Growing Our Bioregional Learning Center
Further to our exhilarating meeting last month, we’re writing to invite you to this month’s online gathering, at 7:30 pm Sunday, December 17 — and to share this excellent 10-min video from Joe Brewer, that succinctly describes the role of a Bioregional Learning Center:
For those of you who were present for Joe’s riveting and paradigm-shifting talks in February of this year, we have exciting news. And for those of you who missed last February’s visit, we have an opportunity to bring Joe and Penny back to Rochester in February 2024.
If you attended his first talks here is an opportunity to be re-inspired about the possibilities in our ecoregion.
On our December 17th call, we will be updating you on the work of the Design School for Regenerating Earth’s global work, as well as our many conversations with individuals and institutions in our own ecoregion. We’ll be creating teams for hosting Joe and Penny’s potential trip and seeking input on the objectives, dates, locations, audiences, and issues that we would like them to address in the Genesee Finger Lakes ecoregion.
Since Joe and Penny’s trip last February, along with Benji Ross they launched the Design School for Regenerating Earth using their work in Barichara, Colombia, as a template for activating other bioregions. In May, they were hosted by ecoregions of the Colorado Basin Bioregion, from the headwaters of the Colorado River to the Mexican Sea of Cortez. They recently completed a month-long bioregional activation tour including 14 stops across parts of Cascadia—the longest established bioregion in the world, spanning multiple ecoregions along the Pacific coast from British Columbia, Canada, to Northern California.
Among the lessons learned from these activation tours are ones that could be relevant to issues we have, such as
- Having neighboring jurisdictions take a larger view of their seemingly local issues to see the value of data-sharing and taking collective action on landscape-scale issues like transportation, water, and regulations that impact the ecosystem.
- Connecting people working on synergistic regenerative projects who may live/work 5 minutes from each other, but don’t know each other.
- Connecting older and younger people who share an understanding of collapse and how we need to respond to it.
- Speaking possibilities and priorities into existence by convening landscape leaders from across the bioregion —
— among others.