Regeneration in Action on Mallorca
Journeys through inner and outer landscapes for personal and systemic regeneration
At the end of October 2024, I will have the pleasure of co-hosting a group of diverse professionals on ETH Zürich’s Certificate in Advanced Studies here on Mallorca. Together with Tobias Luthe and the team of the Systemic Design Labs we will spend 8 intensive days travelling inner and outer landscapes and weaving various project visits and activities on Mallorca into what will be an embodied experience of regeneration in action at the personal, group, organisational and bioregional scales.
The exact programme is still being finalized and some changes will still happen, but here is a little preview. We will start our week near Palma de Mallorca spending an afternoon and evening on the land I steward here exploring the regenerative agro-food-forest which I planted over the last 3 years. In addition, we will have two parallel mini-workshops.
One of them will be with Mallorca based Dutch entrepreneur, Jasper Middendrop, who created a start-up working in the field of regenerative material. We will get some hands on experience in 3D printing with ground olive pips and algae based binders and how this can not only be used to print diverse objects but also to create 3D to scale models of the topographic map of ‘areas under regeneration’.
The second workshop will be with the Panamania-British artists, Ela Spalding, who also lives on Mallorca and will introduce here art and science based collective mapping process called ‘Suelo’ (soil). We will apply this methodology to deepen into the story of place of Mallorca and the Balearic Islands.
After an evening of some local food around the camp-fire the group will return to their rural hotel in the nearby village, where we will start our journey the following day after spending the first part of the morning introducing and practicing the ancient ‘sacred technology’ of The Way of Council to further land in place, in the group and in our own being as participants in the collective learning journey we are about to embark on.
Around mid-morning the group will get on their bikes to cycle for about 2–3 hours up into the Sierra de Tramuntana to the pituresque town of Valldemossa. Some of us will choose electric bikes and others trail bikes, all in an attempt to compensate for different levels of fitness and keep our cycling a deeply enjoyable way to deeply perceive the ‘lay of the land’.
The ‘Systemic Cycles’ methodology of exploring a bioregion by bicycle has been well tested over the previous field trips. The experience of actively moving through the landscape at the speed to a bicycle is simply one of the best ways to embody the diversity, scale and topography of a given landscape.
In Valldemossa, the group will meet with Joe Holles and some of his team to give us a tour of the impressive Son Moragues (sonmo) project that aims to bring one of the old estates of the Tramuntana mountain range back into a regenerative mode of operation.
This philanthrophically funded flagstone regeneration project has created its own protected areas and gives free but regulated access to these natural regeneration zones. Over the last 15 years many of the old stone walled terraces have been restored and the estate’s farm has been converted to regenerative agriculture, while the forest management has worked on excluding the grazing pressure of wild goats and re-planting diverse native species.
The diversification into different cottage industries and value added products has led to the creation of a ceramic factory, an olive oil press, gin distillation, local wool based arts and crafts, a small scale production of local textile, cosmetics and carved stone products.
Through their foundation ‘Iniciatives del Mediterrani’ Joe Holles and his team have helped to create the first partnerships between large estates in the Tramuntana and created an initial manual for regenerative land custody practices in this unique UNESCO World Heritage site. The foundation are working on land custody and multi-stakeholder alignment through initiatives in Palma and other parts of the island(s).
We will spend the evening mapping what we learned after a short presentation on the collaboration between Son Moragues and the Mallorcan tech start-up True World, using digital twin, mapping and digital dashboard technologies to make the degenerative and regenerative impact of activities on the estate visible and hence more intelligible.
The following day our systemic cycle tour will continue along the Tramuntana coastline Northwards, as we learn more about the story of place and the change in land-use patterns over time. We will cycle through an area that is famous for its ancient olive plantation and its rich cultural history.
We learn about Ramon Lull, the Mallorcan monk who translated the Arabic texts that tiggered the Italian Renaissance a hundred years later, and Archduke Ludwig Salvador of Austria who fell in love with Mallorca and wrote a five volumes (nine books) scientific study about ‘Die Balearen’ between 1869 and 1884 and protected that part of the coastline from deforestation.
By lunch-time we will arrive in the harbour for Soller to meet up with my good friend, Brad Robertson, the founder of Save the Med. We will board a boat to continue our journey along the coast while we will eat lunch and listen to Brad share about the integrated marine and terrestrial regeneration and community custody of land & sea work that his organisation and many local partners are engaged in pioneering.
We will anchor in Cala Tuent where we will be met by the local dive school with snorkels, masks and fins for everyone and Brad will guide us during an immersive — pun intended — experience of the coastal biodiversity of this remote area first hand.
