Each week, we will offer you some prep tasks with time estimates, most often in the form of suggested reading/watching/listening totalling not more than ~1 hour. You will get the most out of the course if you can make the time to complete them. Please keep a learning log: a document tracking what you read/watch/listen to, with some reflections on what you are learning. This is a requirement for graduation (and receipt of your SEEDS).

We are delighted to now be able to announce our stellar lineup of guest experts:

Week 1: Introduction

Rieki Cordon & Cece Heart (SEEDS)

Week 2: Regenerative Agriculture & Thriving Local Economies

Daniel Wahl & Precious Phiri

Week 3: Regenerative Money

Sep Kamvar (Celo) & Sarah Friend (Circles)

Week 4: Decentralised Organising and Horizontal Leadership

Samantha Slade (Going Horizontal)

Week 5: Co-operative Ownership

Trebor Scholz (Platform Co-ops Now!) & Derek Razo (Purpose)

Bonus session: Charles Eisenstein (Saturday 13th March, 5-7pm UK time)
Week 6: Wrap up

The first and last sessions will be a little different to the rest. For this first session, our intention is to give you an entertaining and gentle birds-eye view of the Regenerative Renaissance.

Time estimate for this week's essential prep tasks: 1.5 hours

Time estimate for optional prep tasks: 3 hours

Essential prep tasks (1.5 hours):

Make sure you are familiar with Slack's threading feature and wherever possible reply to messages in threads rather than creating new posts in channels (5 minutes)
Join the Slack channel for your region (2 minutes, this is important as we will use this information to assign you to a pod):

If appropriate, join the Slack channels for your (non-English) languages (2 minutes, let us know if you want us to create channels for any other languages!)

Listen to at least one episode from the recommended podcasts and start/join a thread on it in #media-podcasts (1 hour). Some suggestions:

JOANNA MACY on the World As Lover And Self (For The Wild, Nov 2020)
Daniel Christian Wahl - Designing Regenerative Cultures (Future Thinkers, Oct 2020)
Riane Eisler "From Domination to Partnership" (Team Human, Dec 2020)
What if indigenous wisdom could save the world? Sherri Mitchell & Tyson Yunkaporta (From What If to What Next, Jan 2021)
Charles Eisenstein – From Dehumanization to Sacralization (State of Emergence, Jul 2020)
Radical Dharma – a conversation with angel Kyodo williams (Emergence Magazine, Dec 2020)

angel Kyodo williams

Tyson Yunkaporta

Watch at least one of the following videos and start/join a thread on it in #session-1 (30 mins):

'Humanity's Phase Shift', Daniel Schmachtenberger (Rebel Wisdom)
Pat McCabe: Thriving Life: Indigenous Ways of Knowing (Advaya)
Journey to a Regenerative Civilization Episode 1: Regenerative Renaissance (SEEDS)

Optional: the rest of the Journey to a Regenerative Civilization series (SEEDS)

Optional prep tasks (3 hours):

Watch one of the recommended films and start/join a thread on it in #media-films (2 hours)
Start reading one of the recommended books and start/join a thread on it in #media-books (1 hour)

We will be assigning you all to pods of no more than 6 participants so you get to know some people in more depth. These pods will change after three weeks: for the first three weeks, they will be as geographically diverse as possible; for the second three weeks, they will be as local as possible. To enable us to do this effectively, please make sure you join the Slack channel for your region (second task above).

Any questions, please feel free to post in Slack or email us.

With best wishes,
Stephen & Phoebe

[email protected]; [email protected]

Recommended books

adrienne marie brown

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Maree Brown

Charles Eisenstein

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition by Charles Eisenstein

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

Climate: A New Story by Charles Eisenstein

Joanna Macy

Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects by Joanna Macy

Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy

Science Fiction & Solarpunk

The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk

The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle, #6) by Ursula K. Le Guin

Bolo'Bolo by PM

Island by Aldous Huxley

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Interdependence & Life

What Is Life? by Lynn Margulis

Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution by Lynn Margulis

The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems by Fritjof Capra

Small Arcs of Larger Circles: framing through other patterns by Nora Bateson

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake

Indigenous Knowledge

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta

The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman by Davi Kopenawa

Treading Lightly: The Hidden Wisdom of the World's Oldest People by Karl-Erik Sveiby

Imagination & Regeneration

From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want by Rob Hopkins

Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism by Julia Watson

Designing Regenerative Cultures by Daniel Wahl

New Economics

Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist

The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money by Brett Scott

Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher

Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson

Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel

New Ways of Organising

Going Horizontal: Creating a Non-Hierarchical Organization, One Practice at a Time by Samantha Slade

Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux

Better Work Together by The Enspiral Network

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan

Cultural Development

A New Republic of the Heart: An Ethos for Revolutionaries--A Guide to Inner Work for Holistic Change by Terry Patten

The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One by Hanzi Freinacht

Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two by Hanzi Freinacht

Food & Farming

Farming While Black – SOUL FIRE FARM

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber

Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making by Allan Savory

The Power of Myth

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin

The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries by Bill Plotkin

Recommended podcasts

‎Emerge: Making Sense of What's Next

From What If to What Next

The Mushroom Hour Podcast

Upstream

Farmerama Radio - The voices of regenerative farming

Recommended films

Symbiotic Earth: How Lynn Margulis rocked the boat and started a scientific revolution (2019)

Fantastic Fungi (2019)

An Ecology of Mind (2010)

2040 (2019)

Tomorrow (2015)

The Human Element (2018)

The Social Dilemma (2020)

Kiss the Ground (2020)

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (2018)

Session 1 homework

If you haven't already, please watch Episode 1 of the Journey to a Regenerative Civilization series (and the other episodes if you like!)

You might also like to check out the SEEDS White Deck.

Session 1 recording

https://zoom.us/...

Passcode: L@Hp6S5e

Session 2 prep tasks

Dear friends,

We’re so excited about the upcoming Session 2 of Tools of the Regenerative Renaissance. We’re thrilled to welcome two esteemed guest speakers:

Daniel Wahl is an international consultant and educator specialising in biologically-inspired whole systems design and transformative innovation. He is a biologist (University of Edinburgh and University of California), holds an MSc in Holistic Science (Schumacher College) and a PhD in Design (CSND, University of Dundee, 2006).

Daniel has worked with local and national governments on foresight and futures, facilitated seminars on sustainable development for the UNITAR affiliated training centre CIFAL Scotland, consulted companies like Camper, Ecover and Lush on sustainable innovation, and has co-authored and taught sustainability training courses for Gaia Education, LEAD International and various universities and design schools.

Daniel currently works for Gaia Education and the SMART UIB project of the Universidad de las Islas Baleares. Triarchy Press published his first book, Designing Regenerative Cultures, in 2016.

Precious Phiri is a training and development specialist in environmental issues, regenerative agricultural practices and community organizing. Her main interest is working with rural communities (especially) to fight and reverse poverty, desertification, loss of wildlife, and climate change and its effects. She was born and raised in Zimbabwe at one of the Hwange communities, the same area where her work is currently based. She recently founded an organization called EarthWisdom with the knowledge of her 9 year career as a Senior Facilitator at the Africa Centre for Holistic Management (ACHM) in Zimbabwe. There she directed training for villages in the Hwange Communal Lands region and different institutions that are implementing restorative land and livelihood programs using Holistic Land and Livestock Management.

Her passion is to help rural communities in Africa to reduce poverty, restore dignity, rebuild soils, and restore food and water security for people, livestock and wildlife.

Prep tasks for this session:

Read one or more of these articles suggested by Daniel Wahl:

Redesigning agriculture for food sovereignty and subsidiarity (7 min read)
Regenerative agriculture: effective responses to climate change (7 min read)
Food and Health (6 min read)
A 2061 Timeline: Restoring the Earth (9 min with lots of links and a video of a talk together with our second guest teacher Precious Phiri)

Watch these two 3-minute videos on soil:

A task from Precious Phiri:

As my way of preparation, I would like each participant to write out a statement with these headings, exploring what kind of people must we be to support the quality of life we want way into the future:

What is the life I want now (quality of life– your surroundings, relations, health, values etc– without quantifying)?
Years from now, what will the future look like (spelling out a legacy you envision for future generations in two forms— the environment, and then our behavior/society/cultural norms)?

These statements inspire change in decisions we make in our daily lives– seeking to move towards that life we’ve spelt out.

Please share what you write in #session-2.

Prep on decentralised energy and connectivity:

Read Meet the microgrid, the technology poised to transform electricity
Watch some of this Microgrids and Virtual Power Plants playlist (full playlist 30 mins)
Watch some of this Decentralised Connectivity playlist (full playlist 20 mins)

Optional extras:

Watch the film 2040:

Watch the film Kiss The Ground:

Consider listening to these podcasts:

A Quiet Boycott with David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture) (For The Wild)
Review of the Oxford Real Farming Conference (Farmerama)

Check out these e-books recommended by Precious:

The Foundations of Holistic Management (e-book)

"Usually offered for free for holistic management classes as a foundation. It is a lovely resource to explore ecosystem processes and how to be effective managers of the land. This framework is what has influenced most of what I do and share about."

