This year’s conference will take place at the beginning of October in Hawke’s Bay. The theme of the conference is Echoes from the Future: What is our response?
We can only speculate about what possible futures are waiting to unfold. Sitting tight and waiting for the future to happen to us looks increasingly risky.
Soothsayers from shamans through to futurologists have made predictions of what’s ahead based on what is happening now. The possibility of people shaping the future they want has rarely been part of scientists’ predictive models.
But now feels different. The time we are living through appears to be struggling to hang onto rigid thinking and the decaying political, economic and social structures it has inherited. As these structures become less responsive to real human needs many people are seeking and exploring fresh roadmaps to navigate into the future they want.
All around us are individuals and communities who have a vision of what could be and how we can make it so. They dare to challenge uncertainty, to reinvent the present and treat the future as if it were tomorrow.
This Conference will ask what kind of society we want and how practically we can get there. Inspiring young people are showing the way, building resilient communities, demanding intergenerational justice, developing meaningful work and acting to restore and enrich the Commons. They are showing us what is possible when we stay the course and support each other with commitment, presence and energy in face of the challenges that echo from the future.
Whether working in business, government, civil society or in the cultural sphere many are ‘leading from the social future as it emerges’ and finding ways to build a more free, equal, mutual and earthcaring commonwealth. They are developing healthy farms, social enterprises, caring communities, schools, social projects and many other expressions of dynamic social thinking in action.
In the midst of such far-reaching social change with enormous possibilities for good and for evil, deep questions arise about the true nature of the human being, about the times in which we are living and about our responsibility for the future of the earth and of humanity, what spiritual consciousness is called for by these enormous challenges and what spiritual resources are at hand.
Full details of the conference will be available soon.