Brad and I have been collaborating for over 12 years and the dream of bringing together a bioregional ‘alliance of the willing’ to work on integrate marine and terrestrial regeneration at the bioregional scale(s) of Mallorca and the Balearic archipelago has more recently fruited into the creation of the ‘Alianca Mar i Terra’ that unites a number of organizations on Mallorca working on marine conservation / regeneration, agro-ecology, land custody, biodiversity conservation and rewilding permaculture and regenerative agriculture.
During the week we will visit various of the alliance’s member organizations, also in part to explore how the work the students will do on their ‘quests’ could eventually support the bioregional regeneration work on Mallorca through student projects.
ETH Zürich and the Monviso Institute recently received the commitment of 6 years of funding for the ongoing bioregional research and weaving work in the first two pilot bioregions of the Upper Po Valley and Mallorca / Balearic Archipelago, the ongoing development of the (free) Massive Open Online Courses as well as the Masters in Regenerative System.
As part of this work Tobias and I will collaborate on the development of the ‘Living Systems Lab Explorer’ which will eventually help to make all regenerative activities / projects in a given landscape more visible to each other and provide them with the in depth knowledge about the landscape(s) and its culture(s).
The program is designed to create mutual benefit and learning between the visitors and the visited. The continuity of the program will make the rhythmic annual visits by CAS students contribute to the bioregional regeneration of the island in diverse ways.
From Cala Tuent we will sail on to the near by Sa Calobra and arrive there just in time for a short walk into the Torrent de Paraise at sunset time when most of the tourists have left. After which we will be collected by (electric) mini-bus and shuttled up to the Santuario de Lluc for dinner and a well-deserved night’s rest.
The next morning we will go for a 2 hour hike to one of the most ancient sacred sites of the island. En route we will learn about the traditional land use patterns of the Tramuntana with its charcoal makers, lime kilns, goat herding and cheese making. After another group council in one of my favourite spots we will walk back to the monastery for lunch.
After lunch it will be time to get back on our bikes (which a kind support person will have collected at Puerto de Soller for us the afternoon before) and continue our trip past the Forestry Centre of the Balearic Islands to the stunning 1000 ha estate of Ariant where the Mediterranean Wildlife Foundation has been active for over 35 years in one of the oldest and most successful re-wilding projects in Europe.
We will stay in an old lookout tower from the times when Mallorca was regularly raided by pirates. There will be no electricity and after sun down everything will be lit by candle light and fireplaces. There is not enough room for the whole group in the house, so about half of us will be staying in tents in the courtyard of that building.
We will spend the evening around the fireplace eating good local food, sampling local organic wine, while Evelyn Tewes, the director of the Mediterranean Wildlife Foundation, will share her remarkable story of bringing back the Black Vulture from near extinction on Mallorca and how the foundation ended up being gifted the 1000ha estate from its previous owners due to their outstanding commitment to preserving the last wilderness in Mallorca from economic speculation.
The following morning we will go for a longer walk around the estate’s farm and visit the Garden Villa and 4ha Mediterranean Garden created by the Heidi Gildemeister over more than 3 decades of visits to many countries with Mediterranean climate, collecting for and planting a living biodiversity seed bank of low water requirement plants for Mediterranean climate conditions. See also Mediterranean Gardening: A Waterwise Approach.
Ariant along with Son Morgues and others is part of a budding network of estates along the spine of the Tramuntana, who’s custodians are working on long-term land custody and landscape scale regeneration.
After a morning immersed in the story of this exceptional place we will spend the afternoon exploring aspects of Joanna Macy’s ‘Work That Reconnects’ preparing ourselves for a council on our own embodied entanglement with ‘more than human nature’.
For those participants who feel called to affirm an important change or next step in their life, we will open the possibility of doing a mini rite of passage by spending a night sleeping alone, outside without a tent and spending a little over 12 hours in a ‘mini solotime in nature’.
After those who chose a ‘solo time’ return in the morning, we will process their experiences in a witness council and create time to simply be in this place. For those who would like to, there will be time for sketching, painting, journaling, siting in silence and reflecting.
We will leave Ariant shortly before lunch to cycle down the hill to a beautiful organic goat farm and local cheesemaker where we will learn about their work and have a traditional lunch, before cycling on to Puerto Pollensa where where we will spend the rest of the afternoon and evening with a local group of community activists supporting marine conservation and regeneration in the area.
We take another boat trip for together with Joseph and Igancio from Arrels Marines and learn about their pilot project experimenting with the underwater reforestation of seagrass meadows. After en joying the sunset behind the mountains we will invite them for dinner and share about our journey as well as learn more about their work.
