Weaving A Golden Thread of Bioregions

Activations in Tunisia, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain

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With all the bad news in the world, here is a little beam of light shining through the cracks. The dreamers are stepping into their power to imagine different kinds of futures. Ecological healing. Spiritual connection. Regenerative education. Economies that act in service to life. You won’t hear about this in the corporate media. Neither will it be viral on social media. Invisible though it is, this is all really happening.

I write this little postcard from the edge to share a glimpse into a gentle weaving process that is already underway. We are weaving a golden thread of light as we travel — Penny Heiple and I are bioregional pilgrims on a spiritual journey to catalyze and strengthen a series of landscapes where local teams have already been hard at work laying the groundwork for their own bioregional learning ecosystems.

You might have heard about our Dandelion Strategy for Regenerating Earth where we envision at least 1000 BLCs (bioregional learning centers) coming into being by the year 2035. As the collapse processes intensify in ecological and social systems, these will be “islands of coherence” in a sea of chaos. Places where learning hubs coordinate across local networks of place-based regeneration. Weaving the dreams of rivers, mountains, forests, and humans toward a new kind of harmony. Held in the dreams of bioregional minds — humans who have learned to listen deeply and act in support of life in their own local settings.

We already went on a pilgrimage in June through the Heart of Turtle Island. Our travels took us to sacred headwaters and major confluences of rivers throughout the Mississippi River Basin. Along the way, we planted seeds for bioregional learning centers in places like the Ozarks, Lower Missouri River Valley, in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, along the front range of the Central Rockies, in the panhandle of Texas, and the Miami River Valley of southern Ohio.

Penny and I will begin the next wave of this weaving process on the southern shores of the Mediterranean in mid-September. Our journey begins in Tunisia with a sacred journey to visit bioregional learning sites that will be followed by the Mediterranean Bioregional Activation — a three-day workshop on September 27th – 29th with people arriving from the four corners of this vast sea that connects Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

Our strategic intent is to lay the groundwork for a Mediterranean hub of bioregional learning sites that grows in strength, diversity, and connectivity in 2027. We have partnered with Elyes Mediterranean to host this gathering and are excited to see which dreams reveal themselves during our pilgrimage.

This gathering is receiving financial support from the Earth Regeneration Fund through its Bioregional Activation Funding Pool as part of what we are able to do with membership dues in the Design School for Regenerating Earth. Everyone who signs up for an Active Hope Lifetime Plan is contributing $500 to help gatherings like this take place around the world.

Next we will be hosted by théra in Tarn-et-Garonne, France. This is a watershed system with deep historic roots and many local regenerative projects. Penny and I will join their team for locally-organized events from October 2nd thru 6th.

In the Tarn-et-Garonne region, they are laying the groundwork for a bioregional learning center to emerge. This includes a strategic piece of land they have brought into their efforts that plays a central coordinating role for the regional planning and ecological restoration work that they hold with deep care.

We confirm every time we travel that there are local regenerative efforts underway everywhere that we go. Stream restoration work. Alternative education. Community spaces. Regenerative farms. They are often working in isolation from each other. The bioregional scale is not present to them yet. So many efforts poised to move through a tipping point that changes the direction of regional economic development at the larger, holistic scale.

This will be true when we continue our pilgrimage on October 8th to 10th in the Leuven region of Belgium where the team of And Now What — Anne Billen and Neil Davidson — has been weaving deeply with diverse local stakeholders around collapse-informed approaches to systemic change. This includes bioregional organizing and the potential for creating a bioregional learning center in their region.

We will participate in a series of local site visits, give public talks, and co-facilitate workshops with the And Now What team to dream more deeply into what a bioregional approach can do for local resilience planning while we are in Leuven.

Our journey continues to the Netherlands where a local network of community organizers has been weaving the Rivers of the North Sea and North Sea Delta into dynamic spaces for bioregional learning. We will be hosted by Sandra Barth-Oosting and Annelieke Verkerk for several days of activities on October 12th, 13th, and 14th.

You can sign up for the full-day event on October 12th that is being co-hosted with Bioregional Weaving Labs to help stimulate deeper relationships with their efforts that span across Europe. What we envision during our time in the Netherlands is to witness and get inspired by all of the great local work that is happening. They too are already on the path to create a bioregional learning ecosystem with multiple diverse place-based regenerative hubs.

Are you feeling the potency of this pilgrimage now? We start in Tunisia. Move into France. Visit Belgium. Weave with the Netherlands. And then the threads continue across to the British Isles as we journey on to spend time with Living Thames near Reading. We will participate in the Living Thames Bioregional Convergence on October 16th and 17th.

There are a lot of people who love the River Thames. It has deep ecological, cultural, historic, and economic significance. Just like the other places along our pilgrimage, the local organizing team is moving through the process of exploring what it would mean to create their own bioregional learning center.

We bring our pilgrimage to a close on October 18th and 19th by traveling on to West Sussex where we will be hosted by Jenny Andersson and the Really Regenerative Centre that promotes the emergence of regenerative economies at scale. She has hosted gatherings about place-based work for many years — as well as bringing deep insights to the philanthropic and institutional landscape for how these efforts need to be supported. Marie Angel Chevrier de Rien will also invite us to key regenerative projects and regional efforts in the Sussex area during our time there.