Whole landscapes, whole communities

"A mini guidebook for creating whole landscapes and whole communities. It was authored by myself and 2 other incredible colleagues of mine. It’s in story form exploring how overtime we’ve lost the rich landscapes, tapping into the wisdom of elders, examples of practices across the African region and a short sample plan for engaging in regeneration work with community groups."

Finally, you could take a look at the books we've added to the Food & Farming section of the reading list (further suggestions welcome!).

Best,

Phoebe & Stephen

Session 2 notes

Regenerative Agriculture

Image from Yes!

Video: Regenerative Agriculture / Regenerative Farming: Regenerative agriculture is an effective way to restore biodiversity and stabilize the climate, but what exactly is it? This video explores three different regenerative practices that have great potential both in food production and in healing the land.
Why Regenerative Organic? videos from Patagonia

Video: Farming Sustainably with Regenerative Agriculture | Restoring Paradise
Video: Why this retired farmer plants trees | Regenerative Agriculture in Spain (Español with English subtitles)
Video: From the Ground Up – Regenerative Agriculture: filmmaker Amy Browne sets out across the dry farming country of South East NSW to trailblazing farmers bringing new life to their land.
Podcasts on Agroforestry

Podcasts on Permaculture

Richard Perkins - Regenerative Revolution: How Permaculture Can Save Failing Food Systems (Future Thinkers)
A Quiet Boycott with David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture) (For The Wild)
Visionary Permaculture with Delvin Solkinson (Expanding Mind)

The Foundations of Holistic Management (e-book)
Article: Regenerative agriculture: effective responses to climate change by Daniel Wahl (7 min read)
Article: For a Sustainable Climate and Food System, Regenerative Agriculture Is the Key (Yes!, Aug 2019)
Map: regen.earth

See also: The Land Institute · Rodale Institute · Savory Institute · The Soil Association · The Timbaktu Collective ·Traditional Native Farmers Association · Colin Tudge · Riverford Agriculture · Richard Perkins · Kiss The Ground · Regenerative Design Institute · Severine von Fleming and Greenhorns · Vandana Shiva · Navdanya Network · Derek Gow – Bringing Back the Beaver · Chris Smaje – A Small Farm Future · Niels Corfield · Designing Edible Spaces · Oxford Real Farming Conference · Open Food Network · Farmerama · No till · Soil farming · Organic · Permaculture · Holistic Farming · Holistic Grazing· Holistic Management · Small-scale · Agroforestry · Rewilding · Seed saving · Seed sovereignty · Food sovereignty · Heritage Grains · Rewilding · Biodynamic · Land justice · No Dig · Mulching

Soil

Image from Interview With Detroit Dirt's Pashon Murray

Video: The Soil Story with Pashon Murray (Español)
Video: 5 Ways to Make Your Garden Regenerative
Film: Kiss The Ground

Rethinking Food Systems

Article: How to feed the world - without killing everything
Report: Localised Routes to Market: Understanding the Community Benefits of Local Organic Food: New research has found that for every pound spent buying organic food through a farmers’ market or veg scheme, almost £3 more is generated in benefits to farmers and growers, their workers, local suppliers, citizens and the environment.
Report: True Cost Accounting (Sustainable Food Trust): The predominant approaches to food production, distribution, retailing and consumption are causing significant damage to the environment, to soil, to the climate, to biodiversity, to rural communities and to public health. We are paying for this damage in hidden ways. Although food appears never to have been cheaper, when we look beneath the surface, we are actually paying far more for it than we might possibly imagine.
Webinar series from HOMEF on Food Systems

Lessons & Impact on our Food and Agricultural Systems by Jackie Iketuonye
Stories of Seeds: Laws, Economics and Market Challenges by Linzi Lewis
The Agriculture that works: Way Forward for our Food Systems and Climate by Million Belay
Rethinking our Food Systems Approach by Nnimmo Bassey

UN Report: Systems Thinking: An Approach For Understanding ‘Eco-Agri-Food Systems’

Regeneration as a tool for community building

Community farmers at Soul Fire Farm

PDF: Whole landscapes, whole communities (by and from Precious Phiri)
Organisation: SOUL FIRE FARM – Ending racism and injustice in the food system

Article: The good old ways: can we still farm like our grandparents?

Community Supported Agriculture

Image from CSA Network UK

Biodynamic Association guide to Community Supported Agriculture
Article: Now is the time to sign up for local community-supported agriculture. Here's why (The Guardian, Apr 2020)
Podcast: #1 CSAs, water buffalo, seed politics and a chicken speak-easy (Farmerama)
Find a CSA (UK)
Article: The growing success of Community Supported Agriculture
Video: Organic Regenerative Farming is the Future of Agriculture | The Future of Food: In this film, organic market gardeners Frank and Josje talk about why the supermarket system doesn't work and how Community Supported Agriculture fits into a new story for food growing. CSA members help farmers to grow the best quality vegetables and to nurture healthy soils by committing to receive a vegetable box every week for a season.

Land restoration

Image: Ecosystem Restoration Camps

Organisation: Ecosystem Restoration Camps
Article: Making the most of the ‘UN Decade on Ecosystems Restoration’: bioregional regenerative development as a deep adaptation pathway (by Daniel Wahl, 9 min)
Article: A 2061 Timeline: Restoring the Earth (9 min with lots of links and a video of a talk with our two guest teachers Daniel Wahl and Precious Phiri)

Appropriate Tech

Organisation: Welcome to Open Food Network
Project: Farm Hack
Article: Food List #46: APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY – FarmHack Blog

See also: Open Food Network · Farmdrop · Sector Mentor · Farmbot

Land Justice & Food Sovereignty

Linocut artwork from Land Justice UK

Organisation: Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF): an ecological think tank organisation advocating for environmental/climate justice and food sovereignty in Nigeria and Africa at large
Book: Farming While Black
Podcast: Leah Penniman: Farming While Black (Farmerama)
Podcast: Leah & Naima Penniman on the Heart of Community Building (The Table Underground)
Article: Soul Fire Farm’s Leah Penniman Explains Why Food Sovereignty Is Central in the Fight for Racial Justice
Article: Redesigning agriculture for food sovereignty and subsidiarity by Daniel Wahl (7 min read)
Video series: Soul Fire Farm Liberation on Land Skillshare Video Series

The Liberation on Land Skillshare Video Series features Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other people of color farmers and land stewards. Paying homage to legacies of African Diasporic and Indigenous wisdom and innovation carried through generations, each “how to” video tutorial demonstrates practical, hands-on skills for making life and livelihood on land, growing food and medicine for our families and communities, and strengthening community food sovereignty.

Building A Planter // Construyendo un Jardinera
Building a Cold Frame // Construyendo un Marco Frío
Building A Planter // Construyendo un Jardinera
Mushroom Cultivation // Cultivo de Hongos
Soil Health // Salud del Suelo
Agroforestry // Agroforestería
Herbal Medicine // Hierbas Medicinales
Seed Keeping // Conservacíon de Semillas
Pasture Raised Poultry // Aves al Pastoreo
Greenhouse Propagation // Propagación en un Invernadero
Bee Keeping // Apicultura
No-Till Beds // Camas sin Labranza
Mushroom Inoculation // Inoculación de Hongos
Honoring The Land // Honrando la Tierra

Organisation: Heritage Grains - Against the Grain Farms
Organisation: Via Campesina : Globalize the Struggle, Globalize Hope! (movement for peasants' rights)
Article: Reflections on diversity, food and farming in Britain

See also: Land Justice UK · Shared Assets · Land In Our Names · Via Campesina · Black Land and Spatial Justice Fund · Community Land Trusts · Parduas · Freedom Farm Cooperative · Gangster Gardener · FarmingWhileBlack.org · Soul Fire Farm · Ecological Land Trust · Slow Food · Landworkers Alliance · A People’s Land Policy · Right to Roam · Three Acres and a Cow

Zero-waste & ethical eating

Podcast: #17 A zero-waste food system, pigness of pigs and sustainable woodlands (Farmerama)
Article: Dan Barber’s long-term mission: to change food and farming for ever ('waste food' entrepreneur)

Video: Dan Barber: A foie gras parable | TED Talk
Article: In 'The Third Plate,' Dan Barber Meets Food Pioneers
Internationally famous zero-waste restaurant: Silo London Restaurant
Film: Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret
Article: Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

Microbiome & health

Image: Nature

Book: I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
Book: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
Books: Dig2Grow: A trilogy of books about the way soil and nature connect all of us to the land. First there was Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations; then The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health; and now, Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life
Podcast: #26: Fungi above & below ground, our microbiome, chicken homes & vines in the UK (Farmerama)
Article: Unearthing the science between soil and gut health: A new field of science is emerging which explores the link between the microbiome within soils and the human gut (Tasting The Future, 2019)
Article: The human microbiome: why our microbes could be key to our health (Guardian, 2018)
Article: Evidence mounts that gut bacteria can influence mood, prevent depression (Science, 2019)
Article: Meet the ‘psychobiome’: the gut bacteria that may alter how you think, feel, and act (Science, 2020)
Article: Food and Health by Daniel Wahl (6 min read)

