What is Regenerative Culture?

Regenerative Culture is a collection of practices and principles that aim to leave you and your fellow rebels better off physically and mentally than before. 

Checking in with each other, encouraging others to step back when they are doing too much and also swapping roles helps to keep the group going. We all have our own tools and resources to help support us in these different areas. Part of taking care of ourselves is reflecting on our capacity and pre-existing physical, emotional, and mental resources,and our particular lifestyle situation as we join and support XR Derby. To do this we need to take Personal Responsibility and continuously ‘track’ ourselves; being aware of our tendencies with regards to taking on too much, the impact of societal conditioning on us, our privileged position, our limits, the feelings, judgements, desires, expectations that come from engaging in the issues.

Here are some of the ways Regenerative Culture (RC) is used in Extinction Rebellion (XR):

  • Wellbeing before actions – create a time and space for listening to how people are feeling.
  • Wellbeing on actions, carry water, snacks, blankets or sun cream, ask people how they are feeling, be a listening ear
  • Wellbeing after actions: setting up a debrief and space for discussing all your experiences, offering reiki, massage, alternative healing, Bach’s flower remedies, food sharing, art therapy, walks or other activities that may help you.
  • Ongoing wellbeing to arrange discussions of fears, and to hold grief ceremonies, along with the support of trained therapists.
  • RC should permeate all XR activities, resources for people’s mental wellbeing, giving positive energy to the drive towards inclusion and diversity.

We are not going to solve the climate crisis in just the next few years. It is going to take a rebuilding of society along more positive lines. New pressures will emerge and the better start we have the better prepared we will be.

Resources
There are a wealth of resources on the following website by Joanna Macy who gave the basis of a lot of XR’s regenerative culture.  https://workthatreconnects.org/practices/
This lists useful practices to try when we get together.
There are songs, articles, books and multimedia resources if you click on the Resources menu at the top of the page on her website.
Book: Active Hope by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

If you would like to know more about Regenerative Culture or you believe you have something to offer to support its further development, we would love you to join our Regenerative Culture working group.  See CIRCLES.