Love as a Practice of Social Change | Summer Work That Reconnects Study-Action Circle

Featured Reading: All About Love: New Visions — bell hooks

Summer invites us to reconnect with what matters most—and to consider how love might become a foundation for the world we're working to create. In our first Study–Action Circle of 2027, we explore bell hooks' All About Love, guided by the principles of The Work That Reconnects.

Together, we'll explore love not simply as a feeling, but as a practice rooted in care, trust, responsibility, respect and justice. We'll reflect on how individualism, domination and disconnection shape our relationships, and what it might mean to place love at the centre of our communities, movements and economic systems.

Hosted by the NENA Systems Change Hub, and supported by the School of Social Impact and the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, this is a space for people committed to shifting deep systems and building the foundations of a new economy grounded in care, justice and regeneration.

We approach the text as a community: reflective, curious and willing to sit with complexity together.

• Thought-provoking dialogue about love, care and justice as foundations for social transformation

• Reflective exercises exploring how we give, receive and practise love in our everyday lives and collective work

• Opportunities to examine how dominant economic and social systems shape our capacity for connection and care

• A cooperative learning space to explore what love-centred communities, organisations and economies might look like

The Work That Reconnects (WTR) offers practical tools and reflective practices to help those working to transform our economic systems navigate complexity, build resilience and sustain collective action. By combining deep reflection, experiential exercises and group dialogue, WTR supports changemakers in facing ecological, social and economic crises with clarity, courage and connection—enhancing their ability to envision and co-create a more regenerative, equitable and wellbeing-centred economy.

As we move through the seasons in 2027, we will:

📚 Explore a selected text that offers new perspectives on personal, social and ecological transformation. Reading is optional.

🌀 Gather for a LIVE online community circle to share reflections, deepen into experiential practices and strengthen our individual and collective resilience.

🌱 Co-create a space where personal growth and systems change are nourished together as we work to build the New Economy movement.

People who care deeply about transformation—policy thinkers, community organisers, educators, researchers, practitioners, cooperative builders, activists and transition leaders.

Join us as we begin the year by exploring how love, care and connection can become powerful foundations for collective transformation.