As an emergent and adaptive network of networks, we will harness the energies, talents and enthusiasms of our members and network partners to develop a series of self-funding projects across 2025. Through these projects we will seek to spread the seeds of ENLIVENMENT as a new/ancient way of being, thinking and doing, in alignment with First Nations knowledges, and acting as allies with First Nations peoples and their communities.

In collaboration with NENA, we will host webinars in 2025 where leading eco-arts practitioners, citizen science projects, First Nations elders and other cultural activists will talk about how their work is part of the shift to an ENLIVENMENT paradigm.

Following our  Wilami Wunmabil, on 31 March, we are now planning the Climate Chorus. This is a cross-cultural  communities choral initiative uniting with Vanuatuan, Solomon Islands and Pacific Agricultural Worker Choirs (PALM Scheme) in a musical, educational program, leading up to the United Nations COP31 Climate Summit 2026.

—Project Lead: Catherine van Wilgenburg

Our blog is a home for creative non-fiction articles and commentary that will share our creative responses to the tsunami of intersecting crises engulfing our world. It will track the search for a new story of ENLIVENMENT, of courageous, resilient resistence to the techno-managerialist, neo-liberal economic global order, as it reaches its apogee in colonising the territory of our minds and emotions through algorithmic data harvesting.

—Project Lead: Barbara Lepani

The Writers Room: Rebellion of the Earth Kingdoms

As a continuation of our commitment to promote the shift from the extractivist worldview of today’s dominant culture to the relationist worldview of Australia’s First Nations cultural foundations, we are developing a Writing Room project to pull together a diverse group of creative minds: writers, musicians, visual artists and cultural workers to story-board a multi-arts publication/performance in 8 episodes: The Rebellion of the Earth Kingdoms. In this story we will be exploring how to rescue humanity from its entrapment in extractivist techno-materialism and dreams of conquering space after trashing the Earth’s kingdoms. We will also bring AI into our story – villain or hero?

The Eldership Revolution

Inspired by Danish writer, Tor Norrestrander’s call for an Eldership Revolution across countries of Anglo-European cultural heritage like his own. In acknowledgement of the role Elders play in Australia’s First Nations cultures, we are exploring the potential for reimaagining Retirement through Eldership Revolution based on the ancient eldership traditions of Anglo-European cultures. Although here in the Blue Mountains we live on the ancestral lands of the Darug and Gundungurra peoples, most of us (95%+) are of Anglo-European cultural heritage. We are a large retirement community, with 23% of us are living in our Third Age, a time when work and family no longer define our days. Continuing strong retirement migration from Sydney is likely to increase, swelling our ranks with people with skills, experience and financial resources.

What if we could redefine the purpose and meaning of retirement away from commodified leisure and pleasure, to co-creating life-affirming legacies for the coming generations: an Eldership Revolution in service of all Life on Planet Earth. We will be looking to our network partners, with potential for links with the Geelong-based work of Mik Aidt and his Force for Life projects. Who else could be our partners in this important project?

[Read more . ..]

— Project Leads: Barbara Lepani, Inge Riebe and Saskya Clark

The Local: Our Future Our Time

The local Metung, East Gippsland Pizzeria, an outdoor venue, will bring together young people concerned about our Futures and wanting to take LOCAL action, for a program of Bands, poetry, local actions and immersive guided walks. Collaborators will showcase how they generate local action among young musicians, citizen arts and citizen science practitioners, including East Gippsland Birdlife, Landcare, local businesses, schools, service organisations, and local, state and federal government representatives.

— Project Lead: Catherine van Wilgenburg