Community Of Practice: Weaving Lab Reflection and Planning 2025–6

Chaired by Nadia Sandi and Alessandra Marazzi 8 Jan 2026

Image created by Weaving Lab

Summary

This session is part of the ‘Community of Practice’ series about the Weaving Lab itself. The focus of the meeting was to look back at work of 2025 and forward to the 2026. The community discussed growth, the balance of “weaving time” versus “real time,” and how to evolve social technologies to match the complexity of global challenges.

Key Learnings

• Growth of the Network: The Weaving Lab’s map has grown significantly, from approximately 200 members to over 900, largely through collaborations with the FITO and GreaterThan networks.
• “Weaving Time”: There is a tension between “real-time” presence (attending live sessions) and “weaving time” — the ongoing, felt sense of connection and learning that happens asynchronously through WhatsApp, recorded sessions, and storytelling.
• Accessing Wisdom: A new initiative was launched to move beyond just “recording and shelving” sessions. By using platforms like Medium, the Lab is now actively curating and summarizing the core wisdom from its gatherings to make it more accessible and visible.
• Social vs. Digital Technology: A key reflection was that while digital technology (the map, Zoom, etc.) has advanced rapidly, “social technology” — how we actually organize, dialogue, and shift systems — needs to catch up.
• The Power of Small Groups: While the network is large, the “unit of transformation” remains small. The community is looking at how to foster clusters of small, deep conversations that aggregate into systemic movement.

Key Actions

• Foster Local “Meetups”: Encourage members to organize informal, in-person gatherings in their own regions (e.g., picnics or park meetups) to ground global digital connections in physical community.
• Continue Intergenerational Weaving: Build on the success of the 2025 “Youth for Youth” sessions, ensuring young weavers are leading and designing their own spaces within the Lab.
• Bridge the “Inner/Outer” Divide: Focus on sessions that help members acknowledge that the “broken systems” of the world are also reflected internally, encouraging radical honesty as a path to change.
• Promote “Adjacent Possible” Meetups: Use tools to randomly pair members for one-on-one “coffee chats” to spark unexpected connections across different sectors (like yoga, healthcare, and design).
• Apply “Bio-regional” Thinking: Support the specialized “Bio-regional Weaving Labs” in Europe as a practical testing ground for how weaving can drive ecological and social regeneration at a local scale.

Image created from transcript in wordclouds.com

References

Participants: Nadia & Alisandra: Lead facilitators and coordinators. Ross Hall & Victoria Harold: Co-founders and strategic leads. Ben Roberts: Mapping lead and steward of the 900-member network map. Mike Zeidler: “Firekeeper”/vounteer curator of the Medium storytelling channel

Books & Literature: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (referenced as a source of spiritual and communal nourishment).

Methodologies & Platforms: Medium: The primary platform for sharing curated community stories. FITO & Veto Networks: Partner organizations that helped scale the Lab’s reach Youth for Youth (Y4Y): Collaborative partner for intergenerational sessions.

Knowledge Base Categories: 1) WL COP, 2) Future of Weaving