Futurecraft Residency

A week-long facilitated residency on cultivating wholeness & crafting regenerative futures

Calling all current and aspiring solarpunks, lunarpunks, metamodernists, Soulcrafters, Homegrown Humans, systems thinkers, fermenters, chefs, botanists, mushroom growers, forest bathers, dancers, swimmers, runners, meditators, yogis, painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers, coders, poets, actors, musicians, clowns, fools, coaches, counsellors, mentors, facilitators, therapists and teachers…

You're invited to join Stephen Reid (lead facilitator), co-facilitators Anna Ling and Laura Gottlieb and special guest facilitators for the first Futurecraft Residency at a stunning coastal venue in Cornwall, UK for a week across Beltane, 28th April – 5th May 2023. 

Apply now

The themes of the residency are cultivating wholeness & crafting regenerative futures.

• Cultivating wholeness: What do we understand by wholeness? What does it mean to be a whole human being? How can we cultivate wholeness both personally and collectively? (Inspired by Stephen's Life as Practice four-week online group journey – if you join the residency, you will be given full access to the course notes.)
• Crafting regenerative futures: What futures do we desire, for ourselves and for all life? What is the context we are operating in? How can we craft our dreams into realities?

Some of our favourite future thinkers include Daniel Schmachtenberger, Nora Bateson, Alnoor Ladha, Bayo Akomolafe, Jordan Hall, Jamie Wheal, Tyson Yunkaporta, Douglas Rushkoff, Charles Eisenstein, Karl Steyaert, Jocelyn Ames, Richard Dennis Bartlett, Ronan Harrington, Hanzi Freinacht, Terry Patten, Kevin Owocki, Ethan Buchman, Manda Scott, Ayana Young, adrienne maree brown, angel kyodo williams, Bill Plotkin, Martin Shaw, Ursula K. Le Guin, Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jeremy Lent and Fritjof Capra. See more on Stephen's Knowledgegraph, Books and Podcasts pages.

The residency is the perfect opportunity to make new friends for life, deepen your current practices and explore some new ideas and activities you might not be so familiar with. 

Each day will include meditation, yoga and group singing, plus a mixture of the following:

• Nature connection and wellbeing
  • Walking meditation
  • Forest bathing
  • Mushroom growing
  • Mugwort, cacao and other gentle plant allies
  • Sauna
• Exercise and embodiment
  • Yoga
  • Running
  • Sea swimming
  • Dance
  • Blindfolded contact
• Connecting with others
  • Circling
  • Authentic relating
  • Bohmian Dialogue
  • The Wheel of Consent
  • The Light/Dark Masculine/Feminine
• Self-expression & creativity
  • Morning pages, dream journaling
  • Painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, singing
  • Fiction writing
  • Clowning/Fooling/Bouffon
  • Co-created cabaret
• Theory/dialogue/discussion/films on topics like:
  • Recapture the Rapture (Jamie Wheal)
  • Atomic Habits (James Clear)
  • Seeing That Frees (Rob Burbea)
  • Soulcraft & Wild Mind (Bill Plotkin)
  • The Listening Society (Hanzi Freinacht)
  • Reinventing Organisations (Frederic Laloux)
  • Unbound (Kasia Urbaniak)
  • Existential Kink (Carolyn Elliott)
  • The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent (Betty Martin)
  • Sand Talk (Tyson Yunkaporta)
  • Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer)
  • Pleasure Activism (adrienne maree brown)
  • The Systems View of Life (Fritjof Capra)
  • Wholeness and the Implicate Order (David Bohm)
  • The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)
  • The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson)
  • A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Becky Chambers)
  • Post Capitalist Philanthropy (Alnoor Ladha & Lynn Murphy)
  • The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth (The Red Nation)

Sample timetable:

One session each day will be left open for free time and offerings from participants. It's OK to miss a session here and there if you have important matters to attend to.

All meals and snacks are provided, and will be top-quality, microbiome-boosting organic and vegan with occasional vegetarian options. In addition, all participants will be offered:

• Two 30-minute calls, one before and one after the residency
• A mushroom grow kit to take home

We will prioritise applications from people who:

• have experience meditating for 30 minutes in one sitting
• have practised some yoga  
• are enthusiastic about singing in a group
• have already attended one or more residencies/retreats on relevant topics

We welcome people of all ages, genders and sexualities. All rooms are shared. We will be a maximum of 20 people.

A limited number of scholarships are available – please say you are interested in this option when applying.

Apply now

Your facilitators

Stephen Reid

Stephen Reid is a teacher, technologist and coach devoted to the flourishing of Life on Earth who has trained in the fields of complexity science, physics, software development, transformational coaching, meditation and plant medicine. He writes a regular newsletter, teaches the Life as Practice course, and is a member of the not-for-profit worker co-operative Dandelion Collective, where he leads the development of the Dandelion platform for regenerative events and co-created gatherings.

Previously, he founded The Psychedelic Society, taught the How to DAO, Tools for the Regenerative Renaissance, The Promise of Decentralisation & Introduction to web3 courses, served as the youngest ever board member of Greenpeace UK, and consulted for organisations including the New Economics Foundation, the Living Wage Foundation and 350.org. Stephen has an MPhys in Physics from the University of Oxford, where he specialised in quantum field theory, and an MRes in Complexity Sciences from the University of Bristol.

Anna Ling

Anna Ling is a singer-songwriter, community choir leader and yoga teacher based in Devon with over 10 years experience teaching choirs and yoga.

