North American Hub Workshop
3 Day T-Lab called “A Deeper Sense of Place: Growing Bioregional Stewardship”
Limited space of 54 available. Register your interest here.
When will the North American Hub Workshop take place?
Monday 17th - Wednesday 19th July 2023. This is designed to follow the main conference in Sydney (July 12th - 14th) by a few days, allowing for participants to digest key insights and invitations from the main conference and integrate information into the novel T-Lab that is focused on sensing the emerging patterns on life in the Casco Bay Bioregion. Our focus is long-term and will require commitment from all who are involved in the T-Lab.
Where is the T-Lab/ Workshop?
The COBALT Team invites dedicated catalysts of change to an informal and unforgettable experience in one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Gulf of Maine in the summertime. All T-Lab participants will need to register their interest and commit to participating in one of six working groups in advance of the July T-Lab / Workshop.
Main Location: Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment - Smith Center
The in-person event will be held at the Smith Center for Education and Research (opening in Spring 2023) on July 17-19. The Smith Center is located in the middle of the campus of Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment and includes a wide range of outdoor spaces, trails, animal barns, and gardens within yards of the center. Wolfe’s Neck Center’s unique setting as a working farm on the coast of Maine makes it an ideal place to provide a meaningful experience to focus on transformation systems at a bioregional scale.
On July 19th day time meeting at Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education - Multipurpose space
On July 19th evening event at Shiller Center for Coastal Studies at Bowdoin College - Multipurpose space
ONLY 54 SLOTS AVAILABLE
Place-based Transformation lab (T-Lab)
In preparation for this workshop, we are hosting six working groups on the theme of Place-based Transformations, using the framework of Bioregions. As a T-Lab space is limited to 54 people who will need to be part of 1 of the 6 working groups described below:
Workshop Action-Agenda Themes:
Working Group #1: Bioregional Systems Storytelling.
Working Group #2: Art and Science of a Bioregional Fibershed.
Working Group #3: Seeing, Connecting and Amplifying Regenerative Design across a Bioregion.
Working Group #4: Traditional Ecological Knowledge/Wisdom at a Bioregional Scale.
Working Group #5: Strategy, Communications, Brand Identity for Seagrass Stewardship.
Working Group #6: Co-Creating a Bioregional Digital Twin.
Register Your Interest!
All Registration options include the full 3 day workshop on ‘Bioregional & Place-based Transformation’:
IN-PERSON 3-Day Workshop - Portland Hub
Mon 17th - Wed 19th, July 2023
$310 USD
Book camping and comfort camping at Wolfe’s Neck Center as soon as possible.
There are a limited number of lovely accommodations from rustic A-Frame Cabins, to comfort camping as well as campsites for the hearty. These will go fast: book your accommodation here. A few campsites have been reserved on this stunning peninsula in Coastal Maine. That will be at the location of the Workshop. These campsites won’t be available to reserve after June first.
There is also a range of hotels and AirBnB options to book at your own expense.
Special Discount: IN-PERSON 3-Day Workshop - Portland Hub + Accommodation
Mon 17th - Wed 19th, July 2023
$515 USD
Three beautiful brand-new cabins at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center at Bowdoin College (SCSC), with six private rooms each and gender-specific bathrooms and showers. These 18 beds will be ‘first come, first served,’ so be prepared to sign up fast! Room availability is from July 16, 4:00 pm until July 20, 10:00 am. This location will be the center of action for Working Group #5: Strategy, Communications, Brand Identity for Seagrass Stewardship and is about a 30-minute drive from the Workshop Main Headquarters at Wolfe’s Neck.
ONLINE 1-Day Lessons Learned from T-Lab/ Workshop
Wed, October 4th, 2023
NOTE: This is a few months after the in-person event and will serve as a public report-out of the lessons learned from the T-Lab/ Workshop. More details will follow.
Free of charge
Join the leaders from the North American Hub T-Lab/ Workshop online for a 3 hours session (Wed, October 4th, 2023). The leaders of the 6 working groups will share the lessons learned and the next steps emerging from T-Lab/ Workshop. We will apply the principles of Blue Marble Evaluation to a bioregional/place-based context. Participants will be introduced to the theory of transformation at a bioregional scale and how it could be further developed and applied in their own backyard.
FAQs
Why are we running the North American Hub Workshop?
Transformation Community recognizes that transformative change includes finding new ways to do things that are inclusive and sustainable. We are trying a different approach to open in-person participation as a limited registration T-Lab/ Workshop for active participants in 6 working groups to further develop a strategy for the inclusion of a broader range of people. By convening a report-out we will share lessons learned and the next steps that could be valuable for place-based transformation initiatives across the globe.
