take a look through my eyes.

biren shah giovanna olmos ej clement-akomolafe bayo akomolafe toro ighele aerin dunford reginald bassey ethan miller kate boverman naveen kumar v

a global social movement a suggested process

leaping through „reality‟ creating the core team

koru festivals building the social hub – launching koru

an invitation

Koru is a shared dream of people, who believe that another world is possible. Inspired by the countercultural currents of thought that seek to transgress the globalizing world of givens that we together inhabit, Koru is an attempt to make commonplace what now seems impractical: community and smallness. It starts with disenchantment. We see that our world is not made up of atoms as such, but stories and collectively held narratives. Our many worlds are the co-creations

“the world we live in leaves a wound of separation so deep that our very souls are scarred; only new stories, new myths, new dreams can help us recover what we

have so desperately lost: each other ej clement-akomolafe

of our consciousness. This means we can co-create worlds and systems that are meaningfully enabling – worlds in which we can thrive. „Unfortunately‟ (at least from the perspectives of a growing critical population around the globe), our world today is enchanted by the myths of duality, separation, scarcity, fear, and progress – which animate our global monetary frameworks, our systems of education, our notions of wellbeing, the monoculture of progress, the drive to consume endlessly and, most importantly, what we think is possible. Koru represents a network of collectives around the globe, who are disenchanted from these stories, and who actively seek to re-enchant their realities by engaging streets, neighbourhoods, communities and other localities with new conversations, new practices and new relationships. As indigenous shamans reach for other dimensions, Koru is an adventure of healing our fragments, shifting consciousness, reconnecting with mystery, and asserting the irreducible dignity of difference.

wise soulful broken searching vulnerable heroic

“koru is an invitation to become, to anticipate new worlds, to transgress the normal, to re-enchant our

landscapes with the always unprecedented possibilities of community – the only security of our unravelling

days…” bayo akomolafe

Koru works by connecting small collectivities of people working together to address the multidimensional crises of consciousness now gripping our planet. The idea is relatively straightforward. Anyone, without need for expertise or degrees, can embark on a Koru dream-quest. First, you connect with your deep questions and disenchantments; then you visit the Koru hub, where you can form a collective (a Koru playground) by inviting other friends (with whom you can meet physically!). You can embark on a dream-quest by meeting with a locality and building conversations on creatively generated, culturally sensitive platforms for interaction. A dream-quest can address the hegemony of institutionalized schooling, the damage caused by monetary monocultures and the possibilities of alternative currencies, and the „need‟ to re-animate indigenous livelihoods and ways of be-ing. Unlike traditional team missions, a dream-quest does not need to produce „results‟; the destination is the journey of healing, decolonization and reconnecting. This is because an ethical space of play motivates our articulation of Koru: the idea that the „reality‟ is porous, participatory, and ambiguous.

curious sociable

adventurous keen

courageous seeking

“the beautiful thing about koru is that it does not require conformity to an external idea…”

giovanna olmos

“i don‟t know…” toro ighele

1.

How koru work

2.

3.

Start a koru collective. Get to the koru portal, register, and invite others you can potentially meet with to your „playground‟.

Embark on a dream-quest. Now that your conversations are on, identify a street, a neighbourhood, or a locality which you can engage and begin activities that co-create new possibilities.

Share your koru quests. Continue to share with other koru collectives what you and others in your „playground‟ are doing along with your community of interest to localize their economies, revitalize indigenous traditions, and think out educational alternatives.

Other things you could do

with koru

Start conversations about your transitioning and

your consciousness shift

Earn a Fern (a gift currency for koru

collectives)

Participate in discussions about decolonizing our

worlds

poetic musical simple profound different faithful

How can we transit from independence to interdependence? How can we transit from scarcity to shared abundance? How can we transit from schools and certificates to learning ecologies? How can we transit from the template of one world to the fresco of multiple worlds? The experiments of conversations, new relationships, new ethics and values, and new practices that Koru represents are the powerful responses to these questions – „answers‟ that point to the power and possibility of our time. We can leap through our „reality‟ – piercing the atmosphere of normalcy and immutability we have been conditioned to accept. Imagine the possibilities that can be enacted by small, unorthodox, un-missionaries in search of other worlds of power!