She has a BA in Ethnomusicology from SOAS and is accredited by the Association of Teachers of Singing and the Natural Voice Network. She has worked with organisations including Wren Music, Talking in Tune, Academy of Music & Sound, Jamming Station, WOMAD and Voice Camp. 

Anna did her first accredited Yoga Teacher Training with Ana Forrest in 2014, and has joined many more yoga trainings since in Hatha, Power Yoga and Iyengar. She lived in an Advaita ashram for 3 years and has a strong daily practice in both yoga and meditation. 

Anna loves nothing more than creating spaces for people to feel their shared humanity and understands the power of both singing and yoga to increase group connection and cohesion as well as individual joy. She’s currently recording her debut album and her music can be found on all major streaming platforms.

Laura Gottlieb

Laura Gottlieb is an integral facilitator and design researcher who has studied philosophy, design, facilitation, Bohmian dialogue, Authentic Relating, yoga, taekwondo and Zen Buddhism. They are currently finishing their doctoral studies at Mälardalen University where they are exploring relational sensitivity in participatory design. Laura is a qualified facilitator with Ten Directions, Real LIFE, The Philosophy Foundation and Core Quadrant, and the founder of the Stockholm Bohmian Dialogue group. They have a BA in Philosophy from the University of Southampton and an MA in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art, London.

jae spencer-keyse

jae spencer-keyse (she/they/he) is a skilled facilitator, community builder, learning designer, and mentor. They are captivated by the question: What if learning and education supported individuals and the world to thrive? This curiosity led to the development of radical reimagination, a collection of initiatives aimed at addressing the urgent need to re-envision and co-create learning experiences and life as a whole.

For the past 13 years, jae has held various positions in the fields of education and systemic change. They recognize that traditional education systems often dictate what is considered "good" and "right," leaving many students feeling like "failures." Based on academic and industrial models, these systems tend to undervalue creative and imaginative practices. Rather than attempting to reform the existing system, jae is focused on radically reimagining it by exploring deeply relational, creative, regenerative, anti-oppressive, and embodied practices.

jae has collaborated with organizations such as the United Nations, FutureLearn, Samsung Not A School, Huddlecraft, Big Change, and HundrED, and co-founded YouthXYouth and The Weaving Lab. They hold a degree in Politics and International Relations from Warwick University and a BPS-accredited master's degree in Psychology and Neuroscience from the University of St. Andrews.

Guest facilitators

Ronan Harrington

Ronan Harrington supports the world's leading companies to create healthy, high performance cultures.

Ronan's expertise comes from an array of senior leadership roles. Over a decade ago, Ronan became one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society of the Arts. As a lead Futurist to the British Foreign Office (at the age of 24), he authored a report on the world of 2030 and how the British Government should respond. He received a Masters in Public Policy from Balliol College, Oxford University, and then became one of youngest executives in the City of London, as Director of Futures and Strategy at RPC.

It is not only expertise, but hard won wisdom that defines Ronan.

In 2020, he led the political strategy for the Global Environmental Movement, Extinction Rebellion, coordinating a global movement in over 60 cities around the world. Like many leaders, the weight of responsibility led to severe burnout and in Ronan's case being diagnosed with a debilitating chronic illness. Having overcome incredible difficulty, Ronan now shares the hidden drivers of burnout and what neuroscience-based tools, and cutting-edge team practices are best to manage stress, overwhelm and drama.

Gaia Harvey Jackson

Gaia Harvey Jackson is a workshop facilitator, coach and artist creating spaces for deep transformation. She specialises in women's empowerment and leads the Psychedelic Society's events programme for women. 

Gaia is passionate about the revival of ritual and works with communities to co-create ceremonies around the world, helping people to mark significant moments, move through challenges, and celebrate life. Her work combines elements of theatre games, voice work, meditation, dance and ritual, creating safe and playful environments where people can authentically connect and release.

Gaia has worked with organisations including Medicine Festival, Morning Gloryville, Togetherness, Alter Ego Network, Ecstatic Dance UK, Noisily, Kilifi New Year Festival Kenya, Ecosystem Restoration Camps, Pinky Promise and Midwifing the Veils.

Roisin Green

Roisin Green has been practising meditation, clowning and various embodiment modalities for over ten years. She teaches the the Power Play: Submission and Domination Reframed workshops and assists former Taoist nun and dominatrix Kasia Urbaniak on her course Power With Men, a syllabus designed to address situations where female-conditioned people tend to lose power. In 2022, Roisin began training to be a psychotherapist and is happy for this training to be further underpinning her dedication to rigour and safety in this field.

Roisin works at depth in a gentle, simple and to the point manner. She has learned the delicate dance of cultivating psychological and spiritual power simultaneously. In working with Roisin, you will learn to be precise, to slow down and grow compassion as you build your temple of awareness and gain the capacity to hold yourself in your experience.

David Basak

David Basak is dancer, meditator and architect who has been practicising Contact Improvisation (CI) for more than 10 years.

His interest is in the layers beneath the dance form and the intimate learning that can happen between self and other when we drop out of words and into the relational somatic body. He has experienced much growth through the subtleties of CI and aspires to share his learnings for deeper, richer and juicier meetings with self and other.

Beyond CI, David has extensively studied Buddhism, has practiced meditation for over 15 years and facilitates kambo ceremonies. He is a qualified architect specialising in the eco-refurbishment of heritage buildings and is on the management teams of several UK festivals.

Please note Psychedelic Society member discounts do not apply to this event. Header image credit: Forest Village by Sandara