Fifteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

There is an emerging knowledge movement slowly building all over the world, though often unnoticed by the media and formal education systems. Within this movement a group of us has been nurturing and learning with is the Ecoversities Alliance comprised of people, organizations and communities who are reclaiming knowledge systems and a cultural imaginary to restore and re-envision learning processes that are meaningful and relevant to the challenges of our times. A number of these initiatives are also challenging and going beyond ‘sustainability’, embracing other notions and practices around de-colonizing, transition, regeneration, autonomy, and numerous local terms. Although diverse in its origins, these different pedagogical initiatives both critique the existing education systems, and cultivate new practices to regenerate ecological, social and cultural ecosystems, whilst also reflecting on the meanings of ‘home’ as locality and as an ‘economy’: hence the name ‘eco-versities’. The Ecoversities Alliance is a trans-local community of over 100 transformative learning spaces from around the world who have been meeting and working together since 2015 through international and regional gatherings, learning exchanges, campaigns, workshops, learning journeys, film festivals and publications. The values and orientations that are shaping this learning movement are: Emergence; Inquiry in Solidarity; Experiential Learning; Emplacement; De-colonising; and Inter(trans)cultural Dialogue. This interactive workshop will share some of the learnings of this Alliance and will also invite participants to learn in-between cultures, epistemologies, cosmologies, and in ways we might not recognize to re-imagine the role of universities for the Ecological Age.