Welcome
I work with systems both big and small that are in fundamental shift and in transformation. I accompany and co-create with those who are on the edge of what we do not know. Those who are willing to lead, live into, and learn through, the deep changes that are being asked of us now.
Transitions, transformation, this is my work.
I do this locally, globally, and online. How? By co-creating collective practice and processes to navigate times and places of chaos, crisis and regeneration. Tending the inner and outer work of our leadership, and exploring how we are complicit in the systems we want to transform. This includes the rite of passage of hospicing what is dying whilst hosting the newness that is emerging. We will find the turning points, and become the turning point.
This is artful work. It’s the work of cultivating courage. This yields new harvests, new stories. We make poetry of public policy, find beauty in the broken and carve landscapes of belonging. We are the stories we tell.
You can follow these stories, along with the series and the book I am writing, The Wild Life of Dying. Click on the links below to dive in and find out more.
The website, much like my life, is a work in progress, but soon it will be ready to share with you. In the meantime, you can reach me at vanessa.reid@the-lwi.org
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Co-Founder: The Living Wholeness Institute
Co-Principal: The Ecological Imagination Lab
Co-Instigator: The Steadying
Hearth-Host: The Writing House
Co-Lead: The Imaginarium and Cafe at the Edge of the World (Wolf Willow Institute)
Co-Initiator: The Art of Hosting-Athens and The Systemic Innovation Zone (the SIZ)
Watch: TEDx Conscious Closure and the Wild Life of Dying
SYSTEMIC DESIGN
Designing depth pedagogies, rites of passage, and cross-cultural complexity immersions with the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Learning
Initiator & Maestro: The Imaginarium
Producer and Host: Cafe at the Edge of the World
Process Design & Lead Faculty: Positive Deviants Fellowship (years 1-3)
Designer and Lead Facilitator: Niigani Miinigowiziiwiin (We Give These Gifts to the Future) a 3-year cohort with the Canadian Science Centres, The Presencing Institute, Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig (University) and Wolf Willow to braid complexity thinking with Indigenous knowledge systems and shift the culture of science education, decolonize science and deepen cross-cultural fluency.
Designer and Host: The Indigenous Changemakers Systems Studio, a six-month initiative bringing together Elders, artists and changemakers from the Treaty Three region in northern Ontario looking bring a culturally-centered systems lens to the opioid crisis. A partnership with the Binesiwag Center for Wellness. blending Anishinaabe gikendaasowin (ways of knowing) with systemic design.
SYSTEMIC TRANSFORMATION
Co-creating systemic transformation initiatives with Living Wholeness Institute. We work around the world to co-create cultures and communities of practice dedicated to systems transformation amidst complexity, collapse and chaos.
Designing and hosting transformative initiatives and practice grounds - Greece, Middle East, Europe, Finance Innovation Lab (UK), European Commission
Accelerated depth learning with land and place, multiple intelligences, inner and outer, individual and collective and capacities for emergence
Land-based residencies and immersions with the land of Axladitsa (Greece)
Regenerative futures and climate adaptation field practice
FACULTY:
Systemic Designer: Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab @ Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig (University))
Process Designer and Faculty: The Hedge School (Trailblazery, Ireland)
Navigator: Ever/Was, an endings hotline for organizations
Global Steward: The Art of Participatory Leadership
Designer and Facilitator: The Art of Public Dialogue: hosting conversations on race and identity @ Anima Leadership
GO DEEPER:
Watch: TEDx Conscious Closure and the Wild Life of Dying
Read: Secret Guides and Weird Waymarkers (Stanford Social Innovation Review)
Listen: The Collective Imagination Toolkit / Creaturely Portals
Interview: Transitions and Systems Change (with the Systems Sanctuary)
Explore: The Four-Rooms: a learning ecology for systemic transformation
Read: Conscious Closure: stewarding organizations through the cycles of life
"be softer with you.
you are a breathing thing.
a memory to someone.
a home to a life."
~nayyirah waheed