Soil connections, Money Stories, and Design Research for Healing.

Friday practice #1 – Week 2/2024

This is #1 of my newly started practice of sharing and (un)learning, publicly.

This week's shoutouts go to:

????????? Pelin Catherine Turgut invited friends over to dig a permaculture swell and plant trees at her place where she’s in the process of renovating a ruin and regenerating land. Pelin is a wonderful inspiring human, creative pioneer, writer, and storyteller whom I got to know through the creative residency program o jardim that she co-created and co-hosted with Valerie Marouche & Mert Cetinkaya 1 year ago in Portugal: This intentional space for creative solidarity and creative solitude was one of my highlights in 2023 – a brave space and enabler for many transitions that followed: e.g. Leaping into the freelance world, embracing creative re(dis)covery, and moving to Portugal. And most importantly: building new relationships, connections, and friendships for life.

???????Invited through the Regenerators alumni community I got to learn about U4P, a newly found initiative by Pavel Luksha and Morgan Silver-Greenberg , and their U4P Talks series. U4P is in the making and aims to create a learning ecosystem for societal transformation, highlighting approaches that promote thrivability of Planet and People and invite heroes of transition. The first talk was with James Ehrlich , who shared his lifetime work and research on regenerative communities, his experience at ReGen Villages, and their evidence-/nature-based AI-powered tool Village OS?. I was deeply inspired by the question of how we can enable land owners to simulate regenerative land rejuvenation visions that consider what the land needs. Again the realization: The solutions exist, the tools exist – it’s about making them accessible at scale and support with resources, funding, and mindset shifts so we BUILD the conditions for life and the realities we want to live in. Also: First time I heard about the field of compassionate sustainability, a rabbit hole to dive deeper into.

???????? This week I followed a generous invitation by Myranda Heipel , who I met in the coastal cowork collective in Ericeira, Portugal. She hosted a beautiful and intimate intention-setting session, inspired by the 4 elements earth, air, water, and fire. It was inspiring to witness how the co-working space shifted into a candle-lit meditation space, where we were guided through prompts to feel, reflect, let go, and re-imagine. Thank you for getting me away from the screen and out of my head, and inspiring me to invite being grounded, free, flowing, and passionate into 2024.

???????I got the chance to join a session hosted by Lena Bumke and Alícia Trepat Pont from Greaterthan around personal money stories, part of a bigger series around shifting the collective narratives related to money. Money makes the world go round, yet it is still a taboo topic that is deeply engrained with patriarchal conditioning and patterns. From sharing about the role money plays in our lives, to mapping and exchanging our personal money life stories and engaging in an exercise called Liberating Finance Pods inspired by the Non-violent Global Liberation community, this was another brave space that shifts perspective and actively works on collective unlearning and building capacity for togetherness! Shoutout to the wonderful space holding and facilitation, showing again the power of metabolizing / unlearning with and being held by a group (of strangers).

Check out their upcoming course on Building Thriving Networks … or join the next session in the Building New Money Stories series. Just the welcome email you receive when joining the Greater Than community is worth it, I won’t spoil it ??

???????An article by Trauma-Informed Researcher and Design Strategist Jenny Winfield reflecting on four major shifts in her research practice over the past few years resonated so deeply. I can highly recommend reading this thoughtfully written piece and following their work at CHAYN . It inspires me to dive deeper into trauma-informed Design Research and share more openly and generously. Thank you for putting words to thoughts and experiences I couldn’t formulate well so far and planting many seeds: "Working for an organization that seeks to drive impact rather than revenue, my user research mindset has moved from: ‘What knowledge can I gather from people in order to build profit?’ to ‘What can we learn with people to support them in their healing journey?” (Jenny)

So this week I’m grateful for all the vitality, re-connection, and inspiration around

• Permaculture, soil rejuvenation, regenerative villages, and compassionate sustainability
• Unlearning patriarchal conditioning and rewriting narratives around money
• The Power of Togetherness and healing/building/working together
• Trauma-informed Design Research supporting healing, not profit

Wishing you a nourishing Friday and weekend ??

This is the first share of a newly started weekly practice for personal, and collective, unfolding and (un)learning: Works/words/worlds in progress