Microgrids and Virtual Power Plants

Microgrids and Virtual Power Plants YouTube playlist 🍿
Meet the microgrid, the technology poised to transform electricity (Vox, May 2018)
Sustainable microgrids are the future of clean energy (TechCrunch, Mar 2020)
Smart Microgrids: The Future of Sustainable Power (News ) (PCM, Apr 2020)
Tesla has over 120 operational microgrids around the world (Electrek, Oct 2020)
Microgrids: the secret of self-sufficiency (Eni, Sep 2020)

Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves (New York Times, Mar 2017)
Brooklyn Microgrid | Community Powered Energy
Solshare, the Startup for Sharing Solar Energy in Bangladesh (Medium, Mar 2017)
Why microgrids will transform how we use, buy, and sell energy in Sussex and Kent (Brighton & Hove Energy Services Co-operative, Apr 2020)
South Hams Community Housing Project Wins green Energy Funding from the South West Energy Hub (Jun 2020)

The World's Largest Virtual Power Plant (Tesla, Jul 2019)
So, What Exactly Are Virtual Power Plants? (Green Tech Media, Oct 2020)
How ‘Virtual Power Plants’ Will Change The Future Of Electricity (Forbes, Jul 2020)
Tesla Energy Plan from Octopus Energy

Decentralised Connectivity

Decentralised Connectivity YouTube playlist 🍿
Building the People's Internet (Urban Omnibus, Oct 2019)
How To Set Up An Open Mesh Network in Your Neighborhood (Shareable)
NYC Mesh

Freifunk
B4RN: The World's Fastest Rural Broadband
How the 'world's fastest' broadband is coming to rural UK communities that big providers won't touch (Positive News, April 2019)
Launching the Decentralized Wireless Alliance (Medium, May 2020)
Helium is building a peer-to-peer internet-of-things network (Fast Company, Nov 2019)
Decentralized Networks Are The Future Of Telecoms, Should Telcos Be Worried? (Forbes, Nov 2020)

Scuttlebutt: An offline-first, P2P social network
Scuttlebutt: an "off-grid" P2P social network that runs without servers and can fall back to sneakernet
The Nomad Who’s Exploding the Internet Into Pieces
An off-grid social network
Podcast: Secure Scuttlebutt – The “Localized” but Distributed Social Network (Epicenter)
Clients:

Session 2 homework

Review

Check out a few of the links/organisations/projects from the notes above and start/join a thread on something that excites you in #session-2.

Research: What's going on in your area?

Post a link in your #region channel to some kind of local food, energy or connectivity project happening in your area. (You can use this slide of the presentation for ideas.)

Journaling in your learning log (5-10 minutes)

What is your relationship to food? What role does food play in your life? How could it be different?
What is your relationship to soil and growing? How might you like it to evolve?
Can you imagine a future where your community is self-sufficient in food, water and energy? What would need to change?

Optional: Download a Scuttlebutt client and play around

Session 2 slides

https://docs.google.com/...

Session 2 recording

https://zoom.us/...

Passcode: ?Ti3$NHK

Session 3 prep

Dear friends,

In case you missed it, here's the recording of Session 2 (passcode: ?Ti3$NHK).

We hope you're looking forward to Session 3 of Tools of the Regenerative Renaissance as much as we are. Our guest speakers for this session:

Sep Kamvar is a computer scientist and artist, and co-founder of Celo. Previously, Sep was a professor at Stanford and MIT and founded Wildflower Schools, a nationwide network of nonprofit Montessori schools. Sep is the author of three books and over 40 technical publications in the fields of search, peer-to-peer networks, and social computing. His artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. Sep received his Ph.D. in Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics from Stanford University and his A.B. in Chemistry from Princeton University.

Sarah Friend is an artist and software engineer, specializing in blockchain and the P2P web and currently working with Circles. She is a participant in the Berlin Program for Artists, a co-curator of Ender Gallery, an artist residency taking place inside the game Minecraft, an alumni of Recurse Centre, and an organiser of Our Networks, a conference on all aspects of the distributed web.

Please note at the request of one of the speakers the second half of this session will not be recorded.

Prep tasks for this session:

Watch this 12-minute summary of Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics (Charles' work has inspired both SEEDS and Celo)

Read/watch the following:

Celo:

Celo: What if money were beautiful? (video, 1m20)
Celo's community tenets
Optional: Celo: Meet the team working on Celo (video, 2m23)
Optional: The Celo About page

Circles:

Circles Philosophy (video, 4m08)
Optional: Circles FAQ

Regen Network:

Welcome to Regen Network (video, 2m16)
The Regen Network Buyers and Land Stewards pages

DAOs:

Aragon: The Fight for Freedom (video, 5m50)
Optional: DAOHaus homepage (especially the 'How a DAO works' section)

Ethical banking:

How to stop funding fossil fuels by moving to an ethical bank (Extinction Rebellion, 14m read – especially the 5 Steps to Positive Action)
Do some research to find an ethical bank in your country!

Please install these two apps:

Set up a Circles account and share your profile link in the #circles channel on Slack so others can vouch for you
Download Celo's Valora app. I will send 5 Celo Dollars to the first 50 people who send a request to me for that amount (+447740364130, kindly funded by Celo)

Optional extras

More reading/watching on SEEDS (optional, as the videos are a bit longer):

The Journey to a Regenerative Civilization series especially Episode 12: The Evolution of Money - Gold, Dollars, Bitcoin & Seeds (33m)
SEEDS: Global Green New Deal (video, 24m)
The SEEDS White Deck and (if you're feeling brave) the full SEEDS Ecosystem Resources list

Organise a video call with your pod over the next 2 weeks as a mid-way check-in on how you are finding the course, via your pod channel in Slack

Finally, you could take a look at the books we've added to the New Economics section of the reading list.

See you on Wednesday!

Best,

Stephen & Phoebe

Session 3 notes

What is money?

The History of Money (video, Open University)

"Today, the only thing that distinguishes the value of a banknote from any other paper is trust."

Money Definition (Investopedia)

"The value of money is not derived from the materials used to produce the note or coin. Instead, value is derived from the willingness to agree to a displayed value and rely on it for use in future transactions. This is money's primary function: a generally recognized medium of exchange that people and global economies intend to hold, and are willing to accept as payment for current or future transactions."

Fiat Money Definition (Investopedia)

"In contrast to commodity-based money like gold coins or paper bills redeemable for precious metals, fiat money is backed entirely by the full faith and trust in the government that issued it. One reason this has merit is because governments demand that you pay taxes in the fiat money it issues. Since everybody needs to pay taxes, or else face stiff penalties or prison, people will accept it in exchange."

Functions of Money, Economic Lowdown Podcasts | Education | St. Louis Fed (podcast with transcript)
Episode 12: The Evolution of Money - Gold, Dollars, Bitcoin & Seeds (SEEDS video)

"We've never seen liquidity pumped into a crisis to that degree, ever in history. Because the economy during the worst of the pandemic was basically shut down, all this liquidity basically boosted the money supply, but it couldn't find its way into the real economy," she added. "But all this liquidity has to go somewhere, and it went not just into the stock market, but every market has done well – junk bonds, precious metals."

Note the three characteristics of greatest difference:

Sovereign vs. non-sovereign
Centralized/censorable vs. decentralized/censorship-resistant
Dumb vs smart/programmable

Cryptocurrency as the new global reserve asset?

Paying taxes in crypto: the end of fiat?

What is cryptocurrency?

Many of these articles refer to bitcoin but the same arguments mostly apply to cryptocurrency more generally, including cryptocurrencies with minimal energy use (see below)

Visions of Bitcoin: How major Bitcoin narratives changed over time
The Many Faces of Bitcoin
Bitcoin Is the Biggest Big Short
Bitcoin becomes the Flag of Technology
Crypto-Civilization | Balaji Srinivasan (podcast)
Bitcoin Rap Battle Debate: Hamilton vs. Satoshi (video)
From the spacemesh blog:

"Perhaps the most enduring source of conflict within the Bitcoin community derives from incompatible visions of what Bitcoin is and should become. Businesses building on Bitcoin, believing it a cheap global payments network, eventually became nonviable when blocks filled up in 2017. They weren’t necessarily wrong, they just had a vision of the world that ended up being a minority view within the Bitcoin community, and was ultimately not expressed by the protocol on their desired timeline… Visions of Bitcoin are not static. Technological developments, practical realities and real-world events have shaped collective views."

E-cash proof of concept
Cheap p2p payments network
Censorship-resistant digital gold
Private and anonymous darknet currency
Reserve currency for the cryptocurrency industry
Programmable shared database
Uncorrelated financial asset

Censorship resistance

"Censorship-resistance… implies that any party wishing to transact on the network can do so as long as they follow the rules of the network protocol… Censorship-resistance is considered to be one of the main value propositions of Bitcoin. The idea is that no nation-state, corporation, or third party has the power to control who can transact or store their wealth on the network. Censorship-resistance ensures that the laws that govern the network are set in advance and can’t be retroactively altered to fit a specific agenda."

From Who Needs Censorship Resistance? Not Most Of Us (a skeptical take):

"Addressing problems of government repression and privacy vulnerability around the world is going to take more than technology. Policymakers and cryptocurrency experts should join forces as much as possible to help enable environments where human dignity, prosperity, and freedom can coexist."

