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Education & Learning
Learning does not begin with school and end with graduation. It continues throughout life — through reading, conversation, experience, inquiry, teaching, listening and participation in community. Whole Life Times has always approached publishing as a form of community education: helping people discover ideas, people and resources that may enlarge understanding, encourage inquiry and contribute to personal, social and planetary transformation.
Gaiarcadia · Summit · Academy
From the Gaiarcadia Summit to Gaiarcadia Academy
What is the Gaiarcadia Summit?
The Gaiarcadia Summit is an interdisciplinary gathering concerned with humanity's relationship with the living Earth and with the personal, cultural, educational, ecological and technological changes required for a more regenerative future. It is an important learning environment in its own right: a place where scholars, practitioners, educators and change agents can meet across disciplines and explore the transition into the emerging Gaianthropocene / Ecozoic era.
The inaugural online Gaiarcadia Summit, held on 20–21 April 2024, brought together 45 speakers in ten substantial sessions over two days. Its programme ranged from heart intelligence and consciousness to cosmology, ecology, regenerative systems, education, sustainable communities, climate and energy, leadership and healing.
Two broad, interconnected arms
Although the Summit embraces many subjects, its educational purpose can be understood through two broad and interconnected movements:
Gaia-Self (r)Evolution concerns the inner and cultural dimensions of transformation — how we understand ourselves as participants within a living Earth, and how consciousness, worldview, psychology, spirituality, education, relationships and collective intelligence may evolve accordingly. The inaugural Summit included sessions such as Awakening the Heart of Humanity, Humanity's Great Upshift and Our Cosmic Journey to GaiaSelf.
Ec-Regen (r)Evolution concerns the complementary outer and practical work of ecological and regenerative transformation — the redesign and restoration of the systems through which humanity lives on Earth. It encompasses regenerative agriculture, climate and renewable energy, ecotechnology, sustainable cities and ecovillages, water, food, economics, governance and the restoration of ecosystems and communities.
The distinction is useful, but the two arms are not separate. Gaiarcadia is concerned with their relationship: transformation of the human being and transformation of the systems we create belong to the same larger process.
The inaugural 2024 Gaiarcadia Summit provides a concrete example of the breadth of the Gaiarcadia learning field.
Gaiarcadia Academy
Gaiarcadia Academy carries this educational purpose beyond the periodic Summit. It is conceived as an evolving environment for continuing inquiry, dialogue, learning and collaboration around the knowledge, capabilities and forms of consciousness needed for the Gaianthropocene / Ecozoic era.
The Summit can therefore be understood as a major convening point within the wider Gaiarcadia educational field, while the Academy provides continuity between Summits — enabling ideas, relationships, courses, dialogues and collaborative learning to continue developing over time.
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Education & Learning subjects
Gaiarcadia Academy
Learning for human and planetary flourishing
Gaiarcadia Academy extends the educational purpose of the wider Gaiarcadia initiative beyond the Summit itself. It provides a setting in which ecology, sustainability, systems thinking, human development, consciousness, science and the future of civilisation can meet as parts of a larger field of learning rather than as isolated disciplines.
Gaiarcadia Academy
Learning across boundaries
Many of the questions facing humanity do not fit neatly within one academic discipline. The Academy can create spaces in which knowledge from different fields is brought into relationship.
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Gaiarcadia Summit
A gathering place for learning
The Summit brings researchers, educators, practitioners, thinkers and participants together around ecological, cultural, technological and consciousness-related questions.
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16–17 April 2028
Learning towards Summit 2028
The journey towards the second Gaiarcadia Summit can itself become an educational process through WLT articles, Dialogues, WLT Connect and continuing Academy activities.
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A Living Knowledge Field
Learning through connection
More than a collection of information
The developing Whole Life Universal Field of Knowledge is intended to connect ideas and resources across subjects, people, organisations and time. Whole Life Times material can sit alongside Gaiarcadia sessions, books, lectures and carefully selected outside sources — each retaining its own authorship, provenance and identity while becoming discoverable through shared relationships. Whole Life Times Dialogues adds another essential dimension: learning through sustained conversation with the people developing and applying these ideas.
This continues a longstanding reference-library principle in a new form: help people not simply obtain information, but find their way through it.
We catalogue the source; we don't absorb it
Valuable knowledge does not have to originate within Whole Life Universal to belong in the Field of Knowledge. Sister publications, educational networks, universities, research organisations, authors and other trusted sources can be selected, described, connected and made discoverable while remaining clearly identified as independent sources.
Curated Learning Resources
Whole Life Resources & Wellemart
Education & Learning in Whole Life Times extends beyond magazine articles, interviews and Summits. Whole Life Resources and Wellemart provide complementary gateways to books, eBooks, audibles, eLearning, podcasts, webinars and other learning materials selected for readers interested in personal development, holistic health, ecological living, leadership and wider human and planetary transformation.
