Our Journey So Far (GRP 07)

by Jascha Rohr • 11. Dezember 2019

The emergence of an idea...

For over 20 years, Jascha Rohr has been exploring and experiencing the power of cocreative design processes.

As the co-founder of the Permaculture Academy and The Institute for Participatory Design, he has time and time again witnessed the creativity and innovation that can be unlocked through truly collaborative processes.

In 2018 longterm friends Roman Huber and Jascha met for a private retreat in Huntlosen. It was the hottest and driest summer in Germany for decades.

Presented with such stark evidence of the looming climate crisis, they discussed the lack of collaborative creativity in politics — especially in international politics, where we are facing the most complex problems on a global scale. The idea to form a new non-profit organisation to address this problem started to emerge.

One day, whilst preparing lunch together, they spontaneously recorded the very first 'Future Cooking' video.

When they were offered the financial support of a private donor and friend at the end of 2018 the idea started to become a reality.

Visit to Schloss Tempelhof

The three founders of the Cocreation Foundation, Jascha Rohr, Roman Huber and Alistair Langer, met together for the first time at Schloss Tempelhof in May 2019. 

What better place to start our journey than somewhere where another vision has already manifested?

Roman co-founded Schloss Tempelhof in 2010 as an intentional community with a vision for an ecologically sustainable and socially equitable way of life.

With a background in marketing for sustainability projects, Alistair brought an understanding of the dynamics involved in building a successful non-profit. 

Over three days the three founders embarked on a deep process of dialogue and exploration to begin to build the strong foundations of a cocreative team.

Throughout the process, it became clear that they couldn’t jump to any conclusions. Instead they decided to embark on a journey to collect, compile and advance what is already known about cocreation.

Taking our idea around Europe

There is a principle in permaculture design: start at your backdoor.

Each of us come from different but complementary backgrounds, so we decided to spend the summer consolidating our networks and slowly enlarging our circles of connection. 

To give people a feeling for cocreation in action, we developed a workshop format to explore some themes - such as collective healing and compassion - that we felt needed to be considered in global governance processes. 

We held three of these 'Global Cocreation Forums' in Stockholm, Berlin and Vienna.

A key element of the workshop is the ‘pattern puzzle of global cocreation’, inspired by the pattern language approach of Christopher Alexander.

In Stockholm, Berlin and Vienna more than 70 experts contributed their knowledge and insights.

In Kyiv, we participated in the Emerge Gathering and the Metamodern Arts Festival.

The Emerge Gathering is an exciting new experimental event bringing together thought leaders from the fields of social change, personal development and business to experiment with new ways of relating.

Whilst in Kyiv we recorded an in-depth dialogue with Swedish social entrepreneur and author Tomas Björkman. Watch Part II on YouTube

In Lund, Sweden we recorded a second 'Future Cooking' video with Daniel Görtz.

Daniel is one half of the fictional Philosopher Hanzi Freinacht and co-author of two books, The Listening Society and The Nordic Ideology

In London we expanded our network with amazing support from the team at The Conduit.

The Conduit is a members club for social change makers, making it a natural fit for our project!

In Vienna we were introduced to some of the key figures of the Austrian social-impact scene.

Upcoming events

In March we’ll be at Elevate Festival in Austria. This year’s theme, ‘Human Nature’, is all about examining the relationship between humans, nature and technology in the age of the Anthropocene.