Energy consumption

"Celo’s mission is to enable a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity — for everyone. This includes our planet. To empower this aspiration, the Celo community envisions a platform with sustainability considerations from the ground up through:

A Proof of Stake consensus algorithm
Carbon offsetting with each block reward
Bounties for regenerative behavior
Natural capital-backed currencies

These span from a reduction in resource usage of the core blockchain infrastructure, to offsetting negative impact through the protocol, and finally the real world experience in cryptocurrency incentivizing regenerative behavior. Each of these builds on top of the next and beautifully paints the picture of a system built to reduce consumption, sustain, and eventually renew environmental resources."

SEEDS is powered by the Telos blockchain, which is 66,000 times more energy efficient than Bitcoin:

Proof of Stake Explained (video)
A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy
Delegated Proof of Stake Explained (video)
What is Delegated Proof of Stake? An Overview of DPoS Blockchains
Explain Delegated Proof of Stake Like I'm 5 (Hacker Noon)

SEEDS

SEEDS
SEEDS constitution
SEEDS White Deck
SEEDS: Global Green New Deal (video, 24m)
The Journey to a Regenerative Civilization series especially Episode 12: The Evolution of Money - Gold, Dollars, Bitcoin & Seeds (33m)
Rieki Cordon & Stephen Reid on Seeds as Money (podcast)
The full SEEDS Ecosystem Resources list

SEEDS is a new, global, blockchain-based payment platform and currency designed to incentivise and reward behaviours by individuals, companies and communities that support an equitable and ecologically regenerative civilisation.

No one person or organisation is behind it; it is collectively owned by the holders of the SEEDS currency, and run by a decentralised team of hundreds of individuals across the globe.

Over the next 12-18 months, SEEDS intends to reach price stability relative to purchasing power. To maintain this price stability as the SEEDS economy grows further, new SEEDS will need to be minted. How these newly minted SEEDS are spent will be decided via a participatory budgeting process. Any user of SEEDS can make a proposal, and all 'citizens' of SEEDS vote on which proposals are funded.

A version of this participatory budgeting process is already up and running, and has resulted in the distribution of 50m SEEDS (currently worth £1m) to more than 60 different projects worldwide. Examples of funded projects and organisations include:

Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance, a six-week, better-than-free course focused on tools and techniques that can be used and enjoyed right now for healthier, happier lives, thriving local economies, a fairer distribution of power and resources, and the healing of the planet
Forests Without Frontiers, a non-profit dedicated to planting trees and reforesting degraded landscapes with support from a network of artists and musicians, as well as businesses and individuals working to become carbon-positive
The Sisters, a global network of women and women’s organisations, working together to create a more peaceful and sustainable future

Celo

Celo
Valora wallet
Celo: What if money were beautiful? (video, 1m20)
Celo's community tenets
An introductory guide to Celo. | The Celo Blog
Celo: Meet the team working on Celo (video, 2m23)
The Celo About page
Celo Camp 2020: Celo's Values with Sep Kamvar

"Currently, the world’s financial system excludes roughly 1 in 3 adults. At the same time, 6 billion smartphones will be connected by 2020 as these devices spread throughout emerging markets. Cryptocurrencies accessible on mobile phones hold great promise in bringing financial inclusion to the world’s underbanked.

Despite this potential, cryptocurrencies have still not significantly impacted these populations over the last 10 years. Using cryptocurrencies is still much too complex for the average person and price volatility makes them undesirable for merchants to accept as payment. Additionally, blockchain networks are often inaccessible to unbanked and underbanked populations due to data constraints from their mobile providers.

Inspired by extensive research in emerging markets and developing countries — Tanzania, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya — Celo is building a mobile-first blockchain platform alongside a suite of financial tools accessible to anyone with a basic smartphone. On this platform, value can be transferred faster and cheaper than traditional bank wires using globally accessible technology. Since cryptocurrencies are completely programmable, a wide array of financial services can be created without costly intermediaries."

5 potential innovations on money presented by Sep:

Universal Basic Income
Demurrage (decay in value encouraging circulation)
Natural capital backed currencies
Ecology of money: local, regional, national, sectoral
Debt-free money

Circles

"Circles is an alternative economic system that acts a bit like a basic income. Rather than wait for someone else, we can build our own economic systems to support each other, and in effect, give each other a basic income. Circles is intended to be a new kind of exchange, completely different than any kind of money in use today. It comes unconditionally, and grows in value based on communities. Circles tokens move through communities through ‘trust connections’.

The goals of this are to foster local economic interactions, and to value those things which are not seen, are invisible, or are not valued under our current system. Circles is building new networks to acknowledge those fundamental things that in the current system don't have a euro value."

Regen Network

"We bring together two cutting edge technologies: satellite driven earth observation science, and blockchain technology, to create the foundation of a new digital monitoring, reporting and verification system for ecological health."

Participatory budgeting, DAOs, DHOs & DisCOs

From What is participatory budgeting? A 60-second guide:

"Participatory budgeting comes in all shapes and sizes, but basically it looks like this:

Ideas are generated about how a budget should be spent
People vote for their priorities
The projects with the most votes gets funded"

Online tool for participatory budgeting: Cobudget

"Cobudget is a tool and a methodology that makes resource allocation participatory. It enables all members of an organization to get involved in decision-making by proposing projects and allocating funds to the proposals they like."

DAOs, DHOs & DisCOs: blockchain-based participatory budgeting

What's a DAO?
Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) (Binance Academy)
Aragon manifesto

Hypha DHO (organisation leading the development of SEEDS)
Welcoming Hypha's Decentralized Human Organisation
What is the Hypha DHO? (video)
Journey to a Regenerative Civilization Episode 11: Regenerative Villages

From Aragon's What's a DAO?:

"A DAO is an internet-native entity with no central management which is regulated by a set of automatically enforceable rules on a public blockchain, and whose goal is to take on a life of its own and incentivize people to achieve a shared common mission."

From Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), Binance Academy:

"While the idea of decentralized organizations is not new, using smart contracts to automate some of their working mechanisms and functionalities is what makes DAO a useful and interesting concept."

DAOs allow people to:

Attract and incentivize contributors: DAOs incentivize contributors by giving them a say in the future of the organization.
Pool funds: DAOs use cryptocurrencies, allowing people all around the world to pool funds.
Govern those funds together: DAOs allow people to collaboratively channel common funds towards common missions.

What are DAOs good for?

DAOs are global: DAOs allow people to come together and work on common missions just as easy as joining a chat group.
DAOs are transparent: DAOs allow anyone with an internet connection to check their members, financials and decisions taken.
DAOs are fluid: DAOs scale their workforce dynamically. There are low barriers to entry, allowing new members to join.

From DAOHaus

DAO platforms

DAOhaus

DAOHaus Version 2 is Ready

Colony

Aragon

Blockchain-based match funding

Panvala

From Meet Niran: The Civic Champion. Learn more about the CEO of Panvala

"Panvala is the sustainable treasury for communities to share. The share of PAN you hold is the share of Panvala's subsidies that your communities can enjoy in perpetuity… PAN is a digital endowment for your community.

There are currently 27 communities in the Panvala League who allocate 75% of Panvala’s quarterly inflation using donation matching, with 10.26x matching last quarter. We believe that Panvala’s treasury grows stronger the more we share it, so we aim to grow the Panvala League from sixteen communities to thousands."

"Panvala’s economics are modeled on Bitcoin, which funds the network using inflationary block rewards. When you hold BTC, you’re opting into a system where you know your holdings will be diluted up to the maximum supply of 21 million BTC to fund block rewards for miners. Similarly, Panvala’s stakers have opted into a system where they will be diluted up to a maximum supply of 100 million PAN, and the Panvala League’s communities allocate that inflation themselves."

Gitcoin

"Think of Gitcoin Grants as Ethereum’s largest crowdfunding platform – a crypto-enabled Patreon that is focused on financing the infrastructure of the new open financial internet. In the past 18 months over $4.5 million in funding has been distributed to public goods on Gitcoin Grants, culminating with $1 million given in the first two weeks of December."

Ethical banking

How to stop funding fossil fuels by moving to an ethical bank (Extinction Rebellion, 14m read – especially the 5 Steps to Positive Action)
Banks and their environment impacts (video)
Change your bank, change the world - Lily Cole (video)
Triodos Bank

Radical Philanthropy & Decolonising Wealth

Soul Fire Farm - Equity Guidelines and Reflection Questions for Foundations & Donors
Funding Movements by Ayni Institute
Knock, Knock. Radical Philanthropy Calling by Guerilla Foundation who is doing leading work in this area
Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva
Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas
Peter Koenig : 'moneywork' - very highly regarded practitioner who works with people to heal trauma around money and uncover hidden biases and wounds in relation to money
Great Twitter thread from Tom Nixon on money work
Resource Generation - a movement and multiracial membership community of young people (18-35) with wealth and/or class privilege committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power.

Session 3 homework

Review

Check out a few of the links/organisations/projects from the notes above and start/join a thread on something that excites you in #session-3.

