Through the eyes of a child
Preventing runaway global warming is the most important task for our generation. This threat was unknown to those who came before us, and for those who come after it may be too late.
Look into the eyes of a child and you will know: this challenge is ours.
This is not a time for panic and alarmism. Neither is it the time for denial and dissembling, for looking on the bright side, for pretending that we can meet this challenge by making some overdue adjustments at the margins.
Dealing with the challenge of climate change and thus making the transition to a sustainable future calls us to our fullest humanity. It will require all the honesty, ingenuity, intelligence, and courage we can muster. And it can't be left to the "experts" and the "leaders". This is a task for us all, acting together.
It is a task for community.
Finding the way to a sustainable future on this planet through a forest of poorly understood complexity will test to the full the capacity of our communities and organisations to learn and act together. There is no blueprint to follow, no precedents to guide us.
We must learn the way as we go.
This is why the Wollumbin Institute Co-Learning Commons has been established -- to promote practical innovation and collaborative learning for the historic shift we must make.
What is the Wollumbin Co-Learning Commons?
A community of organisations fostering partnerships, alliances and networks to create groundbreaking sustainability demonstration projects and to gather the learning that emerges from them.
Three words sum up what we are about:
The Wollumbin Institute member organisations share a commitment to advancing the transition to a more sustainable future.
Our member organisations understand that innovation in our social and cultural systems is essential if we are to make this transition within the timeframe now available for us.
We understand that systemic learning is fundamental to the social innovations required for the sustainability transition. We call this Co-Learning, shorthand for collaborative action learning -- learning together in action.
The Wollumbin Co-Learning Commons exists in the space between our member organisations. It is a space in which to foster new connections and encourage joint learning and action.
Why was it formed?
The idea for the Wollumbin Institute arose from Northern Rivers representatives who attended the Leading for the Future Roundtable at Parliament House in Brisbane, Australia, in 2007*.
Discussions following the roundtable focussed on the importance of innovation and organisational learning as drivers of sustainability transition. While ever organisations committed to sustainability continue using outmoded forms and methods to achieve new outcomes, they will continue to fall far short of the breakthroughs they are seeking.
The conclusion we reached was that a new form of meta-organisation is needed to catalyse collaborative partnerships and demonstration projects, then harvest the learning to enhance further innovative regional and local initiatives. Such partnerships add value to the participating organisations by building their capacity to deal with uncertainty and implement effective transition strategies.
After some months of planning, the initiating group moved to incorporate the Wollumbin Institute as a non-profit association in July 2008.
How does it work?
The Wollumbin Institute is growing a community of organisations collaborating on climate change/sustainability action learning projects, and then applying the learning to their own separate and joint activities.
Building the resilience of communities and the local economies that support them is essential for the sustainability transition. The Wollumbin Institute seeks opportunities to support projects that enhance eco-social sustainability at a local level and facilitates learning networks between them.
Our Co-learning Commons is the incubator for collaborative projects of this kind involving our member organisations and other organisations in the wider community. Click on the Programs button on the left to learn about some of our current co-learning projects.
Complexity Science & Social Change
It is plain for all who care to see that conventional approaches to organisational and social transformation over the last 200 years have failed us. This is one major reason for the multiple crises now confronting us as our seriously outmoded institutions and mindsets struggle to come to terms with a reality that has far outpaced them.
Over the last half of the 20th Century a new way of understanding and engaging with the world has arisen from fields of scientific inquiry as diverse as meteorology, artificial intelligence, biology, mathematics and computer science. Now known as "complexity science", this new paradigm is exploring how eco-systems, societies, the climate, economies, and the human brain exhibit complex behaviours as a whole that a knowledge of their constituent parts does not help us understand or even predict.
These characterists that only arise at the level of the whole system are called "emergent properties" because they seem to emerge in a self-organising fashion when a system develops sufficient complexity. The concept of "emergence" has thus become an important tool for better understanding how complex systems evolve and, when the circumstances require, transform themselves.
Click on the Emergence button on the left to explore how we are applying this concept to our work in the Wollumbin Co-Learning Commons.
Who is leading the Wollumbin Institute?
The Governing Committee overseeing the start-up process until the first general meeting in 2009 is:
- Dr Ingrid Burkett - Business Innovation Manager
- Cr Simon Clough - Lismore City Councillor
- John Dolman - Company General Manager
- Uta Dietrich - Director of Health Promotion
- Professor Jenny Graham - University Executive Dean
- Richard Kelloway - Community Facilitator
- Kenneth McLeod - Process Consultant
- Robert Pekin - Social Venture Entrepreneur
- Murray Richardson - Management Consultant
- Jan Strom - University Regional Programs Manager
Priorities for the Institute’s activities emerge from Strategy Forums involving representatives of its member organisations. The role of our Governing Committee (board) is to ensure that the Institute is adequately resourced and that these resources are used efficiently and appropriately.
(* The roundtable, attended by 200 invited business, local government, community, and policy development representatives, was convened by Ken McLeod for the Ethos Foundation and hosted by the Hon Rod Welford, Minister for Education, Training and the Arts. The Northern NSW participants included people from business, education, regional planning, local government, tourism, and community development.)