“love is political…” naveen kumar v

“what we need is a radical new sense of being together

– our days of flying alone must now come to an end” reginald bassey

restless poetic faithful different enchanted transitioning subversive

Koru is a DIY (do-it-yourself) operation based on collective efforts towards transitioning from one consciousness to another. In a very compelling way, Koru is thus an attempt to reimagine how people can work together. Orthodox organizations reinforce the givenness of structures, hierarchy, logos, memos, and elaborate titles. While these are beautiful gifts, we look forward to settings that unleash

different types of relationships and conversations not presently available within work settings that stress conformity and order. We look forward to meaningful work (as against jobs) where the easy divide between „failure‟ and „success‟ is mushy, where „reward‟ means a lot more than monetary compensation, and where co-creation is paramount. The social hub and other „central‟ activities that involve some sort of forecasting and planning (such as organizing a festival) will be animated by a core team of co-founders in a work setting we call a „playground’.

“Can we find a way to foster some version of comunalidad in our modern, urban, Western

reality? Are we just too far removed from this kind of worldview, or is there a way we can make

the space and go slow enough to tap into the deepest root of comunalidad: human

interdependence…” aerin dunford

thoughtful profound sociable hospitable silent questioning empowering

Connecting koru collectives around the globe will be koru festivals, which will bring persons who have embarked on dream-quests, persons who would like to engage new conversational possibilities, and friends of koru to an animated, energized arena. A koru festival is designed to gather koru collectives around the globe. The festival will feature music, art, narratives, story circles, presentations of koru dream-quests, talks, food, dance, and expeditions. We envisage naturally stimulating settings and aesthetically empowering places as contexts for the festivals. The festivals will strive to honour aspects of indigenous livelihoods – such as gift culture practices, indigenous performances, etc. A koru collective or a cluster of koru collectives can create a koru festival – with support, guidance and direction from the koru core team as well as other koru collectives. A koru festival is an opportunity for persons on a koru adventure to share their transitioning experiences with others who are taking the same journeys.

“if the present systems seem limiting and destructive to me, it is not because there is something inherently

wrong with them – but because now we are being called to step up (step out, step into) onto the next rung of the

evolutionary ladder…” biren shah

strong courageous playful empowering friendly wise

The koru symbol in Maori culture stands for new beginnings. Could there be a better time than this year of transitions (2012) to celebrate new ways of be-ing that privilege a preferred consciousness? By June 2012, the Koru social portal will be launched – this is what we envision and hope for. This date will also stand as the point we push into the sea of uncertainty, as we together attempt to stimulate koru collectives, inspire dream-quests, share transition narratives, and keep conversations going about what is possible in our chaotic times. Ej and I have committed our little resources to the construction of what will hopefully be an enriching experience on the internet. We hope our core team conversations will help stimulate creative ideas about what the hub might look like and what people around the world could do with it.

“you never change anything by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that

makes the existing model obsolete…” buckminster fuller

“What does it mean for us to truly come to experience ourselves as Gaia – the emergent

being of earth's self-regulation – learning about itself, experimenting with new forms of

consciousness and freedom…” kate boverman

nerdish creative revolutionary different open colourful

Dear Co-creator of Koru, We are deeply honoured to be in company of the beautiful people who are making koru a thrilling possibility – persons such as you. A few days ago, we believe we reached a milestone with the formation of the core team or playground. Now comprising ten members, the co-founding team will help situate the emergent DIY practices of koru, and will help manage the social hub and other tasks related to community organizing and event coordination. Because koru is not exactly an „NGO‟ or organization in the traditional sense, we do not intend the kinds of relationships that define these work contexts. Thus, in line with the wisdom of Aerin and Ethan, we‟d love to invite you to a conversation about

what koru means for you why you have said yes to be part of the core team what you envision about yourself in relation to

this process launching koru our narratives of disenchantment what we can do together and how we will work to

achieve koru We respectfully invite you to a Skype conference on March 16 (please indicate your readiness and suggested local time preferences in response to this invitation).

intense spirited playful discerning adventurous open free

“we work often as if these things (the „economy‟, the „environment‟, our sense of separation) were given, as if they were built into the structure of the world itself. [Koru] will work on unravelling these ways of thinking (which become, and are reinforced by, ways of life), and…begin creating (and, in many cases, recovering) concepts for living that make visible our connections, our interdependence…” ethan miller