Journaling in your learning log (5-10 minutes)

How would the world be different if every person was paid a Universal Basic Income sufficient to cover their needs? How would your life be different?
How would the world be different if stored money (both paper and electronic) decayed like organic matter?

Optional: Join the Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance (Feb-Mar 2021) DAO on DAOHaus

Install Metamask
Add the xDai chain to Metamask
Get some XDAI on the xDai chain. Either:

Buy XDAI directly with fiat via Ramp, or
(Advanced users) Get some DAI on the Ethereum mainnet and transfer it to the xDai chain using the xDai Bridge

Exchange (wrap) at least 5 XDAI into WXDAI on Honeyswap
Make a Membership Proposal with the following parameters:

Title: [your name] would like to join the DAO

Shares requested: 1

Token tribute: 1 WXDAI

Session 3 recording

https://zoom.us/...

Passcode: +GUt@a86

Session 4 prep

Dear friends,

We hope you're looking forward to Session 4 of Tools of the Regenerative Renaissance as much as we are. We're so excited to welcome the guest teacher for this session, who is a long-time collaborator and practitioner of horizontal organising:

Samantha Slade is the author of Going Horizontal – Creating a Non-Hierarchical Organization, One Practice at a Time. Samantha pioneers culture-driven practices and operational tools for the future of work including Teal organizations. A “social designer", Samantha supports teams, organizations and ecosystems to grow participatory leadership approaches, collaborative practices and prototype mindsets.

A purpose driven entrepreneur, Samantha co-founded the Percolab network and the coworking space Ecto. For over 20 years, she has been putting her background in anthropology and learning design in service of innovation work in North America and internationally. Emergent process, design thinking, ethnography and a vast range of participatory approaches are her tools. Samantha is actively engaged in the international commons movement and the Art of Hosting community.

Prep tasks for this session:

Read:

Please read Chapter One of "Going Horizontal" (PDF here). Optionally read also the Introduction and Chapter Two.

Watch these three videos:

Optional extras:

Check out the Leadermorphosis podcast, recommended episodes:

If you haven't already, please organise a video call with your pod over the next 2 weeks as a mid-way check-in on how you are finding the course, via your pod channel in Slack.

See you on Wednesday!

Best,

Phoebe & Stephen

Session 4 notes

Slides

From Phoebe: These are slides from lectures and talks I have given in the past - I am sharing with you in confidence, please do not share further.

Slides from Session 4: TRR - Decentralised Organising & Horizontal Leadership - Phoebe and Sam
Slides from a lecture to MA students at Schumacher College in 2019 - MA in E4T Schumacher College Lecture: Networked and Distributed Organisations covers Collective Intelligence, New Ways of Working, Enspiral and Distributed Organisations, Web3 and Blockchain, DAOs and Network Societies.

Toolkits

Going Horizontal by Samantha Slade
Leadermorphosis Ep. 10: Samantha Slade on practicing self-management

Platform Design Toolkit

Reinventing Organisations, Teal & the work of Frederic Laloux

The new Reinventing Organisations Wiki
The excellent Reinventing Organisations YouTube channel with dozens of bitesize videos
Frederic Laloux on Soulful Organisations (7m)
Talk followed by Q&A by Frederic Laloux on Reinventing Organizations (1 hour 40 min)

Enspiral, Ouishare & Networked Communities

The Enspiral site
What is this thing called Enspiral (video, 2m)
An Impact Report of the Enspiral Network (2020): blog piece and full report
What is Enspiral - an FAQ by P2P Foundation in 2014
Enspiral Tales blog
Enspiral Handbook

Key Ingredients of Modern Communities for Impact by Enspiral's Chelsea Robinson
Network-ing Does Not Equal Network Weaving

Case studies of horizontal organisations

See the Cases for Inspiration page in the Reinventing Organisations Wiki

Buurtzorg: Dutch home-care organization with 15,000 employees

Buurtzorg on the Reinventing Organisations Wiki
The Buurtzorg Model
Leadermorphosis Ep. 26 Buurtzorg and the power of self-managed teams of nurses

"Buurtzorg is a remarkable organisation: 15,000 employees working in 850 self-managed teams to deliver home care to patients in the Netherlands. The results, including both patient and employee satisfaction, are so outstanding that Buurtzorg-inspired models are popping up all over the world. I got the chance to talk to three nurses from Team Houten, all of whom came from a traditional, large healthcare company, and hear firsthand what it’s like to work in such a high-freedom, high-responsibility environment. Listen to this wonderful conversation with three passionate and charismatic women – Marian, Chila and Jolanda – and discover what they’ve learned over the last nine years about tough conversations, teamwork, and personal development."

Morning Star: supplies 40% of the U.S. tomato market

Morning Star on the Reinventing Organisations Wiki
Morning Star's Success Story: No Bosses, No Titles, No Structural Hierarchy
7 ways Morning Star Tomatoes helps employees become high performers
If Self-Management Is Such a Great Idea, Why Aren't More Companies Doing It?
First, Let's Fire All the Managers (from 2011 - it’s old!)

Haier: global leader in white goods

Haier profile on Peter Fisk's Gamechangers

"Currently, Haier comprises of 200+ customer-facing microenterprises and 3,800+ service and support microenterprises. It feels like an ecosystem of start-ups; Haier calls it the RenDanHeYi model. This model leaves only three different kinds of roles within Haier; the ‘platform owner‘, the ‘microenterprise owner‘ and the ‘entrepreneur‘.

Each microenterprise enjoys power over its decision-making, personnel selection, and profit distribution. The microenterprises are no longer linked by administrative connection, but by a market-driven contracting mechanism."

"Doug Kirkpatrick, co-founder of The Self-Management Institute, original team member of Morning Star and author of “Beyond Empowerment”, shares his insights about common misconceptions of self-management, what it really takes to have self-management work, and the example of Haier (the largest appliance manufacturer in the world) in China which is organised into 4,000 self-managing teams."

Leadermorphosis podcasts on other organisations

Leadermorphosis Ep. 53 Jabi Salcedo and Dunia Reverter on K2K's 10 keys to becoming a self-managing organisation: Spanish consultancy that has transformed more than 85 organisations from traditional to self-managing over the last two decades

Leadermorphosis Ep. 39 Beetroot's founders on purpose, self-management, and shocking people with trust: remarkable self-managed IT company set up in 2012 to create social impact in Ukraine
Leadermorphosis Ep. 42 Ved Krishna on self-management in an Indian paper factory: compostable tableware manufacturer based in Faizabad, India that has been experimenting with organisational self-management since 1999 (See also Mango Season - self-management in India)

Holacracy & Sociocracy

Holacracy.org
What is Holacracy? (video, 1m48)
Here's how the 'self-management' system that Zappos is using actually works
Holacracy: A Radical New Approach to Management by Brian Robertson at TEDxGrandRapids (video, 18m20)
"Holacracy" by Brian Robertson - BOOK SUMMARY (video, 4m45)
Leadermorphosis episodes with the founder of Holacracy: Ep. 31 Brian Robertson on Holacracy and self-managing organisations (Part 1) and Ep. 32 Brian Robertson on Holacracy and self-managing organisations (Part 2)

What is sociocracy? (video, 19m24)
A very brief introduction to sociocracy by Harri Kaloudis
Sociocracy 3.0
Sociocracy for All

Roles & leadership in horizontal organisations

Alanna Irving's model of Full Circle Leadership

What’s all the fuss about roles in horizontal teams and organizations? by Samantha Slade
How we enable switching roles and positions by Manuel Küblböc
How we are structured in autonomous teams by Manuel Küblböck
Onboarding at Gini by Susanna Lussen

Full Circle Leadership by Alanna Irving
Full Circle Leadership - Alanna Irving (video, 15m23)
Extending Full Circle Leadership by Alanna Irving
Reconstructing the Idea of Leadership by Alicia Trepat Pont
The Dark Sides of Leadership by Alanna Irving
Leading in Uncertain Times: Leadership as a Quest by Sahana
How we lead. in a self-organized organization by Manuel Küblböck

The role of Source

Whose Idea Was it Anyway? The Role of Source in Organizations

"Today’s topic looks at the importance of identifying the starting point of an idea or a project. Who was the original creator, the inventor, the initiator (which I shall refer to as the Source)? How are upsets in teams connected to this concept of source? Why do some projects simply not work and why do we often react miffed and protective when it comes to sharing our ideas? And how does it influence hierarchies? Naming the source is not only important to create balance in teams, projects and organizations, but also in our personal relationships and in dealing with us. When I acknowledge the source in someone else, we work together more joyfully and create fewer misunderstandings. If I feel and honour the source in myself and follow it’s natural flow, I am more likely to do “my thing” and experience more wellbeing."

