An immersion into nature-based village building

Come join us for our Weaving the Village in-person gathering and training. Weaving the Village is both an experience of village cultural elements and a training for how to weave village in your home place. We will be weaving together acorn leadership training & practicing the 8 handshakes wheel. We love a complex, interwoven design for our courses…and that is also how nature seems to design life…

Above all it will be a time to come together and experience these beautiful connective teachings in person, around the fire, in the forest, by the stream, in the sauna, and alongside each-other in the camp kitchen!

The 8 Handshakes Wheel

The 8 handshakes wheel maps out the core areas of practice we need to commit to in order to create regenerative culture. Within each of these areas there are many different cultural elements, some of which we will be practicing during our time together.

Here are some examples of how we will practice each of the directions from this wheel:

EAST – Deep Nature Connection – practices focused on deeply opening the senses, connecting with the animistic world, and community storytelling, inner tracking and collective learning.

SOUTH-EAST – Mentoring – Directional mentoring for the specific direction you are holding within the acorn leadership model, peer mentoring and practicing the art of questioning in community.

SOUTH – Subsistence Activities -participate in collective village tasks & learn the physical fire-tending skills for our village hearth.

SOUTH-WEST – Tending the Wild – participate in on-site tending the wild activities at our inspiring re-wilding location for the week.

WEST – Community Peace-Making – explore village building peace-making principles through personal commitment to the peace-making principles of inner peace, good message, unity of heart & mind and healing; practicing tending your own inner-peace, partaking in supported inter-personal short-feedback loops, tracking community hearts & minds and transforming grievances to grief.

NORTH-WEST – Inner Tracking & Healing- through activities such as community sitspot, journaling, community dialogue & mentoring, and participating in community grief-tending.

NORTH – Regenerative Design – through understanding the design of Weaving the Village, co-design of the Village Nature Gathering, learning the whole acorn design model and exploring the learnings after the Village Nature Gathering.

NORTH-EAST – Creativity – Exploring ancestral skills and developing your song leadership in community through learning and leading specific songs.

Acorn Leadership

The 8 Shields model offers rich teachings on how to bring the roles of the village back so that everyone feels held and can find their belonging. For the full duration of Weaving the Village you will be in one of the eight directions. Exploring the embodiment of this direction for a prolonged period of time, in community, will support you to grow and reflect on your inner relationship with this archetype aswell as learn the role and cultural elements associated with this direction.

During the Village Nature Gathering weekend you will lead a ‘society’ of people who will join you in that direction, giving you the opportunity to further grow your understanding through sharing and supporting others in their relationship with it.

Through this whole process you will receive teachings of the whole acorn wheel, receive personal mentoring for your direction, and be in a peer mentoring relationship with the person in the direction across the axis from you.

Who is this for

Weaving the Village is for anyone who

• wants to experience nature-based culture and be held in a village of belonging
• wants to experience and learn a model of community deep nature connection practices and how this can develop into a nature-based culture
• is involved in community and/or village building and wants to learn a framework for how to bring out peoples gifts, the roles that are essential for creating a thriving community of people, the core areas of focus needed to transition to a regenerative culture, and what community peace-making can look and feel like.

We will as always have elders present who will be offering an outer ring of holding that embraces all the participants and staff.

If there is sufficient need for a children’s program we will do our best to organize for this to run alongside Weaving the Village.

Where, when & cost

To be confirmed

The price is inclusive of camping, nurturing catering cooked over the open fire, and the Village Nature Gathering.