22ND CENTURY SOCIETIES LAB is a community of practice focused on offering future-oriented social innovators, artists and entrepreneurs a shared environment in which they can prototype the human systems of tomorrow, today.
Today’s state of global affairs, with the regression of democratic institutions, the dehumanizing effects of late stage capitalism and the accelerating destruction of our ecological systems. It has become a ripe environment for despair, cynicism and a foreboding sense of generalized disempowerment. Concurrently, an ever-growing movement of social innovations is emerging to meet these challenges by integrating both old and new ways to better organize human life. This movement is influencing culture and offering new philosophies and social practices that could, if given the proper fertilizer, be made to grow into true alternative societal structures.
Out of this context emerges a need to create durable spaces where the forebears of the worlds of tomorrow can come to co-develop emerging human systems in holistically nourishing communities.
Vision
Such a project would join an international movement of similarly rigorous and multi-disciplinary initiatives dedicated to systemic transformation through human system intervention.
The 22ND CENTURY SOCIETIES LAB will structure its activities to best meet these four families of needs:
Provide learning experiences
by organizing learning circles, reading groups, online information sharing platforms,
webinars, speaker visits, learning journeys, mentorship programs, etc.
Facilitate practice opportunities
by hosting co-development environments,
encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration,
supporting event organization for its members, etc.
Provide resources to support development
by providing access to spaces, supporting grant submission processes,
cultivating international community development,
coordinating resource sharing initiatives between members, etc.
Foster healthy social relationships
by hosting support environments for members such as support circles, facilitating access to mediation or counselling for members in need, organizing celebrations of member successes and other informal gatherings that cultivate durable relationships.
Other fundamental principles include
• Horizontal organizational structure
• Eco-responsibility
• Decolonization and radical inclusion
• Open source information production
• Contribution to the common good
Organizational structure
In the short term, the 22ND CENTURY SOCIETIES LAB will be an informal gathering
with no legal structure and is to be understood as a prototype community incubated
After a 1 year prototyping phase, we shall explore the possibility of creating a solidarity
cooperative, a not-for-profit organization or a fiduciary.
Funding
During the prototyping phase, the 22ND CENTURY SOCIETIES LAB will run on community contribution
of spaces and will be run by volunteer time donations with minor investments from Métacollab Montréal.
How can I help?
Below, the entries in the project timeline displayed in purple are still open to contribution.
Project timeline
Phase 1
- Seek out core group of co-promoters
- Revisit project description and polish core proposition
- Translate material to French and English
- Compile initial offering from community members willing to take some co-leadership on activities to be hosted by the lab
- Start mapping out the network of potential allies and allied organisations
Phase 3
- Finalize events schedule and logistics
- Publish events invitations
- 22ND CENTURY SOCIETIES LAB activities
- Document events
- Start communications with international communities
Phase 2
- Codesign 1st year calendar of events
- Produce first drafts for event invitations
- Find partner organizations for space and resources
- Revisit branding
- Seek out contributing specialists for additional content
Phase 4
- Debrief processes, learn and decide on 2021 activities
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