How do you thinking about the future? What shapes the way you think? What can't you see or think because of the way you have been educated and trained? These are the fundamental questions we need to address. It takes courage to say we don't have the answers but to start the transformation anyway...
Regenerative development | Building resilient places | The Tourism CoLab & Communiversity | Local2030 Islands Network |
Wrote this blog post a week ago on the #TourismColab because I have been grappling with why listening to lived experience and local knowledge represents an evolution in our #HumanDevelopment #Conciousness. The wisdom of local communities is a missing link in genuine, creative approaches to future challenges. I am despairing at the recent flood of top-down, tone-deaf solutions-based marketing. (Just look at the way the #tourism industry has started to market #NatureRepair and #NaturePositive) Understanding the urgency of the #ClimateCrisis and #BiodiversityLoss requires understanding derived from multiple levels of understanding and experience. To illustrate, take a bonfire: We can think about it analytically (what it is), perceive it from a distance and feel it. But it's the integration of these ways of knowing, layered with memory (e.g. the social experience) and lived experience that creates an integrated understanding. Consider how this applies to communities: We can draw their boundaries on maps (thinking), observe the daily rhythms of a community (perception), and feel the spirit and connection (feeling). Our cognition, memories and lived experiences of community create a rich tapestry of understanding that goes far beyond any single dimension. This multi-layered knowledge is crucial when we try to imagine building resilient communities—without lived experience, our ability to envision and create meaningful community spaces is going to be limited. This has huge implications for how we anticipate the future. Can those inhabiting all those high-level conferences and policy meetings truly understand real transformation happens at the ground level, where people hold this integrated intelligence of head, heart, and instinct? I've seen policymakers go into communities and be afraid of them! I've been in those high-level meetings, and now I can't unsee this: those in communities who watch the seasons change, who carry generations of local knowledge—these are the true agents of change and action. Their systemic intelligence, built through direct experience and deep connection to place, is what we need to navigate our future challenges. Yet our current funding models prioritise those furthest removed from this lived experience—the conference-goers, policy-makers and the template makers who may have never felt the pulse of a local community. To create meaningful change, we need to redirect resources to support those who carry this #EmbodiedWisdom, who understand their communities through thinking, feeling, and deep memory. Only by valuing and empowering this local, experiential knowledge can we build the #resilient, #adaptive communities we need for the future. Please share your thoughts.... the nexus between the change we so desperately need, genuine understanding of the crisis ahead and the resistance (beyond simply fear) is key. Read the post: https://lnkd.in/gfxYB4-X