Liberation Ecology Project

Duration: 90 minutes - 2 days)

Maximum Participants: 30

Description:
What would sustainability look like, if it refused to sustain global inequality? What can freedom look like in a system headed for ecological collapse? That these questions are so difficult illustrates the disconnect between how we think about issues of social health - like freedom and equity - and issues of ecological health. These questions haunt the divide that runs right down the middle of the work that we do to make the world a better place. Why do we think of fundamental issues like social health and ecological health as being unrelated? We can find our answers to these questions, and begin to bridge that divide, in an atmosphere of engagement and collaboration.

Integrating presentation for multiple learning styles, discussion, and small-group work, the Liberation Ecology workshops are like what most of us wish school could have been. Using the material of their own projects, aspirations, and day-to-day lives, participants are guided through a process of exploring the networks of relationship that integrate us into a broader context, in a critical synthesis of ecological, social, and evolutionary perspectives. With hands-on mapping exercises that draw out the hidden connections between power, freedom, and the flow of energy and resources across seemingly disconnected social and ecological communities, participants discover and discuss new perspectives on our situation, and new strategies for changing it.

We don’t have to settle anymore for the absurdity of choosing between social and ecological objectives in our lives and in our work – and we shouldn’t! The workshop is an opportunity to build our theory-and-practice toolbox for making a new kind of project – one that refuses to choose between these two the social and the ecological. Our projects can navigate a way forward in which whole system health is woven into a dynamic integrated strategy. Inspired, visionary, everyday folks all over the world are working together now to create that future. Naming that movement as a movement, and identifying the themes that unify diverse people and projects, is part of the workshop, and part of the work we are called to do. The Liberation Ecology workshop creates an environment that’s rich in what is needed for the audacious task of transforming our social system: passion, collaboration, and inspired critical thinking.

A more detailed workshop outline can be found here.

Audience:
This workshop is appropriate for anyone who makes decisions with other people: students and educators, progressive congregations and enterprises, activists of all stripes, including aspiring and retiring activists, organizers, organizees, and anyone who is interested in ecological and social design for a better world. No specialist background knowledge is required. A general knowledge of social and environmental issues is helpful.