EcoGather Was and Is…

 a collaborative learning network dedicated to:

• place-based lifeways

• the vitality of agro-ecosystems

• the change-competence of communities

• the transition to well-being economies, and

• the pursuit of collective liberation.

We also supported other groups seeking to courageously confront collapse, explore the space between stories, and begin writing humanity’s sequel by providing access to heterodox educational resources.

We also held and tended welcoming virtual spaces for learners to experience pluralistic exchange and resonant connections across geographies, cultures, identities, worldviews, and lifeways.

We gathered to learn from and transform our relationships with each other, the rest of the natural world, and life itself.

EcoGather Now Is...

… an archive of 22 self-paced online courses plotted into our Digital Garden. Which will remain freely accessible until June 2030. 

Our operations were mostly relegated to the digital realm so it was especially important for us to choose, when possible, the tools, platforms, and practices that align with a set of principles that guide and help to harmonize our Digital Ethics, which are to:

  • Leverage digital technology to:
    • Expand and increase access to knowledge;
    • Promote cosmolocal exchange and engagement;
    • Support networked communication and movement building; and
    • Eventually make people less dependent upon advanced technologies.
  • Resist dominant-culture tendencies to enclose knowledge or turn it into “intellectual property.”
  • Favor technologies that are appropriate for human-scale use that are, in the words of E.F. Schumacher, “cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone; suitable for small-scale application; and compatible for man’s need for creativity.”
  • Reduce reliance on technologies, tools, and platforms designed to futher accelerate or consolidate capital accumulation and fuel profit-centric growth economies at the expense of the living world (from which capital is extracted).
  • Turn away from technologies that monetize and harvest users’ data as the product.
  • Prioritize privacy and security, while balancing useability and remaining within our non-profit project’s means and maintaining our ability to reduce financial barriers to participation.

For these reasons, we made an effort to transition from the default platforms we had been using to those that are better (if imperfectly) aligned with our values. 

 

We recognized that “the devil is in the default,” (hat tip Jay Cousins), so we hoped to exemplify critical consideration of the (seemingly benign) ways we interact with damaging technologies and systems in our everyday lives. We tried to make simple moves to live into solutions that aligned with our values, all while balancing:

 

  • ease of use
  • reasonable affordability
  • open source technologies

A Brief History of EcoGather

EcoGather was initially founded to bring the work of late heterodox environmental economist David Fleming to a wider and activated audience, which we did for several years via our distinctive Surviving the Future program.

In 2021, we began assembling a cosmolocal learning network that connects people and place-based organizations on learning journeys that probed the “space between stories” by offering guided lessons and interactive virtual spaces that made sense in and of a world that does not.

Between 2021-2023, with our partner communities and a growing network of consulting scholars, we put together over 300 modules of paradigm-shifting, and skill-building digital courses that covered subjects such as Wellbeing Economy, Climate + Change, Change Shaping, Ecology, Agroecology, Relational Food Systems, and related topics, which we made available to individual learners and allied organizations using trust-based sliding scale and donation-based pricing, via access-supporting partnerships, and through gift and barter arrangements. The self-guided courses are now freely available in our Digital Garden through June 2030. 

Our accessible learning assets and weekly open EcoGatherings supported and held spaces for radically imagining and collectively living into post-capitalist realities, pursuing purposeful, connected land-based alivelihoods, returning to kinship as part of the natural world, and finding pleasure and abundance while living within limits.