, sun of fire, soil of earth, carbon in the air – that became the foods we ate. We discussed the importance of soil health, nutrient density, and food as medicine, and we shone our awareness not just on what we eat, but how we eat, too.

How we eat: it’s something so often overlooked, but when we’re in intimate relationship with our food, when we know the stories of the people and places behind our plates, food somehow tastes even better, it feels different in our bodies, and to waste it feels like a sin. Every meal became an opportunity to revalue food.?

Unlike typical food conferences, most of our time was spent outdoors foraging, helping in the kitchen garden, inoculating mushrooms, gathering around the fire, and connecting with the land. It was a time of deep connection with nature and allowing the natural world to be our greatest teacher. I saw my job as designing an experience and holding a container where the conditions enabled moments of meaning to spontaneously appear. And many did. But I can’t take responsibility for that. The experience truly was co-created. Energy generously exchanged amidst the group, which made corralling everyone challenging (and something I’d forgotten about while operating in Zoom-land over the past years), but I took that as a good thing! Where we went was determined by the extent to which each individual brought their full self. It was as much a journey of understanding and connecting with the outer-world nature as it was connecting with our inner-world nature. It was underpinned by an ‘experience first, knowledge second’ approach.?

Over the course of three days, we moved from regenerative ‘thinking’ to regenerative ‘doing’ as to regenerative ‘being’. So often we can talk a big ‘regen’ game, but that’s the easy part, to put its principles in practice is much more difficult. Everyday, I find myself forgetting and getting caught up in the default modes of doing and striving, thinking I have the answers, posturing, and pretending. Hours, days, and sometimes even weeks pass until something wakes up in me and remembers my true nature which is nature. And nature is inherently regenerative. Therefore, we all known deep in our core how to be regenerative. This immersion was a time of remembering for us all. We learned about the food philosophy of 42 Acres, got our hands in the soil, drilled into logs to inoculate mushrooms, sat in stillness alone in nature and listened to its answers to our questions, and used movement, breath, meditation, and sound to ground us and open ourselves up as conduits of creation.?

There’s a temptation to drop into the old reductionist models and ask, ‘What are the measures of success? What are the actions that came out of it?’ I hold a different view on measuring impact. One that values the individual’s experience, which is inherently challenging to quantify, but can be captured in feelings and words. In our closing circle, I asked everyone to share one word capturing their inner state. ‘Love’, ‘connection’, ‘hopeful’ were words spoken by the group. Then I asked, ‘what are you carrying with you from this time together?’ ‘Inspiration’, ‘energy’, and ‘hope’ were words shared. Some people shared how their experience showed them the importance of pausing, and how they realised how caught up and trapped they’d been feeling in their work. Others remarked on how they’d been feeling cynical about the world, and how they were leaving feeling hopeful. For me, this was the impact we'd hoped to create when first setting the intention for this immersion. To leave people feeling empowered, full of energy, and aligned with a sense of purpose -- that's what it's all about.

I left reflecting on the power of community. When we open up, strip back the scripts and status, and allow ourselves to see and be seen, we can foster a real sense of community remarkably quickly. Faces that were strangers in our opening circle felt like familiar friends by the end of our three short days. It never ceases to amaze me how time warps and two days can feel like two weeks when immersed in nature and detached from typical schedules. While everyone invested significant time to be there, away from their work and businesses, I think it’s safe to say that it was well worth it.?

I felt a deep gratitude for everyone who showed up and their willingness to go deep, revealing their whole selves. I felt gratitude for the land for holding us and sharing its wisdom with us. I felt a sense of knowingness that creating and offering experiences like this is indeed serving a need. Working this inflection point between inner and outer-world transformation is a powerful pathway to spurring meaningful change. It starts within, at the deepest levels of our subconscious. Scale starts right here under our feet. Scale starts with one. Each of us is a node in a complex interconnected web. Our thoughts, words, and actions --positive or negative -- send ripple effects in all directions. And that is exactly why integrating tools that allow us to break the threshold of the rational thinking mind to access the outdated beliefs and mental models is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but an essential ingredient for systems-change. On that note, I’ll close with one of my favourite images these days: a little drawing of the ‘iceberg model’ from Donella Meadows, which highlights the mind and inner dimension as the highest leverage point for systems-change.?

I feel motivated to bring this format of 3-day immersions to people whom it will best serve, within food and beyond. I’m curious to partner with others to bring it to other regions, and to play with more accessible versions (think day-long urban version and enriching interactive dinners) for different audiences. What would it look like if it was seed funded and financially de-risked from the beginning? What if the group was curated rather than self-selecting? Could the format lend itself to enriching company strategy off-sites? Lots of questions to explore. Much more is yet to emerge.?

I’m taking an open-sourced approach to all of this, imagining it like a fruiting body spreading spores across the world. It has been so cool to receive notes from contacts new and old saying how they want to explore how they can bring a multi-day event to their place. If you’re feeling the pull to do so, please reach out. I’m happy to share more detailed learnings and lend myself to the project if it feels right.?

Whether you participated in this magical learning journey or not, you are welcome to tap into a community I have recently started facilitating called, The Regen Mentorship Club. The first one was pretty great, exploring the statement: ‘To be a regenerative leader is to be a healer’. The theme for the next one is a surprise, you’ll have to drop in to discover what we come up with. Free (optional donation) and open to all. Thursday 6 July @ 4:30pm GMT. See you there! Just be sure to secure your place here .