Orienting Futures: Emerging Culturally and Ecologically Responsive Practice

This webinar explores how the Orienting Futures learning community supported social enterprise practitioners to deepen their understanding of regenerative systems, decolonising practice and equity-centred leadership, including:

• Building a peer learning community grounded in brave spaces, relational practice and collective knowledge generation.
• Exploring planetary boundaries, systems thinking, regenerative design and ecological approaches to social enterprise.
• Understanding decolonising practice through Indigenous leadership, cultural literacy, systems of violence and positionality.
• Applying trauma-informed, equity-centred and intercultural approaches to leadership, organisational design and collaboration.
• Using embodied learning, reflection, play and creative practice to support deeper learning and transformation.
• Creating shared language, practical resources and ongoing connections that participants could apply within their own organisations and communities.
• Challenging outcome-focused approaches by prioritising process, relationships, curiosity and collective learning.
• Hearing participants reflect on increased confidence, stronger leadership, greater clarity and new ways of engaging others in conversations about systems change.
• Exploring how social enterprises can move beyond extractive models towards regenerative, collaborative and justice-centred ways of working.

Throughout the webinar, participants demonstrate how creating space for reflection, discomfort, creativity and connection can strengthen individual practice while building the collective capacity needed to transform social enterprise systems for people, place and planet.

Show notes and quotes

Guy Ritani: “Part of this was identifying common systems of violence and what elephants are in the room. How we understand the patterns of those elephants and how we acknowledge and recognise and interact with them. These are classism, colonisation, capitalism, ableism, patriarchy, white supremacy, Zionism, and these are just a select few from some context, and all contexts change.”

Toad Dell: “Talking about the Macro Ecology, these bigger systems, like climate, down to ecosystem, down to bioregion, down to soil, water, everything else as well, and understanding that these systems are like Russian nesting dolls, those little dolls within dolls within dolls. At every layer, at every scale, these systems are touching each other laterally.”

Participant Emeli: “I think what I found challenging was my complicity and my privilege as I went through all the different systems, ecology, ecosystems, and environmental. There was so much I learned. Even though I found that challenging, I thought that was good for me to know about my impact and the impact of my social enterprise, our social enterprise, and what we are doing. Chopping and changing between that decolonial thinking and what habitually I've been a part of all my life.”

Participant Bridget: “I think I was getting a little nervous that this is just how it is and feeling those feelings of defeat. Then having this new invigorated language and community and ways of knowing and ways of being, informed by permaculture and queering and Indigenous knowledge, has really blown my brain apart in the best way.”

Participant Lauren: “I think this idea of deep learning becomes so important because we all have these learning injuries. We have these behaviours that we learn in institutions. Sometimes those structures are upholding processes that keep us in certain place and teach us the language of assimilating over the language of being able to think critically and relate and connect to each other. Interrogating those structures is about what you can bring to the surface. I think I've had to grapple with what I have to move through in order to open myself up to learning and to not have those defensive mechanisms.”

Participant Mehak: “...the whole experience, more than anything else, gave me a sense of not feeling alone. Which I think happens quite often in my head or in our heads when we are sitting and thinking about these systems all the time and witnessing them and witnessing our bodies witnessing them and us feeling through what's going on. Then also learning about them and knowing, and I'm like, is anyone else thinking about this?”

Participant Erin: “Also queer theory, as mentioned here in this space, as a social innovation. I've always been rainbow because I love that transformative moment that is fleeting and full of beauty. One of the things I've learned over time is that to appreciate beauty, sometimes it's the hardship that we contrast it with that can really open our eyes and our hearts to that joy.”

Explore more

For those who are keen to dive deeper and do differently, here are some links to learnings and resources mentioned by the speakers and/or related to the open learning topic:

• Regenerative Webs of Care
• Series 2 resources:
• • Navigating Elephants in the Room
  • Equitable Relationships at the edge
  • Equitable Relationships at the edge part 2
  • Copy of Decolonial Obligations
• Series 3 resources:
• • Social Enterprises - Patterns & Functions
  • Equitable Applications
  • A Connected Dreamscape
• I’m a “Spoonie.” Here’s What I Wish More People Knew About Chronic Illness
• Toolkit from 2025 Orienting Futures Program:
• • Orienting Futures - Topic Overview
  • Credits & Resource Citation
  • Orienting Futures - Pre-series Development Report
  • Orienting Futures - Welcome Pack
  • Orienting Futures - Wrap-up Pack