Who must we become, in a post-growth economy? Lifelong learners, continually developing and supporting each other, says Alana Bloom

For more see alanabloom.co.uk

We’re delighted to run this piece from Alana Bloom, a facilitator with the lifelong-learning community Enrol Yourself - its purpose defined below:

Amidst forces driving inequality, insecurity and environmental crisis, it's becoming increasingly important for more people to make learning and development a lifelong habit.

We think the importance of continual development goes beyond fostering personal employment and fulfilment, to fostering what is needed for individual and collective transition in the direction of a sustainable and equitable future. 

How could we create a totally different system, one that brings learning closer to the fundamental purpose of our lives - throughout our lives? 

More here. Keen to hear your responses, please post below and share online.

Alana Bloom: The role of peer-led learning in a post-growth, post-COVID, climate-chaotic world

The world looks somewhat different to just under a year ago when I wrote Can a Learning Marathon help us get our need for connection met, in the midst of multiple crises? for the Daily Alternative. The Crises that we were experiencing a year ago feel like a hazy memory, in these current circumstances. 

Just in case you need a recap… In the past year, we have seen the speeding up of various climate tipping points, whilst huge wildfires ravage the Amazon, Australia and now Siberia. We’ve been faced with a pandemic that shut down most of the world and redefined the necessity of essential workers and the NHS.

In the past months, the price of oil fell below zero. More recently we’ve seen the rising up of the movement for Black Lives Matter in the wake of police brutality in America. This is a time of uncertainty, instability and change.

Through the past 16 months working with Enrol Yourself hosting a Learning Marathon, my peer group has helped me feel a deeper connection to my innate resilience, creativity and belonging. Within this community, we’ve been able to sit with the many questions of these times and not need to find all the answers. 

It has been a lifeline in the wake of everything that is happening. Being in this peer group has helped me to understand that life is complex—and the further we expand our capacity to hold this complexity, somehow ‘the more’ becomes possible.

I often feel that it is a space where we can practice building the world of our longing, even in the face of adversity. It’s like a tonic to the tensions of these times.

Lifelong learning is part of how we grow and adapt to these uncertainties. It isn’t a journey with a destination, but a lifelong evolution that is needed for us to survive and come into right relationship with each other and the world around us. 

So yes—my deep need for connection, and so much more, has been met through a Learning Marathon. And there is something much deeper that is being seeded through this work. Something that ties in with wider systemic issues and change, especially in connection to a post-growth world and mindset.

Alana Bloom

Most of us recognise that we are on a finite planet with limited resources, that needs us to relinquish our desire for economic growth if we are to survive. This course-correction asks us to redirect the desire for economic growth towards something else and potentially more profound.

What if we shifted this growth towards our learning and the infinite human potential that comes from that? We need to focus our energy for growth on people and communities. To let ourselves be changed by the process of learning. 

There are big society-wide changes that need to happen for us to see a more regenerative world take form, but peer-led learning can help us cultivate the tools that support that shift. 

Peer groups are a process of embodying “the change we wish to see” on the macro scale, in the micro. As adrienne maree brown writes in Emergent Strategy, “the large is a reflection of the small”. So as we relinquish perpetual growth as a society, paying attention to relationships and the interpersonal mirrors the systemic changes that we need. 

It has only been through my visceral experience of hosting a learning community through Enrol Yourself that I had a lightbulb moment of understanding. I got that peer-led learning creates the fertile soil for individual and collective enrichment, and this facilitates the inner transformation needed to support our changing world.

We learn in relationship, either with an idea, a community, a person. Our deepest and most embodied learning comes from relationality.

Peer-to-peer learning does this beautifully. It doesn’t mean glossing over the challenges and difficulties, but figuring out how they become part of the process of deepening our relationality with each other. Especially in times where—metaphorically and physically—it feels like people are getting further and further away from each other. 

What would be possible if we all had the skills to host and facilitate our own learning?

Many of us within Enrol Yourself are connected to the idea that peer-to-peer learning is a rehearsal for an uncertain future that will require new levels of adaptability, resilience and connection. With this in mind, how do we learn to decentralise the work so that there are more spaces for peer learning?

Something we are exploring at Enrol Yourself is building a flock of hosts through our Host Fellowship. This is a group of facilitators that have the skills to bring people together and offer a process that powers their individual and collective learning.

We support, guide and mentor this growing flock of hosts who will go on to host their own individual learning journeys. Thus strengthening the ‘mycelium’ of hosts that facilitate groups huddling around certain ideas, organisations, issues and communities, 

With the possibility of initiatives like a universal basic income becoming more tangible, as well as the reckoning of our economy coming to a standstill and the ongoing shift in ways of working due to Covid, getting creative with our learning and response to the current circumstances is going to support the transition many people are making. 

If we all had the skills and support to facilitate our individual and collective learning, we may find a world where we spend our spare time exploring our interests, getting familiar with our passions, following our curiosities and living in deeper connection with ourselves and others.

These possibilities may render our obsession with perpetual economic growth obsolete. Imagine how this space could give way to skill swapping, sharing, learning how to make and mend, sharing resources and generally cultivating a post-growth world.

Imagine growing our collective capacity for our individual and interpersonal growth and how it would feed and nourish us on the micro and macro scales. The diversity of experiences and perspectives is part of the magic of peer groups, so of course each of our future possibilities may look different.

Yet the capacity for finding joy, even in the challenges, is part of this. Our relationship with joy is not going to become easier. Choosing joy even when things feel difficult is going to become more challenging. Therefore it’s more important that we can make that choice together so it becomes easier. 

Why might learning to facilitate our collective learning be part of the move towards a post-growth economy?

There is so much incredible work out there that is building regenerative post-growth cultures—so there isn’t a lack of ideas and innovation. Yet what is needed for us to create the right conditions for this world to become reality? 

It is the shifts that happen at a much more intimate level; the aha! moments that open up possibilities; the squeeze and contraction of a challenge or clash and the new capacity that is made through it. It’s empowering our learning and reclaiming the knowledge we each carry with us.

It’s learning how, through simple coaching techniques, that anyone can learn to help someone find their own answers rather than imposing our own. It’s understanding the role of reciprocity in our relationships and how all of us have something we can bring to the table. All of this grows our resilience and capacity to drive our own learning as part of our ability to survive and thrive.

Who must we become? This is a question that has been following me for a while and is the question of The Learning Relay (a new shorter online learning journey starting in August that is a sibling to the Learning Marathon.) The reason this question entices me so much is because it connects to what must we let go of, what must we acknowledge and what must we cultivate in this moment of uncertainty. 

It’s a deeper question that doesn’t point towards success or stardom. It is connected to the spiritual journey of bringing forth our unique individual gifts as part of our ability to survive and thrive in this world. These gifts could be qualities, attributes, wisdoms, skills or just our ways of being—but they are absolutely essential for us to discover and cultivate.

Like a choir all singing the same note but taking a breath at different times, we all have something beautiful and unique about our voices. However true power is only really felt when we are singing together in harmony, our fullness expressed through each of us bringing forth our unique voice. 

Enrol Yourself is a community of humans who are exploring many of the ideas and themes above, You can meet some of us at the Host Fellowship Open House on the 28th July.