Running great meetings & effective decision making

Remote Working: 5 tips for Meetings by Marina Lynch
If you're running Zoom/Teams/Hangout meetings please spend 5 minutes reading this first by Geoff Mulgan

3 tools from sociocracy to use right away, plus magic phrases
Consensus Decision Making - guide by Seeds for Change
How we make decentralized decisions by Manuel Küblböck
HOW WE MAKE DECISIONS (Autonomic Co-operative)
Advice process. A simple tool for group decision making by Loomio
Generative Decision Making Process by Samantha Slade
Sociocracy 3.0 - Consent Decision Making Demonstration (12 minutes)

Feedback & growth

How to give and receive feedback in an agile organization by Manuel Küblböck
Feedback isn’t just what you think it is by Ria Baeck (Percolab Droplets)
Speedbacking. Having a culture of individual feedback by Joshua Vial (Enspiral Tales)

Salaries, budgeting & relating to money

Announcing our Playbook: why we’re defaulting to transparency
What is the pay system you dream of? Beyond the taboo of money by Samantha Slade
Sharing Money With Friends: What Could Go Wrong? by Rich Decibels
Manas Tech Handbook
How to set your own salary by Evgeny Shadchnev
Want to reinvent how you do salaries in your organisation? by Lisa Gill
Performance Evaluation and Salary Setting by Nicola Heckler

Peter Koenig : 'moneywork' - very highly regarded practitioner who works with people to heal trauma around money and uncover hidden biases and wounds in relation to money
Money is a story: let’s tell a new one by Kate Beecroft (Greaterthan)
Great Twitter thread from Tom Nixon on moneywork

Culture & relating

A Manifesto of Being and Working Together by Phoebe Tickell (Enspiral Tales)
Going from a Culture of Evaluation to a Culture of Dialogue by Doha Moghrabi (Percolab Droplets)
Listening can be just the opposite of what we might think: Four techniques for deep listening by Samantha Slade (Percolab Droplets)
Gini’s Empathy Handbook
Rhythms: Making space for teams to self-manage by Optimi (Enspiral Tales)

By Manuel Küblböck:

Shared care & organising in pods

Courage Before Hope: A Proposal to Weave Emotional and Economic Microsolidarity by Rich Bartlett
Microsolidarity site
Solidarity pods: Self-organised support groups for compulsive world changers by Nigel Taptiklis

Conflict, resolution & endings

Non-violent Communication website
A Collective Concept for Conflict Resolution by Samantha Slade

Why we need to be prepared to close our organisations down by Gina Rembe (Enspiral Tales)
Stewarding Loss - a UK based collective developing tools and practices for ending organisations well

Session 4 homework

Two homework tasks:

Choose two of the three practices we covered in Session 4 (Making proposals, Trigger log and Transparency with finances) and practice with a friend, peer or colleague in a 15 minute session. Write a small reflection about the experience in the #session-4 Slack channel. (30 min)
Choose one section from the Session 4 course notes and dive into at least 3 of the recommended links. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, try and read all the links in the sections! Write a short reflection in #media-articles or #media-podcasts about one link you read or listen to. (30-60 min)

Optional:

Arrange to meet up in a group of 4 people and play a few rounds of the Going Horizontal Card Game. The instructions are on the webpage linked. The game involves telling stories from your experience of work and collaboration related to one of the seven domains of practice of Going Horizontal. The others in the group practice deep listening through a certain lens. They then share back what they heard in your story. Everyone then shares gratitude and insights. It’s a great game :) (30-60 min)

Session 4 recording

https://zoom.us/...

Passcode: Hb4@xUV7

Session 5 prep

Dear friends,

You can now find the notes for session 4 in the Google Doc. The recording is available here (passcode: Hb4@xUV7).

A reminder that we have a bonus session with Charles Eisenstein on Friday 12th March, 6pm-8pm UK time! Put it in your calendar :)

In the meantime, we hope you're looking forward to Session 5 of Tools of the Regenerative Renaissance as much as we are. We're delighted to welcome two guest experts:

Trebor Scholz is a scholar-activist and Associate Professor for Culture & Media at The New School in New York City. His book Uber-Worked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy (Polity, 2016) develops an analysis of the challenges posed by digital labor and introduces the concept of platform cooperativism as a way of joining the peer-to-peer and co-op movements with online labor markets while insisting on communal ownership and democratic governance.

Derek Razo is an entrepreneur and technologist with a passion for social change. He is a cofounder at Purpose Network, which uses innovative financing and ownership solutions to help companies stay independent and mission driven for the long term. Previously, Derek has co-founded international open-source projects, worked with the world’s largest NGOs to pioneer new models for funding innovation, and helped build technology products used in democratic uprisings and grassroots efforts around the world.

Prep tasks for this session:

As a bridge from the last session:

11 Practical Steps Towards Healthy Power Dynamics at Work, taking note of Step 11. Share the ownership!:

"My concern is that words like “non-hierarchical” and “self-organising” [can] create a smokescreen, masking the real power dynamics that are ultimately determined by the ownership structure."

Content from Coops UK:

Co-operate | A film to celebrate #coopdifference (video, 1m20)
What is a Co-operative? (video, 1m50)
The pages What is a co-op?, Co-op values and principles and Types of co-ops

Steward Ownership:

Purpose's page on Steward Ownership
Pages 6-19 of Steward-Ownership: Rethinking ownership in the 21st century

Platform Co-operatives:

An introduction to platform co-ops · Stephen Reid

Optional podcasts/longer videos:

See you on Wednesday!

Best,

Stephen & Phoebe

Session 5 notes

Perspectives on property/ownership

What Is Property? (Investopedia)
Noam Chomsky on property rights, equality and democracy (video)

Umair Haque on artificial scarcity (Medium)
Charles Eisenstein: A Beautiful World of Abundance (Resurgence)
Own Your Data Foundation

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon from Proudhon: What is Property? (video, 17m)

In his 1840 book What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government, Proudhon claimed "Property is theft!" (La propriété, c'est le vol! – see this video for more).

From Is Property Theft? (Psychology Today, 2019):

"Interestingly, a careful reading of Proudhon shows that he might have had some workable, realistic ideas, consistent with human nature and evolution. He did not believe that economic change could be obtained by revolution, but only by gradually increasing acceptance of his proposals. He believed that some wealth inequality was inevitable and acceptable; his long-term goal was simply decreasing grotesque wealth inequality. As an anarchist, he did not see government ownership of the means of production (socialism) as a solution, although he accepted the inevitability of government because there will always be people who want to regulate the behavior of others. His goal was simply to minimize governmental control. His hope was that people would see and embrace the wisdom of economic mutualism, which involves voluntary, cooperative, mutual assistance among laborers, resulting in benefits to all workers. There would be no violent overthrow of the government or economic system, but rather a gradual replacement of the politico-economic system as mutualism slowly increased over time."

Ursula K. Le Guin & The Dispossessed

Illustration of Ursula K. Le Guin as a young writer from

Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds

The Dispossessed

Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (2018 documentary film)

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

ursulakleguin.com
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin (2018 documentary film. Those in the UK can watch on BBC iPlayer)
Legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin dies at 88 (The Verge)
Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds (Humanities Magazine)
The Fantastic Ursula K. Le Guin (The New Yorker)
Ten Things I Learned from Ursula K. Le Guin (Paris Review)
Ursula Le Guin: 'Wizardry is artistry' | Ursula K Le Guin (The Guardian)
Hopping Through Time With Ursula K. Le Guin (Huffington Post)

From ‘The Dispossessed’ By Ursula K. Le Guin: An Embodiment of Postmodern Anarchism ?:

"The existence of an explicitly anarchist society on the moon of Anarres has led many critics of The Dispossessed to focus only on the traditional anarchist themes of this novel. Yet the truly radical legacy of this novel is that it transgresses the boundaries of conventional anarchist thinking to create new forms of anarchism that are entirely relevant to life in the postmodern condition. Le Guin updates the conventional anarchist project and positions anarchism to move into the third millennium...

The strongest and most direct statement of Le Guin’s anarchist vision appears in her 1974 novel The Dispossessed. In her attempt to embody anarchism, Le Guin constructs a highly traditional anarchist society on the planet Anarres. Drawing on the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anarchist writers Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, she imagines a society [without] the state, organized religion, and private property."

From The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin – Simple Lines:

"A key concept in the social imaginary on Anarres is the idea of society as an ecology, within which people have a ‘cellular function’ – a way of living that is their ideal contribution to the whole. This is a vision of economics built on biology and ecology rather than physics and mechanics... The central values of this society are solidarity and freedom. There is also a rejection of the idea of private property. This runs counter to our familiar notions of individuals and their stuff. This ideology is manifested when people are accused of being ‘propertarians’, or of ‘egoising’ when talking about themselves. The emphasis on non-possessiveness is also found in a sentence such as ‘You can share the handkerchief I use’ [as opposed to, 'You can borrow my handkerchief']. Le Guin skillfully investigates the tensions that emerge between individual desires and a sense of the common need."

From Ursula Le Guin: 'Wizardry is artistry' | Ursula K Le Guin (The Guardian, 2014):

"The “dispossessed” of Anarres are, of course, those who attempt to live without property, but also without a certain kind of language. They have no possessive pronouns (not “you can borrow my handkerchief”, but “you can share the handkerchief I use”) and abjure possessive sexuality. “The language Shevek spoke, the only one he knew, lacked any proprietary idioms for the sexual act … The usual verb, taking only a plural subject … meant something two people did, not something one person did, or had.” Like much of Le Guin’s writing, this is marked by her engagement with the women’s movement, and the notion that a patriarchal language will produce a patriarchal world."

