challenging problems 🤝 creative solutions
Happy #ArtBasel week from our creative community!
Together we’re generating solutions that center our own lived experiences and the needs of our neighbors.
From waste disposal to bus routes, we’re building the power to make our ideas come to life.
The activist and author Adrienne Maree Brown says we are in an “imagination battle.”
“I often feel I am trapped inside someone’ else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.”
This week and beyond let’s engage our imagination and capacity to create so that our communities can get one step closer to freedom.
#MiamiDade#ClimateChange#HousingSolutions#HealthJustice
💪🏾 Building Resilience Through Quest Labs
🌊STREAM Education and Me-Search We-Search Research 🔬
Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back—it’s about transforming in the face of complexity. At Quest Labs Education, we’re weaving futures foresight, emotional intelligence, and experiential learning into a dynamic framework of Me-Search We-Search Research. This approach empowers individuals and communities to navigate today’s challenges while co-creating sustainable, thriving futures.
I’ve always loved acronyms—they’re playful and powerful ways to reimagine how language shapes the world around us.
🧐 My latest reimagination of STREAM education:
Science of Self & Society
Technology as a Tool
Resilience as Capacity Building
Engineering Environments
Art of Active Futures Foresight
Math, Music, Creativity, and Mindfulness
This isn’t just education—it’s transformation. Quest Labs creates a space for healing and collaboration, where personal growth (me-search) meets collective intelligence (we-search) to generate actionable insights (research) for a better tomorrow.
Feeling inspired by the community space and experiences through the Acosta Institute. I believe we must learn be with the realities of what is and navigate them in a way that is inclusive, sustainable, and empowering. I see Quest Labs as part of a larger movement—one rooted in resilience, creativity, and equity.
✨ What are the ingredients of a future in education that you desire for future generations? How can we build systems that are sustainable, empowering, and grounded in both wisdom and innovation?
I'm here to connect and co-create the futures we need to thrive.
#STREAMEducation#Resilience#Sustainability#FuturesThinking#SocialEmotionalLearning#QuestLabs#TransformativeEducation#HealingCommunities
👉#Follow_Akash_Khan
Humanity is still alive in the everyday acts of kindness, resilience, and compassion that permeate our world. Despite the challenges we face—war, natural disasters, inequality, and social unrest—there is a persistent thread of goodness and empathy that binds us together. People come together to help those in need, whether through disaster relief efforts, community-building initiatives, or simply lending a hand to a neighbor.Our capacity for innovation and problem-solving, particularly in times of crisis, demonstrates that humanity remains vibrant. Scientific breakthroughs in medicine, renewable energy, and technology aim to improve the quality of life for all people, tackling some of the most pressing global issues. These advancements are driven not just by individual ambition but by a collective desire to uplift and improve society.Moreover, art, culture, and the sharing of stories across borders reflect our inherent need for connection and understanding. Through music, literature, and film, we continue to explore the complexities of the human condition, finding common ground in our shared experiences, fears, and hopes.Even in an increasingly digital and disconnected world, grassroots movements for justice and equality show that the human spirit still values fairness, dignity, and mutual respect. Humanity thrives in our efforts to build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. These small yet powerful acts remind us that despite our flaws and challenges, the essence of humanity—love, empathy, and hope—endures.
#HumanityAlive#KindnessMatters#CompassionInAction#ResilienceOfHumanity#ActsOfGoodness#HopeForTheFuture#GlobalUnity#EmpathyConnects#HumanSpirit#TogetherWeThrive#PositiveChange#SharedHumanity
Who’s ready to share your story of place?
What makes your place unique?
Why were you drawn to where you find yourself?
How do you care for the place you love?
How does it care for you?
Follow & Share #RegenPlacesNetwork & #StoryofPlace
Dear friends, I support a wonderful organization - WildSeed Society - that focuses on freeing ourselves from capitalism and domination for a more equitable world. Here’s a quote from their website that I like:
"we are really good at extracting things from the earth and each other to make tons and tons of widgets but we are really bad at making rational, ethical and collective decisions about what to make, how to make it, how to distribute what we made and how to relate to each other and the earth as we make it."
You can learn from - and / or give to - Wildseed Society to support racial and economic equity.
Find it on my website or reach out to ask me.
go to: anniemahon.com/reparations
image description: quote above in white text over a galaxy-like background, with an image of WildSeed Society’s Instagram profile picture.
#racialjustice#mindfulnesscoach#reparations
It’s the European Day of #Solidarity Between Generations! 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐢𝐧 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬? You can find 40 activities that have been tested in intergenerational settings in a number of countries in this step-by-step guide that I worked on with others 👉 tinyurl.com/2bb434zk#AWorld4AllAges
URGE’s Alexie Sommer and Ella Doran led a panel discussion and workshop on ‘Hopeful activism and long-term thinking’ at the Equinox Festival at Wasing - one of the many festivals inspired by the vision of fellow URGE member Joshua Dugdale.