On Friday morning we will start our cycle back to Palma. The first stop after an hour and a half of cycling will be the head-offices of the Mediterranean Wildlife Foundation where we will meet up with Evelyn again and have the opportunity to see some (injured) Black Vultures very close up. We will also learn about the work of the foundation with apiculture, with schools, in biodiversity protection etc.
It will only be a short cycle into the nearby town of Inca for lunch at the oldest organic vegetarian restaurant on the island that processes almost exclusively the produce grown in the restaurant’s own market garden along with Mallorcan grown staples.
After lunch the group will split into 4 different team each investigating a different local production/industry theme. The groups of 4–5 people will each take a different route and visit different projects and businesses.
One group will visit the local museum of the leather and shoe industry that once was a big factor in the local economy and then spent an hour visiting the offices of ‘Camper’ — a global footwear brand owned by a Mallorcan family that is slowly understanding what impact their decision to produce in Asia had on their company culture, supply chain security and the local economy. The company is now starting to re-localise production.
The second group will visit a beautiful arts and crafts project that is trying to revive the Mallorcan wool and fibre industry and has created the first circular wool factory in the island.
The third group will visit a local hemp co-op reintroducing the industrial and commercial use hemp to the island. Their production is 100% organic and local.
The fourth group will visit a master knife-maker who is working in a long family tradition creating de diverse types of pocket knives that we so central to Mallorcan rural culture for centuries.
The four groups will eventually converge in the nearby village of Binisalem at the Save The Med Foundation headquarters. Here, we will meet Brad Robertson and his managing director Jaime Bagur, as well as members of their staff to learn more about their activities, how they evolved and are now focussed in the intergated regeneration of land and sea around Mallorca and the Balearic Islands.
We will learn about an innovative collaboration with the Mallorcan artist Carles God who created an artistic expression of the transformative, evolutionary and regenerative impulses that Save the Med offers as pathways towards healing some of today’s degenerative patterns.
At the end of a long day, we will enjoy a meal with the team of Save the Med and afterwards take a shuttle to the hotel where we will spend the final night, before an exciting morning in Palma (details t.b.c.) and our final meal as a group of pilgrims on Mallorca’s path towards regeneration, before the programme officially ends on the afternoon of Saturday, November 2nd.
By the time the participants arrive on Mallorca, Tobias Luthe and I can celebrate 5 years of successful collaboration that has led to over 8000 students from 114 countries taking part in the (free) Massive Open Online Courses and to the successful launch this series of Certificates of Advanced Studies (CAS)that make up the Executive Masters in Advanced Studies: Regenerative Systems (MAS).
A central aspect of pedagogy of this program is about bridging or weaving between hard science and engineering and embodied participatory practices, between the value and benefits of good science and technology and other ‘ways of knowing’, qualitative, relational, warm data and the insights and wisdom that can be gained from other worldviews and perspectives.
We aim to practice our ability to let analytical thought as well as sensing, feeling and intuiting inform wise action. Through activating and revalidating those innate capabilities, we foster a more nuanced understanding of the ‘system’ from within and through relational intimacy with the patterns defining that system.
‘Systems’ here are not understood as engineering units that need to be manipulated and controlled, but rather as patterns of relationship that enable and engender emergence. Rather than doing something to a supposed system out there, we work from a participatory engagement with nested complexities with the intention of facilitating positive emergence through our real time, embodied participation.
To have landed this programme in the highest ranking university in continental Europe is entirely the achievment of Tobias and those who have supported his vision within the university. To me it as been a pleasure to unlearn and learn together and support his tireless commitment wherever I can. I feel privileged to have been invited to co-cuarte aspects of the programme and in particular this field trip of CAS number 3.
You can learn more about the CAS in the links offered below:
Here is a graphic describing the rest of the content of CAS #3 which will be delivered in an online format after the group has gone through the initial intensive experience of travelling inner and outer landscapes on Mallorca together:
In early August Tobias and the team from the Systemic Design Labs offered this detailed info session on the overall programm and CAS#3 which ends with Tobias announcing this more detailed post about the field trip here on Mallorca.
What can I say? In 25 years of experience as an educator in formal (university level) education and diverse non-formal life-long-learning formats and modalities, during which I have worked with dozens of universities and organisations, I have not come across a programme that integrated the potential that comes from holding the value of the highest level of science and engineering next to but not above the value of diverse ways of knowing and participating, inner practices of reconnection, indigenous knowledge and the warm contextual data of being in relationship.
I am deeply impressed by and grateful to the amazing people this programme has attracted and served already. I sincerely look forward to the enormous privilege of co-hosting the field trip. It’s going to be epic! The ripples will be diverse within and without, on the personal and the collective and in the places and people we connect with and are connected to.
Join us in this amazing adventure!
Registration info:
Application at ETH until August 31st
