Whole Thinking Workshops
How well do our practices align with our vision and values?
What are our highest aspirations for our work?
How might collaboration with groups very different from our own lead to greater success?
Whole Thinking Workshops help organizations and coalitions expand the scope and effectiveness of their work through deep reflection on these and other questions about vision, values and core aspirations.
Recognizing and addressing the connections between healthy land, healthy people and healthy communities is integral to the success of today’s conservation movement. For too long, the movement has focused on legal and technical solutions to the challenges of protecting land. We have assumed we can protect land from people through laws instead of with people through relationships. But land, and our relationship to it, is the very foundation of our culture -- and conservation is more than a legal act: it is a cultural one.
For the conservation movement to become the force in American culture that it can and ought to be, we must start to build bridges, finding common ground among diverse groups and uniting ecological and social healing. We must realize our dependence, as a movement, on relationships among people, organizations and communities, and between people and the land. We must become stronger forces for change in our communities by collaborating with others, focusing on relationships, broadening our vision and bases of support, and taking a whole systems approach to our work.
In response to this challenge, we offer Whole Thinking Workshops to organizations, coalitions and community groups around the country. Over two-and-a-half days, we facilitate an in-depth discussion of the vision guiding the host group's work, the values behind that vision, and the ways in which vision and values are or are not aligned. Participants:
- Develop a greater understanding of the role of land, and its uses and misuses, in shaping healthy and prosperous communities
- Consider new theories of how broad societal change occurs, and the role of conservation and education in fostering positive change
- Rethink language and strategies around partnerships, and build stronger goals for collaboration
- Discuss how best to inspire conservation rather than demand it, and how to build stronger bases of support through community-driven efforts, and
- Learn about the ways that they can use Whole Measures to effect the most positive change possible in the life of the communities they serve
We conduct between six and eight Whole Thinkings Workshops per year. In recent months, we have conducted the workshops for the Big Sur Land Trust, the Bay Area Open Space Council, the Natural Lands Trust, the Kulshan Community Land Trust, and Land Trust Alliance members. To find out more about holding one, please see the Frequently Asked Questions or contact us.
Download pdf for more details about the workshops.