P2P Summer School: The Art of Commoning

WeCreate, Cloughjordan Ecovillage, Tipperary, Ireland

5 days from August 24th – 28th, 2015

The P2P Summer School is designed for adult educators, trainers and facilitators for change, coaches and people working with their local communities in the fields of sustainability, community resilience and climate adaptation who want to build the capacity, develop collaborative and participatory practices to empower social change and steward cultural and natural resources.

What will it include?

The P2P Summer School will focus on the practical rather than the theoretical and is structured to balance and integrate concrete learning outcomes delivered using participatory methodology known as the art of hosting. http://bollier.org/blog/art-commoning

The course will bring together P2P pioneers and Art of Hosting facilitators to explore new forms of cooperative enterprise, P2P money, crowdfunding, open value accounting, p2p legal developments, and other vital topics that enable us to adapt our lives, organisations and communities to global challenges and to better steward our common heritage of cultural and natural resources.

Course Director 

(image) The course will be led by Michel Bauwens, the founder and director of the P2P Foundation. Michel works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He writes editorials for Al Jazeera and is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group, with Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, who have organised major global conferences on Commons and Economics. FULL DETAILS

The deadline for Erasmus+ KA1 applications are fast approaching. Applications to your National Agency need to be in by the 4th of March. Don’t hestiate to contact davie@cultivate.ie if you need any further information or assistance

2015 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute

Fear and Trust in Self and Society – June 13-19, 2015 – Garrison Institute, Garrison, NY

The Mind and Life Summer Research Institute (MLSRI) is a week-long program to advance collaborative research among scientists, contemplative scholars, other humanities scholars, and contemplative practitioners, based on a process of inquiry and dialogue. With this unique program, we are not only nurturing a new generation of scientists interested in exploring the influence of contemplative practice and meditation on the mind, but are also fostering the development of new fields of research collectively referred to as the “contemplative sciences.” This year’s institute will be held June 13-19, 2015 and will be located at the Garrison Institute in Garrison, New York, 50 miles north of New York City in the Hudson River Valley.

Mind and Life’s Summer Research Institute is a week-long conference and quasi-retreat that incorporates academic presentations, informal breakout groups, poster sessions, and periods of meditation, yoga, and tai chi each day, as well as a one-day silent retreat. This unique format offers opportunities for deep dialogue across disciplines, as well as inquiry through meditative practices, underscoring the challenges of honoring and learning from first-person experience.

The 2015 MLSRI will be devoted to examining fear, trust, and social relationships. Presentations and discussions will draw on research in both the sciences and the humanities, including neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, religion, and contemplative studies. Over the week, we will explore biological and experiential aspects of fear, its influence on our cognition and emotion, and its expression in both healthy states and clinical disorders. Critically, we’ll also be examining the role of trust and interpersonal connection as a counterpoint to fear, so we will also address the protective functions of secure attachment and compassion. Finally, we will ask how contemplative practices might be used to help us work with fear and cultivate social bonds.

Academy for Contemplative and Ethical Leadership (ACEL)

This new MLI program will focus on seeding a new field of inquiry, practice, and research.

According to many observers, fostering ethical leadership is one of the most pressing challenges of our time. The intention of the Academy for Contemplative and Ethical Leadership (ACEL) is to seed new thinking and research that advances the field of leadership while supporting the inner life and ethical development of participants with leadership roles in business, nonprofit, and civil society.

The participants will be comprised of emergent, mid-career and senior leaders as well as change-makers who are practitioners in their field, scholars, researchers, complexity scientists, educators, contemplatives, and artists. The audience will be comprised of emerging, mid-career, and senior leaders, as well as scholars and researchers, complexity scientists, change-makers, educators, contemplatives, and artists. Applications for the August 2015 program will be accepted from February 1-March 20, 2015

The academy will operate as a week-long program, and will be comprised of presentations and discussions, daily contemplative practices, and dedicated time for exploring research, methodology, and future collaborative projects. It is our hope that research networks will emerge and develop into a community as participants gather, reflect, share, and learn during the immersion week.