What if we stopped thinking of schools as institutions that simply exist within communities, and began imagining them as places from which healthier, more connected and ecologically aware communities could grow?

Schools are often described as hubs of community life, yet in practice they can remain relatively separate from the neighbourhoods, people and ecosystems surrounding them. In this facilitated conversation, educator Tijana Ilic invites us to reconsider the school as a vital social institution — one that is inseparable from the wider ecology of a city or community.

Drawing on Australian and international examples, alongside ideas from educational thinkers including John Dewey and Maria Montessori, we’ll explore what becomes possible when schools develop deeper relationships with their local communities and natural environments.

Could schools foster stronger intergenerational networks? Could children have genuine opportunities to participate in community life, think ecologically and contribute their creativity to the places where they live? And what might education look like if children were recognised not simply as future citizens, but as active participants in their communities today?

Rather than treating education as preparation for participating in society sometime in the future, this session invites us to explore the school as a place of gestation and origin — somewhere we can begin seeding the relationships, ecological awareness and ways of living that healthier, more humane habitats will require.

Come ready to question some of our assumptions about where education happens, who participates in it, and the role schools might play in creating the communities of tomorrow.

This session is part of Healthy Humane Habitats Month: Reimagining how we live, together.

Contact the host of Seeding Tomorrow: Schools as Urban Origins