Dear Subscriber First Name,

Thank you for joining our Seeding Futures newsletter! In case you don’t know us, we’re Falay Transition Design - a collective of transitions designers, systems thinkers, sustainability experts and researchers using system-aware creative practice to catalyse transformational futures.

We are starting this newsletter to follow in our mission of intentionally seeding transitions to more sustainable futures. We hope to do this by sharing our:

• Fruit trees: ideas, projects and practices that are active and already fruitful with learnings and impact

• New shoots: emerging work that’s inspiring us, or that we are beginning to nurture

• Sowing seeds: projects and change that we would like to see in the world, and calls for collaborators to bring them to life

We see this newsletter as a catalyst for conversations, relationships and collaborations - so we’d love to hear from you! If anything resonates with you, don’t hesitate to drop us an email at collective@falayconsulting.com

Fruit trees: Beyond rationality for transformational futures

What kinds of thinking and wisdom are lacking from our usual interactions with wicked problems? As we focus too much on efficiency, meeting set targets and addressing immediate urgencies, we do not have the space to think holistically, systematically or creatively.

Our first Embodied Transition Design Retreat in April carved out space for these overlooked ways of thinking, allowing us a moment of respite to reconnect with intuitive and emotional knowledge and direct it towards co-creating more just and sustainable futures together. Read our full reflections in the blog below:

To share and build on these learnings, we are already imagining the next iteration as a Regenerative Futures Immersion for individuals and teams, where we will bring clarity to ourselves about our purpose and agency in how we can contribute towards building a more sustainable, fair, and regenerative future society.

New shoots: Building our relational infrastructure

We’ve recently been very inspired by the incredible work of Sam Rye on “relational infrastructures”, which he defines as:

“The social connections, interactions, and collective intelligence that underpin a community, network or group's ability to collaborate, solve problems, and drive change. It is an emergent framework of trust, shared values, and common goals that allows individuals, groups, and organisations to work together effectively, pool their resources, and amplify their impact. A strong relational infrastructure can enable organisations and communities to overcome challenges, build resilience, and create sustainable social, economic, and environmental value and outcomes.”

We have therefore begun to explore our collective’s relational infrastructure as an intervention to business-as-usual, and a crucial element of regenerative working practices.

Read more about our ideas to experiment with this in how we intend to be, act and organise ourselves in this short blog piece:

This is an ongoing conversation and experiment, and we want to learn from other existing ways of working. If you are exploring these themes in your own work, we’d love to connect!

Sowing seeds: Imagining the projects and change the world needs

1. Building on CreaTures
   Impressed and inspired by the EU Horizon CreaTures project, and their Nine dimensions for evaluating creative practices, we are working on a project proposal with Open Creative House to explore the role of the music industry for green and social transitions.
   
   We want to hear from others working on projects that are researching the role of creative practice for transitions - let’s learn from each other and work together.

2. Starting new transitions journeys
   If you’re interested but new to the area of transitions design, we are offering an introductory half-day workshop where we share the key elements of transitions thinking, and support teams to identify their agency for accelerating transitions in their ecosystem.
   
   Read about some of our past workshops here, and get in touch below to find out more.

Sunshine: A dose of energy, uplift and hope

Each newsletter we want to share something that has given our community some sunshine in the past month - nurturing our hopefulness and balancing the doom and gloom of the world.

This month we’re sharing Rob Hopkins’ inspiring podcast From What If To What Next, which has been stirring many of our imaginations.

Let’s build a better future together.