Catalyzing innovative strategy and action, building synergistic movement relationships and collaborations, and cultivating capacity to lead the world towards a shared Transition.
What is a lab?
Beloved Community Labs are generative convenings that deepen the inquiry into how to intentionally transform our world. Beloved Community Labs create opportunities for us to practice embodying our values, to understand the systems and ecosystems in which we are working in fresh and proactive ways; to access the depth of our individual and collective knowledge; to identify strategic leverage points for change; to work in innovative teams; and to collaboratively prototype and pilot interventions and initiatives aimed at fundamentally shifting human relationships and ways of living in the world.
Each Beloved Community Lab is different, unique to the people, place, and time where it is held. And, there are some common ingredients and methods that have created a transformative experience for many who have been a part of the Labs. We are sharing this recipe now as an invitation to create your own.
Our present moment demands that we leave behind the existing extractive economy – an economy based on ecological ruin, exploitation of labor, and the suppression and oppression of people. This moment demands that we shift our systems to reflect the extraordinary interconnection of all life and the deepest human values of caregiving and love. This includes a reverential relationship to the earth’s resources, an understanding of labor as the work that contributes to collective well-being, and a commitment to social equity as essential to a sustainable, regenerative society.
The shift from an extractive system to a regenerative system will require monumental change. It will require navigating waves of crisis while simultaneously re-organizing the fundamentals of the way we live, producing basic goods, organizing human exchange, and taking care of each other. We will need to collectively practice new ways of being in order to make these shifts; cultivating our adaptive capacity and resilience while restructuring our relationships to value mutuality and interdependence. We will need to rely on each other, adapt quickly, and collaborate well as we navigate the challenges ahead.
TYPES OF LABS WE OFFER:
Introductory Labs
- What is Beloved Community
- Transformative Movement Building Framework
- Deep Democracy
- Conflict Resolution
Place-Based Labs
- These are fee for service labs
- Customizable to the group
- Lead facilitator designs lab
Deep Dive, Emergent Labs
- Cohort model
Audacious & Bold Vision
Transformative movement builders imagine the path forward to possible futures we cannot yet see. We lead others to share in this vision and contribute to a larger purpose. Our dreams are rooted in the wisdom of the past, with awareness of the present, and hope for the future.
Deep Embodiment
Transformative movement builders step into the future, generating and experiencing a new world here and now by practicing and embodying a new set of values. Transformative movement builders recognize that patterns of injustice are maintained through repeated day to day actions; taking on injustice requires new forms of culture and new modes of relating to ourselves and each other.
Strategic Navigation
Strategic navigation requires new forms of leadership that transcend traditional modes of domination. From whatever position we hold, transformative movement builders must be leaders for the whole, bringing people together with a bigger purpose in mind. We must cultivate a thorough understanding of systems and forces in motion –the general operating conditions of our movements –and forge paths that get us where we need to go.
Radical Connections
Bringing movements into alignment with each other is not about making others fall into line, or replacing one vision with another. It is about cultivating a bigger sense of “movement,” recognizing and acting on connections that already exist. It is about cocreating a story of the future and inviting others to engage in advancing it.
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