May 2025 Newsletter
Welcome to our May 2025 Newsletter. Here you will find our community, research, Second Renaissance, and the Bergerac Praxis Hub updates from the month of May.
🚀 Upcoming Explorations 🚀
From Metacrisis to Second Renaissance: A 4-Week Exploratory Journey – Live Sessions in July
Starting on July 2nd, Rufus Pollock and Sylvie Barbier will be hosting the live From Metacrisis to Second Renaissance: A 4-Week Exploratory Journey. A 4-week course starting on Wednesday, 2nd July, and running every Wednesday from 5pm-630pm CEST. It’s a chance to gather online for interactive learning, dialogue, and deeper exploration of the Second Renaissance framework.
Oasis Collab-a-thon - Tuesday 10th June
On Tuesday, 10th June, 6pm CEST the Oasis will host an extended 3-hour collab-a-thon. This is a work party, a barn-raising, a many-hands-make-light-work community effort. Our primary work project will be related to ecosystem mapping - revisiting, reviewing, updating our Second Renaissance Changemaking Ecosystem map from 2024, fanning out in groups to notice what has changed and what could be improved or updated.
You can attend for some or all of the session, pitching in with the time you have available. Register here: https://lu.ma/7fphyhms
Register Interest for the 2026 Second Renaissance Catalyst Program
The Catalyst Program is a short, high-impact training program designed to build the skills, awareness, and confidence needed to catalyze meaningful local and online movements within the emerging Second Renaissance space.
Whether you're simply curious or already feeling the call,we invite you to register your interest - which is not a commitment but a way to stay informed and help shape the program’s design and leadership.
🔗Read more and register interest here: https://lu.ma/63ul4m41
Program Snapshot
📅 Dates: To be confirmed - likely late January/February 2025
📖 Format: 2–3 days of live, interactive sessions - online or in-person - timed for Europe & Americas
💲This would be a paid program with scholarships available
🌅 Second Renaissance 🌅
Podcasts
The Sacred Ethics of Measurement & A New Archetype of Wise Agency: Zak Stein & Rufus Pollock
In this conversation, Rufus interviews Zak about his early learning journey, exploring the corruption of graduate education, the sacredness of measurement for ancient man and what kind of new wise agency is needed amidst existential risk and all pervasive information warfare - listen here.
Listen to Rufus, Sylvie and Layman Pascal on the Liminal Cafe episode below.
At the Oasis
This month we explored Curiosity, sat with Grief, spoke bold truths on the Soapbox, and played Authentic Relating Games like the Google Game.
May’s tents included: Field Building, Research, Intentional Ventures, Ecofo, Crafting for Wiser Action, and the Divine Feminine Circle.
Some inspiration from the Soapbox activity:
You’re doing the best you can. I see you.
Your wants are sacred.
There is another way—join community.
Decolonize the liminal.
You can read more here: https://forum.secondrenaissance.net/t/oasis-calls-activity-log/337/2
Seeds Issue 4
Second Renaissance Forum
Some of our top forum posts over the past month have included:
🌻Conscious Collectives🌻
Announcing the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio
We are delighted to announce the launch of the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio: a new multidisciplinary consultancy in service of inner + outer systems transformation. The Studio helps foundations, institutions, and conscious enterprises to make sense of – and act in – emerging systems and novel cultural landscapes.
🎥 Watch the launch event here
🌐 https://studio.lifeitself.org/
London Meet Up
Earlier this month the second London meetup took place at Newspeak House exploring the theme of Authentic Relating and its role in a Second Renaissance.
Like an in-person version of the Oasis Community Calls, the evening blended dialogue, breakout groups, and relational practices - and ended with a trip to the pub. Keep an eye out on our calendar for other events taking place: https://lu.ma/second-renaissance.
If you are hosting a local Second Renaissance meetup of your own, reach out to us to see if we can support attendance by attending it to our calendar.
💡Life Itself Research💡
In May, Life Itself Research collective had an active schedule, including collaboration with the Institute of Applied Metatheory, further development of the Ontological Commoning practice, and structured reflection on the Education for Flourishing Conference.
New research included a paper by Jonah Wilberg on Wise Altruism, which was also presented at the research forum:
🌳The Bergerac Praxis Hub🌳
SenseMaking Summer School: Exploring the Metacrisis and a Second Renaissance, September 15th - 21st 2025
Join us for the inaugural SenseMaking Summer School 2025, a week-long gathering of inquiry, learning and connection. Taking place at the Bergerac Hub in France in the second half of September, the summer school will bring together 10–20 participants for an intensive exploration of the
🍂Autumn Praxis Residency (October-December 2025)
What does it mean to live well, together? How can our ways of being transform the world?
Join us for the third Autumn Praxis Residency at the Life Itself Bergerac Hub: a 2.5-month-long container for contemplative, relational, and embodied practice in community.
You’ll live alongside others who are asking questions like these in their lives and work, and experience the frame of collective rhythms and practices for conscious community living developed at the Hub over the past five years. These include experiencing the subtle activation of transformation from the inside out through the Awami Food Praxis system, developed by Valérie Duvauchelle from decades of learning in Zen temples.
This residency is your invitation to slow down, listen, practice, and live the questions - together, through cooking, sitting, resting, working and being together, we soften, reconnect, and become more able to meet the challenges we face and to become more conscious in how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the world.
You can read more here or apply here:
🌱 Help us to create a weller, wiser world together, to support the movement, you can:
💬 Share your thoughts in the comments section
🎁 Share this newsletter with a friend
💸 Become a paid subscriber