From discovering an idea to finding the book or learning resource
Wellemart complements Whole Life Resources as a shopping gateway through which curated Whole Life Times collections of books and learning materials can be brought together for readers. The intention is not simply to create another general online shop, but to connect WLT's editorial and educational work with carefully selected resources that allow readers to continue learning.
From the WLT Archive
Education & Learning by year and issue
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Gaiarcadia Academy & the Field It Serves
Education, dialogue and participation for the Gaianthropocene.
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WLT Book Service — A Short History
WLT's roots in librarianship, community education and alternative information systems.
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Waking Up: A Modern Path to Meditation, Meaning & Clear Seeing
A contemporary learning resource at the intersection of psychology, meditation and philosophy.
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Education & Learning for Thriving in the Gaianthropocene | Ecozoic
A dedicated Summit pathway into transformative learning.
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Putting the World Back Together — Peter Le Breton
Gregory Bateson, complexity, ecology of mind and transformative studies.
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Awakening the Heart of Humanity
Learning through heart intelligence, coherence and consciousness.
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Gaiarcadia Summit Programme
A multidisciplinary educational gathering spanning ecology, systems, cities, agriculture, consciousness and leadership.
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Education & Learning for Thrivability
Transformative learning for a regenerative civilisation.
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The Upshift to Syntony in Thought and Action — Alexander Laszlo
Systems thinking and learning through resonance and relationships.
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Evolutionary Arc to Productive Dialogue — Allan Leslie Combs
Dialogue as a mode of learning and collective intelligence.
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The Great Upshift of Humanity — Ervin Laszlo
A broad educational framework for civilisational transformation.
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Renewable Energy Now & Then — Prof Ali Sayigh
Education on renewable-energy history, policy and future pathways.
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Era of Insanely Cheap Energy — Prof Martin Green
Learning from the development of modern solar photovoltaics.
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Emergence & Shaping of the Gaianthropocene — Zhiwa Woodbury
Ecological worldview, GaiaSelf and planetary transformation.
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Whole Life Resources Catalogue & Guide
A practical education-and-resource pathway embedded within WLT.
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Putting the World Back Together — Autumn 2022
Peter Le Breton on Bateson, learning and systems thinking.
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Ecology of Mind — Autumn 2022
Systems, relationships and ecological thought.
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Natural Food, Gut Health & K-fibre — Autumn 2022
Public health education through nutrition and microbiome material.
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Mindfulness, Psychedelics & Self/Global Transformation — Summer 2021/22
Learning about consciousness, psychology and transformation.
Whole Life Times Dialogues
Education through conversation
Whole Life Times Dialogues is one of the principal educational arms of Whole Life Times. Articles can introduce an idea, a book or a field of inquiry; a Dialogue can take the reader further by allowing the thinker, researcher, author, educator or practitioner to explain that work in their own voice and in conversation.
Learning through encounter, inquiry and dialogue
A good conversation can do something different from a written article. It can follow an unexpected connection, clarify an idea, question assumptions and allow experience, personality and wisdom to become part of the learning process. WLT Dialogues therefore complements the magazine rather than simply reproducing it in another medium.
Over time, Dialogues can become an expanding audiovisual learning library within the WLT Field of Knowledge: interviews and conversations organised not only by date or guest, but also through the same subject architecture used throughout WLT — Holistic Health, OneSelf Discovery, Environment & Ecology, Climate & Energy, Leadership for Sustainability, Humanity & Our Future, Science, Technology & Futures, Education & Learning, The Arts, Money & Economics, Travel & Places, Books & Ideas and Gaiarcadia.
Browse Whole Life Times DialoguesSummit recordings as continuing learning
WLT's audiovisual educational role also extends to the Gaiarcadia Summit. Edited recordings of Summit sessions are progressively being made available through Whole Life Times and Gaiarcadia Academy YouTube channels, and the intention is for the complete video collection eventually to be embedded on the Gaiarcadia Academy website. This allows Summit presentations and conversations to become part of a continuing, searchable learning resource.
A connecting educational medium
A WLT Dialogue can begin with a magazine article or book, connect with a Gaiarcadia Summit speaker or Academy educator, and then lead the learner onward to related articles, books, courses and resources.
This makes Dialogues a connective layer across the wider educational field rather than a stand-alone collection of interviews.
Related Resources
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Whole Life Resources
Education, Development & Growth
Explore educational organisations, services and resources across the wider Whole Life Resources collection.
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Whole Life Resources
eLearning, Podcasts & Webinars
Discover online learning, talks, courses, podcasts, webinars and other educational media.
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Curated Knowledge
Learning beyond the WLU Field
The developing Field of Knowledge can also guide readers towards carefully selected independent educational networks, sister publications, universities, researchers and other sources worthy of inclusion.
Explore the Reference Library