The Commons

From About the Commons:

"The commons is a new way to express a very old idea—that some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good of all.

The commons are the things that we inherit and create jointly, and that will (hopefully) last for generations to come. The commons consists of gifts of nature such as air, oceans and wildlife as well as shared social creations such as libraries, public spaces, scientific research and creative works."

The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons

Is The 'Tragedy of The Commons' a Myth? (Big Think)
The Tragedy of "The Tragedy of the Commons" (Scientific American)
The Non-Tragedy of the Commons (New York Times)
Ending The Tragedy of The Commons (video, 4m)

“Fifty years ago, University of California professor Garrett Hardin penned an influential essay in the journal Science. Hardin saw all humans as selfish herders: we worry that our neighbors’ cattle will graze the best grass. So, we send more of our cows out to consume that grass first. We take it first, before someone else steals our share. This creates a vicious cycle of environmental degradation that Hardin described as the “tragedy of the commons.”"

"The facts are not on Hardin’s side. For one, he got the history of the commons wrong. As Susan Cox pointed out, early pastures were well regulated by local institutions. They were not free-for-all grazing sites where people took and took at the expense of everyone else.

Many global commons have been similarly sustained through community institutions. This striking finding was the life’s work of Elinor Ostrom, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics (technically called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). Using the tools of science—rather than the tools of hatred—Ostrom showed the diversity of institutions humans have created to manage our shared environment."

Managing A Commons

Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing A Commons (OntheCommons.org)
Elinor Ostrom's 8 rules for managing the commons (The Earthbound Report)
Sustainable earth: Nobel laureate, Elinor Ostrom, on how can we manage common-pool resources (video, 3m)

"The commons are those things that we all own together, that are neither privately owned, nor managed by the government on our behalf. Some are large scale and somewhat abstract, such as the English language. Others are local and more tangible, such as fishing rights, and they need more careful management. Our current political paradigm is sceptical of the commons: if nobody takes responsibility for something, it will inevitably be abused. So either it needs to be in private hands, or run by public institutions.

There are good examples of commons though – irrigation networks or pastures that have been managed by and for ordinary people for generations, and they’re still functioning. There are also examples of wrecked pastures and over-exploited fishing grounds, failed commons where a resource was mismanaged and destroyed. Elinor Ostrom studied both kinds, and drew up a list of principles for running the commons:"

Commons need to have clearly defined boundaries. In particular, who is entitled to access to what? Unless there’s a specified community of benefit, it becomes a free for all, and that’s not how commons work.
Rules should fit local circumstances. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to common resource management. Rules should be dictated by local people and local ecological needs.
Participatory decision-making is vital. There are all kinds of ways to make it happen, but people will be more likely to follow the rules if they had a hand in writing them. Involve as many people as possible in decision-making.
Commons must be monitored. Once rules have been set, communities need a way of checking that people are keeping them. Commons don’t run on good will, but on accountability.
Sanctions for those who abuse the commons should be graduated. Ostrom observed that the commons that worked best didn’t just ban people who broke the rules. That tended to create resentment. Instead, they had systems of warnings and fines, as well as informal reputational consequences in the community.
Conflict resolution should be easily accessible. When issues come up, resolving them should be informal, cheap and straightforward. That means that anyone can take their problems for mediation, and nobody is shut out. Problems are solved rather than ignoring them because nobody wants to pay legal fees.
Commons need the right to organise. Your commons rules won’t count for anything if a higher local authority doesn’t recognise them as legitimate.
Commons work best when nested within larger networks. Some things can be managed locally, but some might need wider regional cooperation – for example an irrigation network might depend on a river that others also draw on upstream.

Tool libraries

A family borrowing equipment to go camping

Transport-as-a-service, homes-as-a-service?

A Kibbo van

Co-Living Meets Van Life at Kibbo (note: not a co-op!)
RethinkX's transportation thesis:

"By 2030, within 10 years of regulatory approval of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), 95 percent of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles owned by fleets, not individuals, in a new business model we call “transport-as-a-service” (TaaS)."

Who owns the robots(/cars/vans)?

Who Will Own the Robots? (MIT Technology Review)
Who Owns the Robots Rules the World (Harvard Magazine)

"If the distribution of capital remains narrow, as it is now, the main beneficiaries of robotization would be a small number of wealthy owners, while the living standards of the vast majority of workers would suffer. That would exacerbate the growth of inequality, and risk producing a new robot-age feudalism, with workers captive to a small number of overlords who own robotic technology. If, to the contrary, people shared in the ownership of the machines that replace them at work, everyone’s freedom and living standards would improve."

Ownership of organisations

There are two distinct types ownership rights relevant to organisations:

Voting rights: who gets to make the decisions (most importantly, who can fire you!)
Economic rights: who has a claim on company profits

Traditional

Worker-led/steward-led

Steward-ownership structures commit companies to two key principles:

Self-governance: For-profit businesses are often beholden to the interests of shareholders who aren’t involved in the operation or management of the business. Steward ownership structures keep control with the people who are actively engaged in or connected to the business. Voting shares can only be held by stewards, i.e., people in or close the business, and the business itself can never be sold.
Profits serve purpose: For steward-owned companies, profits are a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves. All the profits generated by the company are either reinvested in the business, used to repay investors, shared with stakeholders, or donated to charity.

(from Steward-Ownership: Rethinking ownership in the 21st century)

Golden shares

Golden Share Definition (Investopedia)
Armin Steuernagel on how to keep a mission driven company independent and raise capital (podcast)

"A golden share is a type of share that gives its shareholder veto power over changes to the company's charter. It holds special voting rights, giving its holder the ability to block another shareholder from taking more than a ratio of ordinary shares."

From Steward-Ownership: Rethinking ownership in the 21st century:

"The Golden Share holds veto rights on all decisions that would effectively undermine the company’s commitment to steward-ownership. This veto-share is held by a “veto-service” foundation such as the Purpose Foundation. To be a veto-share provider, a foundation must be self-owned and have clear provisions in its own charter that enable it to use this veto right

to protect the provisions of steward-ownership."

Case studies

Equal Care Co-op: a multi-stakeholder platform co-operative

Equal Care Co-op are building a new, co-owned social care platform that puts care givers and receivers in charge. By incorporating as a multi-stakeholder co-operative, their digital product and accompanying service is owned by and accountable to the communities using and sustaining it. They arrived at the platform co-op model as a response to systemic inequities within the social care system, seeing it as a practical route to centering choice, power and ownership with the two most important people in care – the person giving and the person getting support.

Supported member: You are being regularly supported by Equal Care Co-op (whether that's voluntary or paid support)

Advocate member: Your relative or friend is being supported by Equal Care Co-op but they cannot be a Member themselves.

Investor member: You support our aims and have invested in our Community Share Offer.

Worker member: You are regularly contributing your labour to Equal Care Co-op, whether that's paid or voluntary work.

Fairbnb

"Rather than faceless investors, the platform will be owned by those who use it and are impacted by its use: hosts, guests, local business owners, neighbours. Created and governed by citizens, FairBnB will keep profits in communities and ensure decisions are made for the good of neighbourhoods, not their exploitation."

Eva

DAOs, again

DAOs allow the separation of voting and economic rights

DAOHaus DAOs (and other Moloch v2 DAOs) clearly differentiate between voting rights (which they call just 'shares') and economic rights (which they call 'Loot'):

"To allow the DAO to issue non-voting shares, we introduce the concept of Loot. Just like shares, Loot is requested via proposal, issued to specific members and non-transferrable, and can be redeemed (via ragequit) on par with shares for a proportional fraction of assets in the Guild Bank. However, Loot does not count towards votes and DAO members with only Loot will not be able to sponsor proposals or vote on them."

Blockchain-Based Limited Liability Companies (BBLLCs)

Limited companies, owned by DAOs – a bridge between the legacy legal and crypto worlds

From Blockchain Companies Should Be Banging Down the BBLLC Doors:

"The blockchain provides an incredible opportunity for changing the way organizations operate. There is an explosion of thinking about how to structure productive interaction, how to bring people together to accomplish something. In terms of company formation, the blockchain is allowing a whole new universe of ways to structure things: more loosely, with more participation, where people are polled immediately, where an entity can accumulate votes, assign different values to things, or distribute rewards automatically. Things that used to be hard to do in terms of direct tracking of participation are now made easy.

But if those organizations exist outside legacy legal frameworks, these innovative companies could find themselves forced into structures they didn’t choose with results that are disastrous for their continued existence. Don’t fight the law – find a way to engage it intentionally, and take advantage of opportunities like the Vermont BBLLC that will help you mold the law to support the innovation you are so good at creating."

Session 5 homework

Review

Check out a few of the links/organisations/projects from the notes above and start/join a thread on something that excites you in #session-5.

Research

Find a worker co-op/platform co-op/steward-owned business in your region or connected to a topic of interest, and share details of it in #session-5.

Session 5 recording

https://zoom.us/...

Passcode: A00D?=&7

Session 6 prep

Dear friends,

Thanks again for a fabulous session together last night, we hope you enjoyed it. The recording of session 5 is available here. Passcode: A00D?=&7

Session 5 homework

Check out a few of the links/organisations/projects from the notes above and start/join a thread on one article, project or topic that excites you in #session-5.
Find a worker co-op/platform co-op/steward-owned business in your region or connected to a topic of interest, and share details of it in #session-5.

