Le Colaboratoire is an arts based education organisation in France, focusing on sustainability and climate change. We offer educational, cultural, social events and programs, bringing together a wide range of active citizens to support ecological and social transformation.

In recent years our work has intensified. The significance of climate change and related social impacts on migration, food security, health, political stability etc, are of high concern. These social and environmental issues affect everyone (if not to the same degree!). So we see significant potential to galvanise and focus energy and concern, strengthening participation in democratic life. This is why we felt a need to focus strategy and strengthen our programs towards mitigating this using Ersmus+ adult education funding. 

In order to better serve and empower civic participation, responding to these needs, we knew that we needed to strengthen our educational provision. We want to be in a position to offer higher quality, more relevant and further-reaching educational programs for the benefit of civil society.

One of the main objectives in our project was to enable staff to gain new pedagogical methods and skills in holistic approaches to resilience, sustainability and regenerative practice for socially and environmentally engaged learners. We did so by following courses for adult educators provided at The Ulex Project. 

At these courses, our adult educator staff learned regenerative approaches to civic involvement and the importance of addressing this in this post-COVID moment. After the pandemic, we've noticed the number of our adult learners drop and our members of staff being 'burned-out' because of the grimness of the vision of the future. A ‘regenerative’ approach goes beyond sustainability to explore how we can involve active citizens in ways that actually renew or revitalize their resources and those of groups around them – this can help us all stay inspired, nourished, & more creative in our civic approach. 

In this context, we've learned to use the term ‘regenerative’ because we don’t want things to just be sustainable. As in the world of permaculture, we want systems to regenerate through processes that restore, renew or revitalize their own sources of energy and materials. This was, civic involvement can be a context within which we can thrive, where we create a shared context that enables us to flourish as we support others to do so. In term, the active citizens that we educate and open our spaces to can learn to embody a life-affirming vision and exemplify the values of social justice that we are inspired to realise in the world.

We are thankful for being able to execute this project within the Erasmus+ adult education programme and are happy to share our valuable outcomes with the rest of E+ community!