Reflections on the Inner Development Goals Summit, Stockholm 2024

This October, I attended the Inner Development Goals (IDG) Summit in Stockholm, on behalf of Life Itself. We were invited alongside our collaborators from the Cohere+ project — Emerge, The Hague Center, Institute for Integral Studies Freiburg, and Ekskaret — to lead a workshop on the final, “Integration” day of the Summit which offered spaces for Summit participants to make sense of and integrate the rich programme and experiences of the previous two days.

Cohere+ is a field-building project, co-funded by Erasmus+, which maps the paradigmatic social change or “Second Renaissance” ecosystem and supports inner capacity development for change agents.

The Inner Development Goals

The Inner Development Goals is a framework of 23 “inner” skills needed for sustainable development. Grouped across 5 dimensions — Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting — they include things like: Self-awareness, Presence, and Integrity & Authenticity (Being); Complexity Awareness and Long-term Orientation & Visioning (Thinking); Empathy & Compassion and Humility (Relating); Communication Skills and Trust (Collaborating); and Courage and Creativity (Acting).

The IDG Summit

The IDG Summit convenes leaders from across business, education, civil society, non-profit, and government sectors to bring inner, human development and outer, structural change closer together. 2024 was the third edition of the Summit and sought to explore “how inner development can help us find better solutions to global challenges”.

The Summit took place from 16th-19th October 2024 in impressive venues across Stockholm such as Cirkus, Fotografiska, and Kulturhuset, with a Pre-Summit “Unconference” on the 15th October.

The first day of the Summit was unified in one location with a Main Stage programme of different speakers and artistic performances moving through the five IDG dimensions. In the breaks and evening, there was a programme of workshops across different spaces dedicated to the five dimensions, including things like guided meditation, storytelling, connection activities, and other creative workshops.

The second day of the Summit split participants into five themed tracks, each of which delved deeper into exploring the IDGs in a specific context, such as business, climate innovation, education, and AI.

The third day of the Summit was an Integration day, aimed at weaving together and integrating experiences and learnings from the past two days.

Highlights & Reflections

The scale of the event was impressive and inspiring, especially to see so many people (around 1500 attendees) come together united by recognition of the need for integration of inner and outer change. The production was very slick and high quality — a lot of care and heart had clearly gone into producing and programming such an event which interweaved speakers with artistic performances with spaces for mindfulness, connection, creativity, as well as thinking and collaboration, and fun!

On Day 1 of the Summit, in the main auditorium filled with over 1000 people, it was joyful to watch as moments of connection were fostered even in such a big crowd — from being invited to raise our hands during the opening talk to show whether we felt sleepy or anxious or excited (for example) and seeing how many others shared that experience, to inventing a handshake with the person sitting next to us in 5 minutes, to dancing all together following the artist on stage.

The programme of the Summit was also quite intense and jam-packed — others whom I spoke with shared the experience of it being very stimulating and tiring. Although there was “ma time” (Japanese concept of a pause, break, or emptiness in time or space) in the schedule on Day 1, this only meant a break in the Main Stage programme. In these breaks, there were multiple workshops happening in the five Dimension spaces to choose from, as well as hundreds of people you might meet and chat with!

In general, I’d say the overall energy of the Summit was one of uplift and positivity. Across various talks and workshops, a theme which people noticed came up a lot was “love”. There was a lot of talk of love and care — for others, for society, for Mother Earth… This contributed to a feel-good vibe, a kind of galvanising “hey, let’s just tap into our love and care for the world and Mother Earth and do everything we can to save the world we love”. There’s a beauty and warmth in this idealism, and yet at times I wondered… What about everything we will not be able to and already cannot save? What about sacrifice, loss, and grief — what part do they play in our responses to the crises we face? How might we need to confront them? What about the ways in which we are powerless? Yes, let’s bolster our collective agency — and where might humility and sober acceptance of the things we cannot control be important too?

One of the most moving moments for me from the whole Summit — and I heard this shared also by many others — was a talk by two representatives from Combatants for Peace, an organisation committed to peace-building in Israel and Palestine, through education and creative activism. In the sea of excitement and positivity (which of course are also valuable ingredients for social change), their stories were grounding and sober and truly powerful. The end of their talk was met by a standing ovation lasting some minutes.

Cohere+ workshop at the IDG Summit

As part of the Cohere+ team, we co-hosted an event on the final day of the IDG Summit to support sensemaking and integration of the Summit’s rich programme.

Our intention was to create an imaginative and playful space for participants to share personal stories and reflections from the previous days through the lens of coherence and incoherence. Over 40 participants attended; unfortunately, many more who wanted to attend could not come due in part to an inflexible event booking system. Our workshop also supported a request from the IDG Hubs Coordinators group with collective sensemaking around the IDG principles.

The workshop included: a deep listening and vocal expression exercise to explore a felt sense of coherence and incoherence; an exploration of the IDG principles and to what extent they felt in coherence with personal experiences of the Summit; a dance activity inviting a somatic experience of relational coherence; a small group activity creating “living sculptures”, i.e. an interwoven sequence of gestures or movements portraying meaningful moments from the Summit; and sharing reflections and insights all together.

Many participants appreciated the space for non-verbal expression and sensemaking as well as discussion and welcomed the way in which creativity and playfulness fostered connection between those present.