The free online session on Oct 4th will be guided by a global thought leader in the field of Evaluation, Michael Quinn Patton. As a facilitator, he will encourage participants to provide practical examples of how this can be applied to bioregions across the globe.
Michael Quinn Patton
Can I attend the event for only one day?
This is a multi-day workshop, so there is no opportunity for one day registrations.
What do I do if I am interested in becoming a speaker?
This is an intensive 3-day workshop that will have a dynamic agenda with a goal to identify and document the emerging patterns of life in the Casco Bay region in order to amplify regeneration and the practice to do so. As a result, there are no opportunities to present research unrelated to this focus.
What do I do if I am interested in becoming a sponsor/partner for this event?
Contact Glenn Page and read more.
Who is coordinating the Portland Hub?
Your host for the Portland hub is COBALT - the Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning and Transformation
COBALT is a network of people dedicated to developing stewardship of our bioregions. The term Bioregion was defined in 1977 by Berg and Dasman and “refers both to geographical terrain and a terrain of consciousness—to a place and the ideas that have developed about how to live in that place.” COBALT is creating opportunities for collective seeing through what we call a “bioregional macroscope” or digital twin to offer better ways to see, connect and amplify transformation within the systems we all live within. This includes pathways towards more local forms of food systems, energy systems, water systems, and the collective capacity to create fundamentally new forms of governance. COBALT is built upon principles of inclusive engagement and is rooted in stewardship action, research, integration of arts and humanities, and critically with indigenous knowledge systems.
Glenn Page
Sophie Piette
Sydney Hay
How do I get to the event?
Flying: Participants can fly directly to Portland (Portland Maine Airport, code PWM) or Boston Mass (Logan International Airport, code = BOS with a VERY simple 2-hour bus ride to Portland). Conference organizers will likely schedule a limited number of pick-ups/drop-offs, and a wide range of car rentals are available around Portland Maine
Driving: Drive straight to the Venue: Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment -184 Burnett Rd, Freeport, ME 04032
Bus from Boston: Concord Coach line is the ideal bus to take from either South Station in Boston or from Logan Airport.
Train: The Amtrak Downeaster is an ideal train to take from Boston’s North Station to either Portland or Brunswick Maine.
Where can I find the detailed agenda?
The agenda will be available on our website & community platform by the end of April and also available on the COBALT Event Website
What if I have to cancel, or am delayed?
Please see our terms and conditions here.
Still have a question?
Please send your question to Sophie Piette.
More information will be published regularly here as it becomes available. Please check back here!
What is the food situation?
Lunch will be provided for all three days as well as an invitation to an opening dinner that will serve as a “Taste of the Bioregion”. Breakfast and dinners for Tuesday and Wednesday are “on your own”.
Lunch for each of the three days will be provided by Big Tree Catering featuring local, fresh, nutritious foods that also feature a “story of place”. Remarkably, most of the food that will be prepared for lunch (salads, sandwiches, etc.) features a wide range of foods that have been grown at Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment, the location of the workshop.
What it means to be a Sponsor
As a sponsor of this event, you will support a three-day innovation hub as world leaders in this field of seeing, connecting, and amplifying transformation systems apply this novel approach to the Casco Bay Bioregion. The North American Hub is focused on place-based regeneration and governance across food systems (terrestrial and aquatic), energy, fiber, waste, and water. The sponsorship will also support the critical role of traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom as central to navigating our path into the future. We invite you to help sponsor this event and be the first to steward the most critically important ecosystem of the Casco Bay Bioregion: seagrass meadows.
Each sponsorship level features stewarding a quantity (in hectares) of healthy seagrass meadows in one of two locations in Portland, Maine. According to the UK-based Project Seagrass, one hectare of seagrass can produce 100,000 liters of oxygen per day, 80,000 fish and 100 million invertebrates, store the equivalent carbon emissions of a small car, absorb nutrients per year equivalent to the treated effluent from 200 people, and supports our commercial and recreational fish such as lobsters, striped bass, mussels, and clams.
Sponsorship opportunities come in various levels, from $2,400 to $30,000 tailored to your needs/goals/ambition. As a sponsor, you will not only bring this workshop to life, but your contributions will directly support the ongoing stewardship of these endangered ecosystems which are the superheroes of our coast. You will be invited to “jump in” and experience these stunningly beautiful underwater habitats that provide benefits for fisheries, water health, nutrient cycling, and marine biodiversity. In addition to the myriad of critical ecological benefits, including the improvement of water quality, stabilizing our coastlines from climate change, promoting ecological diversity, and soaking up enormous levels of carbon dioxide – even more than terrestrial forests – they are the indicators of bioregional health. When the seagrass meadows are deteriorating, it signals that the entire aquatic bioregion is collapsing, and needs to be nurtured back to health… fast!