RegeneratED Retreat 2024

Thanks to the success of last year, we are delighted to be running RegeneratED again this year. 

The Visionaries and The Quadrangle invite you to a co-created community gathering of educators. Together we'll create a weekend full of nourishment and deep enquiry, helping us together grow a more regenerative education system. This invitation is for anyone working in formal and informal learning, mainstream and alternative settings, across all ages, from cradle-to-career and beyond. 

Read this report to find out more about last year’s event. 

We’ll enquire into systemic challenges and new approaches to education as well as providing a space to slow down and connect through mindfulness, embodiment and nature connection practices – so as to help you to reconnect with your purpose within education.

Spend a weekend with other educators outside the classroom and leave feeling more connected to nature and better equipped to lead as a healthier, more nourished self.

We are living in a time in-between worlds, facing urgent calls to evolve our relationship with nature, with younger generations, and with social justice. Will you join us?

Join us to:

• Rediscover your intrinsic motivation for being an educator and discern smart next steps. This weekend will include a collective imagination process, exploring regenerative education as a key ingredient in shaping a healthier future.
• Resource yourself by meeting a truly diverse and supportive community of education leaders; unlikely allies, working in many different ways, whilst sharing one core commitment: to better support future generations and nature to flourish. 
• Revitalise yourself with a restorative and restful weekend in a beautiful natural setting, nurturing your health, wellbeing and nature-connectedness.

Expect to leave feeling deeply nourished by nature, inspired by your peers, and stimulated into new paradigms of understanding.

This retreat is for you if…..

• You’re on a mission to improve how we educate and support children, young people and our planet to thrive
• You work in formal or informal schooling, alternative provision, outdoor education, further education and/or progressive education.
• You want to connect with others who are also helping to create a healthier paradigm in education.
• You support educators through training, wellbeing, consulting, coaching, facilitating.
• You are a driven young person and/or someone with an ambition or calling to work in education and learning.
• You are interested in systems change, exploring conflicts that might be holding us back and/or more regenerative approaches to economy and society.
• You value creating intentional space to dream big and you like to translate ideas into action

In More Detail

During the weekend we will explore three guiding themes centred around the idea of kinship – exploring ways we might regenerate the relationships we exist within.

As your hosts, we will invite you to explore at the level of values, experience and identity. We will offer opportunities for deep systems enquiry, we will create space for emergence and co-creation to explore pressing issues and topics, we will look at some of the conflicts and polarisations that might be holding us back, and we will weave nature connection and wellbeing practices throughout the weekend.

Our guiding themes

1. Kinship with yourself

• How do we equip ourselves and others to lead from a healthy self?
• What self-care practices and rituals can help us and our learners to thrive?
• How do we nourish ourselves to be able to think beyond the everyday and participate in a larger shared mission?

2. Kinship with each other

• What’s outside our current awareness and what can we learn with and from each other?
• Who might be key or as yet unknown allies with whom you should be collaborating?
• How do we build safe and supportive communities of practice without getting overwhelmed?

3. Kinship with nature

• How might we help learners to reconnect with nature and feel its healing benefits?
• How could nature be even more of a co-facilitator or teacher in your workplace and pedagogy?
• How do we practice reciprocity?

The Organisers

The Visionaries exists to convene and support an intergenerational community of educational pioneers and leaders who are united – across ages and sectors – by their belief in the need for more regenerative futures (i.e. environmentally viable, socially just, nature-connected). We focus on leadership development and field building: finding, supporting and connecting established and emerging leaders who can enact and educate healthier human cultures, lighting a path that others might follow.

The Quadrangle was originally a Victorian model dairy farm with a magnificent hay barn, granary, workshops, lawn and a forest garden and river, which was converted into an educational space and retreat centre in 2007.  As a not-for-profit organisation its aim is to preserve the architectural and landscape heritage; promote wellbeing, biodiversity and ecological regeneration and to make the space available for new approaches to learning and regenerative projects.

FOOD

Delicious home cooked, plant-based meals will be provided (organic and locally sourced produce wherever possible), as well as snacks, refreshments and wine with Saturday's dinner.

*Please be sure to let us know if you have any allergies or special dietary requirements.

ACCOMMODATION

Accommodation on site is across a mix of some private and twin rooms (available on request), a very comfortable dormitory and a beautiful campsite for those preferring to sleep closer to the Earth.

We would encourage those who are able to bring a tent and camp in the beautiful land, enjoying proximity to nature and sleeping under the stars. We are also able to supply camping gear where required.