Session with Charles Eisenstein

Unfortunately, Charles needs to reschedule. We are waiting to hear about a date/time that works for him (hopefully between Friday-Tuesday) and will let you know the details as soon as possible.

Session 6

For our final session we have decided to do something a bit different. As there’s so much wisdom and experience in the room, we’d like to invite you to take the stage and be the ‘guest experts’!

We’re inviting five of you to make a 5-to-7-minute presentation in the first half of the session, on a project or inquiry related to the course material. This could be something you were working on before, or it could be something new you’ve enjoyed learning about during the course. These five people will be the 'guest experts' that the rest of you will be free to quiz!

If you'd like to present, please post a short proposal in #session-6. Everyone is invited to 'thumbs up' the proposals that they are particularly excited about, and the five proposals with the most thumbs will be presented at the session.

If your proposal lands outside the top five, we still invite you to record a 5-to-7-minute video that we will be pleased to share with the rest of course (Loom.com is a good way of doing this).

In the final session we'll also work out how we'd all like to stay in touch following the end of the course, explain opportunities for further coming together, and offer clarifications on course requirements and final deadlines.

Best wishes,

Stephen & Phoebe

Session 6 recording

https://zoom.us/... Passcode: 3eeZBN*S

Session 6 wrap-up

Hi friends,

Please find the recording of the final session here. Passcode: 3eeZBN*S

You can find the spreadsheet keeping track of final assignments here. Please fill in your row in the sheet as you complete the tasks below. You have until 17th April to complete the necessary tasks (and receive your 15,000 Seeds!).

Required tasks (green headers in the sheet):

Complete the feedback form
Add a link to your learning log
Record and link to a sensemaking conversation about the course with a small number of other participants

And at least one of the following (blue headers):

Publish a 1000+ word blog post with reflections on the course
Set up a 4+ week learning journey for your community inspired by the content of the course (we would expect this would be at least 4 hours in total).
Submit a Campaign proposal on the SEEDS app
Sign up to the SEEDS Ambassador Academy
Help an organisation/business to accept payment in Seeds and write a short blogpost about the steps to do it

We will be removing the address column for privacy reasons on Wednesday evening. On Thursday we will give everyone who provides an address the address of another participant – we ask you to write/send something to that person (and look forward to receiving something from someone else!). This way everyone will end up in postal contact with two people.

Upcoming sessions for your calendar

SEEDS session: For those interested in submitting campaign proposals on the SEEDS app, signing up to the SEEDS Ambassador Academy or helping an organisation/business to accept payment in Seeds, there will be a meeting offering guidance on Wednesday 31st March 6pm-7pm UK time at https://zoom.us/j/92638093048
Bonus session with Pat McCabe, Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader and international speaker, has kindly agreed to speak with us on Wednesday 14th April 5pm-6:45pm UK time (BST) (link coming). This will be livestreamed.

Pat McCabe

Bonus session with Daniel and Immy on their project CIVIC SQUARE on Tuesday 13th April 6-8pm (link coming)
Phoebe will be interviewed by Stephen followed by group Q&A on Friday 30th April 5pm-7pm UK time at https://zoom.us/j/92638093048. This will be livestreamed.
If you'd like to run a session, we are happy to publicise it to the course and our broader email list – get in touch!

And finally…

We have installed a wiki at wiki.renaissance.university! This wiki is and will remain open source and accessible to all, and we will be creating pages for each section of the course notes. Keep an eye on this Slack thread if you'd like to help out.
We created channels for countries and the wheel of the year.
We invite you to sign up to our personal newsletters at stephenreid.substack.com and phoebetickell.com/subscribe.

We look forward to reading your learning logs and blogs and watching your conversations!

Best,

Stephen and Phoebe

Q&A on SEEDS assignments

Recording: https://zoom.us/... Passcode: Fl=3Un.r

Submit a Campaign proposal on the SEEDS app

Fill out the SEEDS Co-op Proposals Self Assessment form
Attend a SEEDS Proposals Nursery session (usually 4pm UK time Wednesdays)
Check out an example of a proposal that passed (the one for this course!)
See other proposals that previously passed/failed by going to the Co-op section of the SEEDS app and switching from Open to Passed/Failed

Sign up to the SEEDS Ambassador Academy

Join the #ambassadors-general channel in the SEEDS Discord
Attend a SEEDS eTownhall New Ambassador Onboarding session

Help an organisation/business to accept payment in Seeds and write a short blogpost about the steps to do it

New, easy-to-use payment widgets coming soon! We will share in the Slack when they have been released
Until then, people can simply send Seeds to your username
To exchange SEEDS to fiat, try:

The Seeds Swap Telegram group
The #seeds-swap channel in the SEEDS Discord
(For small amounts & those familiar with DeFi) The tswaps.com AMM

Further assistance

If you have checked the above links/joined the relevant meetings and still have questions, SEEDS Ambassador Matteo Tangi is happy to help:

Telegram: 0039 3926399439
Discord

Course follow-up

Hi friends,

We hope you’ve been well in these last few weeks and managed to get some rest over the Easter holiday.

This email is jam-packed with announcements and reminders!

Two pieces of news:

Firstly, we’d like to remind you that you have 9 more days until 17th April to complete the course tasks to meet your course requirements and receive your 15,000 SEEDS! These are currently worth $688.

We’re also very excited to announce that the next Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance course is live! Please share widely as we will be accepting up to 500 applications this time. Read more below.

Completing your course requirements

You can find the spreadsheet keeping track of final assignments here. Please fill in your row in the sheet as you complete the tasks below.

Required tasks (green headers in the sheet):

Complete the feedback form
Add a link to your learning log
Record and link to a sensemaking conversation about the course with a small number of other participants

And at least one of the following (blue headers):

Publish a 1000+ word blog post with reflections on the course. Alternatively, you are also welcome to record a 5 minute video and embed it in a shorter blog post.
Set up a 4+ week learning journey for your community inspired by the content of the course (we would expect this would be at least 4 hours in total).
Submit a Campaign proposal on the SEEDS app
Sign up to the SEEDS Ambassador Academy
Help an organisation/business to accept payment in Seeds and write a short blog post about the steps to do it

So far we’ve had 26 feedback forms completed, 16 learning log links, 23 sensemaking conversations, 6 blog posts, 4 learning journeys, 4 SEEDS campaign proposals, 10 apps to the Ambassador Academy and 7 people helping organisations accept SEEDS. Thanks everyone!

The next course on Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance is live!

We have just launched the next round of the Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance course, running 12th May – 23rd June.

We have made some changes to the course:

The course will have an extra content week on Digital Tools for Collective Intelligence in Week 2
There will be a Reading Week in Week 4 (after hearing you say you would have liked time to catch up with reading)
We have shifted times to 4pm – 6pm UK time to allow for folks in the Asia-Pacific region to join more easily.
We will be accepting up to 500 students this time!

The full session list here:

Session 1, 12th May: Introduction and Regenerative Agriculture & Thriving Local Economies
Session 2, 19th May: Digital Tools for Collective Intelligence
Session 3, 26th May: Decentralised Organising & Horizontal Leadership
Reading week (no session on 2nd Jun)
Session 4, 9th Jun : Co-operative Ownership
Session 5, 16th Jun: Regenerative Money
Session 6, 23th Jun: Wrap up

If you have any guest teachers you would recommend, please let us know. We would particularly like to hear about teachers who diverge from the white male archetype of academic professors.

We also welcome suggestions for books, films, podcasts and articles to add to the course notes, as either comments in the course notes doc or in the appropriate channels in Slack.

Upcoming sessions for your calendar

Sharing session with CIVIC SQUARE, Tues 13th April 6.30-8.30pm UK time

Daniel and Immy will be sharing about their project CIVIC SQUARE on Tuesday 13th April 6:30-8:30pm UK time on at https://zoom.us/j/92638093048. This will include both a presentation/discussion about the project and the work done so far, plans for the future, and current experiments. There will be a chance to ask lots of questions in the Q&A.

Bonus session with Pat McCabe, Weds 14th April 5pm-6:45pm UK time

Pat McCabe Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader and international speaker, has kindly agreed to speak with us on Wednesday 14th April 5pm-6:45pm UK time at https://zoom.us/j/92638093048. This will be livestreamed at this YouTube link. You can share the event on Facebook.

Phoebe interviewed by Stephen, Friday 30th April 5pm-7pm UK time

Phoebe will be interviewed by Stephen followed by group Q&A on Friday 30th April 5pm-7pm UK time at https://zoom.us/j/92638093048. This will be livestreamed (links coming).

Would you like to host a session?

If you'd like to run a session, we are happy to publicise it to the course and our broader email list – get in touch!

And finally…

We have installed a wiki at wiki.renaissance.university! This wiki is and will remain open source and accessible to all, and we will be creating pages for each section of the course notes. Keep an eye on #wiki in the Slack if you'd like to help out.

We look forward to reading your learning logs and blogs and watching your conversations!

Best,

Phoebe and Stephen