Building a Teal Village (IEC 2016 Preview)

By Victor Vorski for Enlivening Edge Magazine

“It is possible that the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community—a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the earth.” ∼ Thich Nhat Hanh

As we apply the Integral and Teal organisational perspective to different areas of life, we naturally come to consider how Teal ideas could apply to the communities around us. At what scale can we completely re-design our communities within a short-timeframe? How deep can personal transformation possibly be whilst living and working surrounded by people of a very different paradigm?

Can we begin exploring the idea of a Teal society by creating a Teal Village first—the village being the natural smallest unit of human community?

Victor Village Newsletter-1-image03My Journey

As I think back, I realise that I have been on a search for community my whole life. I grew up in a new, materially-comfortable but lacking-of-community, soulless apartment block. From childhood, I experienced the void created by the absence of a neighbourhood community.

My parents had many friends, but no one in our building or neighbourhood, an environment which I now realise felt instinctively un-natural. I remember looking forward to visiting my father’s hometown, staying in a multi-generation home surrounded by family and friendly neighbours. 

Since then I have been fortunate to have a few experiences of a rich community-fabric: expatriate life in Kuwait, university in a small town in Canada, the early days of electronic music festivals, Burning Man festival, as well as experiencing how neighbourhood community is supported by the Shinto religion in Japan.

These brief glimpses of the richness and joy of a healthy community fueled my continuing disillusionment with modern big-city life and gave me the impetus to continue searching how to create a life rooted in a thriving, creative local community.

Six months ago we started the “Teal for Startups (T4S)” global online working group, opening a space where like-minded people can meet and collaborate around an idea. I hope that we can use a similar collaboration format to gather and explore the idea of a Teal Village, publishing a series of research and idea papers. In the long-run, perhaps create a think-tank around this dream.

My personal dream is to build a Teal Village which is centred on creativity, collaboration and learning. A home for people working online, a hub of entrepreneurship, art, craft, and design. A village which is naturally a Teal Startup Incubator  and a Teal learning center.

The Questions

To begin our enquiry into what a Teal Village might be, what questions need to be considered? Some which come to mind are:

    • How to create a Village culture which is Teal/Integral, inclusive and deep?
    • How to do village land and architectural planning in a Teal context?
    • How to holistically incorporate Teal entrepreneurship into the Teal Village setting?
    • Can the village be a Teal Startup Incubator?
    • How to develop community-scale Teal-learning systems for all ages?
    • How to balance commons, private ownership, and sharing?
    • How can we collaborate to co-create an open model for a Teal Village?
    • How can we build a global network of Teal Villages?
    • Can a village be organised like a Teal organisation?

 

  • … and many more, join us to explore further!

Join the discussion…

Come to our Workshop at IEC

At the “Teal Village” workshop at the IEC this year Dániel Sinkó and I will gather everyone’s questions for consideration and begin to explore them in small discussion groups. We hope this will generate a conversation which will then continue in an online working group.

Curious? Interested? Want to join the conversation? Sign up!

We are looking for people to join us in forming the core team to facilitate the creation of this working group and many people to gather to explore these ideas further.

Please sign up at the link below to join the conversation:

http://village.teal.one/

A Teal Village workshop-camp-retreat – Portugal 2016!

EarthSkyLab is holding a retreat this summer to together brainstorm building EarthSkyLab, a Teal Village and to plan how each of us could build a life away in a Teal Village, away from the city.

More information at http://skylab.earth/retreat-camp-summer-2016/

 

VV jpg image00Victor: Passionate about building a better future through creating more holistic, humane, joyful organisations. He dreams of creating systems which support wide-scale open collaboration and peer learning, and release human creativity. For the last 10 years Victor has worked in flexible global virtual teams, designing software and advising start-up ventures.

He has extensive experience in software design and is passionate about usability and user experience. He is currently planning EarthSkyLab an Entreprenourial Teal village centered around creativity, collaboration and learning. Victor is craftsman and lover of nature, and co-initiator of Teal for Startups working group.