Love and Compost

A one-day workshop exploring emergent strategy through mātauranga Māori, microbiology, and deep systems thinking.

Wayfaring from the more than human world

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Welcome.
We invite you to join us.
With tenderness, nourishment, and aroha.
Remove your shoes,
Feel the whenua under your toes,
Breathe in softness.
...Hā…
Breathe out all that holds you back
Commune with us.
In this exploration of emergent strategy, Aotearoa.

We feel you.

In these times of systemic stuckness and existential overwhelm, a different type of energy is required - new capacities are called for.

Instead of speeding up, doing more, and trying harder, we need to dig deeper, feel more alive and tune into a different order entirely; one that is fit for the ecological nature of the issues we face. It is time to come back to earth; to reconnect, reweave, replenish and restore.

Come with us.

Guided by aroha, we offer you a space to commune with the complexity of living systems, of which we are all a part, by taking a journey into the fertile darkness where mātauranga Māori, microbiology, and deep systems thinking meet. We will be immersing ourselves in restorative system change to consider how we might meet the challenges we are facing in Aotearoa and the world in fresh and generative ways. We will draw on place-based and ecological knowledge from multiple contexts, and work with the more than human world.

Are you ready?

This day-long workshop is for changemakers of all kinds, contexts and scales who are looking to evolve our tired old systems into life-enhancing ones, and nourish themselves in the process.

It is designed to move us from disembodied thinking, into more grounded ways of being and doing. We will build connective tissue, activate our deep ecological intelligence, and practise restorative systems change together—composting what is no longer serving us and tenderly nurturing what needs to grow.

Wairua nourishing kai, a beautiful environment, and a community of care, is what you will experience.

Let's go.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field - I'll meet you there. Rumi

Let’s step into a Tiriti-led future together.

Moko, Rebecca, and Sarah.

About the facilitators

We are guided and informed by the visions of Moana Jackson(Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou), Percy Tipene (Ngāti Hine), Teina Boasa Dean(Te Urewera, Ngāi Tūhoe), Dr Bayo Akomolafe (Yoruba), adrienne maree brown, Nora Bateson, Tyson Yunkaporta (Apalech), Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi), Suzanne Simard, Paul Stamets, Dr Vanessa Andreotti, and Dr Elaine Ingham.

Moko Morris (Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Te Ātiawa)
Moko is a sister, daughter, mother, grandmother and has been breathing in the Kai motuhake spaces. She has been learning and growing ways in which knowledge and connections support our taiao, so that all our contributions move us towards a food secure, just Aotearoa. With a long career working with communities on holistic sustainability, Moko is Pou Maaori at Kore Hiakai Zero Hunger Collective.

Rebecca Sinclair
Rebecca is a mother, sister, daughter - helping her fellow Pākehā come back into the flow of life, and let go of colonial patterns that separate us from ourselves, each other, and te taiao. She is fascinated by the intangible, the improper and the in-between and how everything is always so much more extraordinary than we might think. She is an experienced tertiary educator, Co-founder of The Pākehā Project, and Honorary Research Fellow at Toi Rauwhārangi, College of Creative Arts, Massey University.

Sarah Hopkinson
Sarah is a daughter, sister, mother, wife - mapping education, design, decolonisation and growing spaces together through the metaphors we use. Anchored in her front yard food farm on Te Ātiawa ki Kāpiti whenua, Sarah is inspired by the invisible, loving ways in which the life-giving systems of microbiology provide useful guidance for how we might thrive together. She has an extensive background in curriculum design, with a focus on sustainability and indigenous knowledge systems, and is currently working alongside Te Papa designing new ways for education audiences to engage with the museum’s collections.

Workshop prices

We are offering choice around what you pay for this workshop.

Consider Option A, if you:

own the home you live in
have investments or a retirement account
travel recreationally
have access to resources in times of need
work part time by choice
have a relatively high degree of earning power due to level of education (or gender and racial privilege, class background, etc.) Even if you are not currently exercising your earning power, we ask you to recognise this as a choice.

Consider Option B, if you:

can access professional development budgets from your workplace or organisation for this workshop
are in a position to ‘pay it forward’ to cover the cost of those who are paying what they can

Consider Option C, if you:

have significant personal levels of debt
are an elder with limited financial support
are an unpaid community organizer
are out of work, a student or otherwise limited financially.