In early 2020, NewStories was asked to be part of the team planning an Art of Participatory Leadership workshop in the Kootenay Region of British Columbia. The three-day workshop in early May was being designed specifically to appeal to people working on the climate process. COVID-19 stopped us in our tracks and we asked what’s needed here and now?

We used a “slow down and speed up” strategy. In March we postponed the three-day workshop until October and over the next 2 months offered three 2 hour workshops on ZOOM to help people learn more about how to offer their leadership in these pandemic times. Coming out of those sessions, we began to see the opportunity to organize the host a cohort of people working locally and regionally on regenerating community in a time of climate crises.

The October workshop was eventually cancelled and we began the process of designing a virtual learning community — which may have some limited face-to-face sessions — of people who want to learn together and take wiser action. We call this an action-learning cohort: people learning new things, trying new stuff, and iterating their work within a learning community.