The panel included Jeremy Whelehan filmmaker and creator of the Wisdom Keepers exploring and transmitting contemporary ancestral wisdom, Nadeem Perera co-founder of Flock Together - a bird-watching collective for black and brown communities and Phoenix instigator of the Climate Emergency Centre’s programme running across the UK, each sharing their stories and examples of hope in action through their creativity and work.
The conversation explored the actions, adventures, and steps we take both individually and, more importantly, collectively to move toward reason and justice, addressing societal inequalities and ecological crises.
These efforts are often guided by a mix of experience, curiosity, intuition, science, and data. The discussion emphasized moving away from a mindset focused on probability and control, and instead, stepping into spaces of possibility and emergence, where hope has space and room to flourish.
One such example is Design Declares - the activist design community, co-instigated by URGE, who are united by a climate emergency declaration, using the tools of the design industry to respond.
When hopeful activism is paired with long-term thinking, it prompts us to look beyond the immediate consequences that affect only ourselves. We begin to envision the future that our children, the young people we care about, and their descendants will inherit. This shift broadens our focus, encouraging us to take responsibility for the world we are shaping for generations to come.
First Nation communities exemplify this mindset with the principle of considering the impacts of seven generations. This philosophy holds that one's actions should be informed by the experiences of the previous seven generations while also considering the consequences for the seven generations that follow. It's a powerful reminder that our decisions today ripple far into the future, urging us to act with both wisdom and foresight.
During the workshop, the audience gathered to share the hopeful actions they felt inspired to take. They were later invited to write these down and hang them in the trees of the surrounding forest.
We closed the session with a group visualization inspired by the brilliant #HumanLayersMeditation that Ella Saltmarsh and Hannah Smith created for The Long Time Project.
The next step is to bring this session to the boardroom…
#hopefulactivism#longtermthinking#designthinking#wisdom#thegoodancestor
🫂 Here's how to choose people you want to live with:
Find your shared values!
We don't necessarily organize around diet (we are everything from vegan to carnivore and exist harmoniously)
or spiritual beliefs (we all have different sacred practices that overlap, but it's not our core identity)
🔍Instead we have identified the types of innovators we want to surround ourselves with:
✨️Creative Professionals -- documentary makers, token builders, digital nomads, and more. We love people building their own way of life and want to create a space with all the tools to do that.
✨️ Ecopreneurs -- people with businesses that serve the environment. Our founder Jordan C. Hammond owns an e-waste company called Mango and many of our residents actively practice environmentalism.
✨️ Social Impact Artists -- we believe art can offer transformation in society. While we totally support hobby painters (and have enough art supplies to survive an apocalypse), we want people with work that is aimed at challenging and dismantling the status quo.
✨️ Spiritual Activists-- A spiritual activist builds connections with the subtle world and takes practical action on them. Some of our residents work with indigenous tribes to translate their wisdom into the real world, and we are about it.
And of course we all rally around being closer to nature and better versions of ourselves.
Does this sound like you?
#ecovillage#intentionalcommunity#offgrid#sustainablesolutions#consciouscoliving#colivingindustry#colivinginsights
𝐁𝐢𝐫𝐝𝐬 𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 ‘𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭’ 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝 - 𝐝𝐨 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠?
This was another great episode of the Planet Critical podcast with Rachel Donald and guest Nathalie Nahai.
Nathalie described how we can learn about systems change from biomimicry. Putting 'shitting posts' in a field encourages birds to gather and fertilize the land. Put several in a field and let nature take over.
Unfortunately, the rest of the episode focused more on the individual values action gap and the inner work individuals need to do to be part of the change.
While Natalie has a background in marketing and psychology, this individual focus is a fatal flaw that many change leaders fall into.
We need support and connection to create the systems change we need for climate action.
The 'shitting post' analogy applies to humans too. The birds gather and do their thing. They don’t self analyze to first ask if they are good enough to join the roost.
If we encourage humans to get their own 'shit' in a row first before joining others to take action, we will be doomed.
The very process of gathering, connecting, and being flawed humans together, willing to support each other, is what we need.
Science shows when you change in groups the individuals in the group and the group as a whole achieves greater success! Together is better. Stop starting with me and get to we straightaway.
We need each other and we need 'shitting posts' to gather at!
So who provides the 'shitting posts'?
I think this is a role corporate sustainability officers can take the lead on. By creating connected social learning networks for multi sector Scope 3 stakeholders.
Sponsoring learning networks empowers stakeholders to lead, share what they learn, and have greater buy in to the change process.
So I challenge corporate sustainability leaders to build Scope 3 'shitting posts'. And to let the natural course of stakeholder change to take charge, spreading exponentially.
How can you help others gather to make change happen?
Wishing you all a more 'productive' year ahead!
#esg#sustainability#scope3#leadership
