Seeds of a Second Renaissance Issue 9 (Oct 2025) – Developmental Spaces for a Time of Transformation
Introducing the growing field of Developmental Spaces – collective spaces for multi-domain inner development in service of social transformation. Plus events & opportunities for inner-led change.
Welcome to Seeds of a Second Renaissance – a monthly newsletter for explorers of inner-led change towards radically wiser societies. For both seasoned travellers and those new to these shores, each edition offers a bite-sized exploration of keystone ideas, and thinkers whose work you may wish to know more deeply.
This month, an issue close to home: introducing the growing field of Developmental Spaces – dedicated, growth-oriented spaces where communities engage in sustained, multi-domain inner development in the service of socio-cultural transformation.
Below, you’ll also find curated events, jobs, and opportunities.
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting voices... who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being.”
~ Ursula K Le Guin (2014)
Across the Second Renaissance thought-space, there’s growing recognition that system transformation begins in the inner world — at the level of mindsets and worldviews that create and sustain failing systems. Not to mention our neglected human capacities for wisdom, resilience and flourishing. However, modern societies largely lack the understanding and infrastructure to support inner development at the scale our moment demands.
While pockets of practice already exist – educational programmes, communities, and institutions fostering different ways of knowing and being – they remain relatively small in reach. But a field of innovation is emerging around what we term Developmental Spaces. These are environments for learning and inner growth across multiple dimensions, purpose-built to catalyse a socio-cultural paradigm shift and cultivate a wiser future. A new white paper published by the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio synthesises the rationale and approaches behind this work, with the aim of informing policy and accelerating its adoption at scale. Read on for a summary of the core ideas!
Inner foundations of outer crises
Today’s interconnected crises stem from the foundations of globalised culture: the deep-seated assumptions, values, and perspectives that shape societies. Evidence is mounting that modern civilisation is breaking down in ways that can’t simply be repaired. Renewal is needed at a foundational level — a profound shift in collective worldview. Ways of being and seeing that we are hardly able to imagine from a modern cultural vantage point.
The missing infrastructure of inner growth
In other words, if we’re serious about system transformation, we must also be serious about inner transformation. However, modern materialist culture largely treats the inner world as irrelevant — leaving us with very few robust, trusted, research-based institutions dedicated to large-scale inner growth for the common good. The potential for human flourishing and renewal is vast; but our inherited maps are fragmented. We need scaleable, integrated approaches to inner transformation — sustained by dedicated communities that can weave new cultural stories together.
In response to this need, a field is growing around the innovation and provision of Developmental Spaces: dedicated, growth-oriented spaces that nurture multi-domain inner development and act as cultural incubators for a new paradigm.
“From the beginning of recorded history, and arguably before that, humanity has evolved in both interior (subjective) and exterior (objective) aspects. But at some time, through the emergence of modern science leading to the industrial and information revolutions, a gap developed — an ever-widening chasm between interior (cognition, awareness, emotion, value) and exterior (e.g. technological ) capacities.”
~ David J. Temple
Integrating domains of inner growth
Building on synthesis supplied by Integral Theory, we sketch several interdependent domains of inner growth:
Waking Up (Spiritual Development)
Concerned with awareness and consciousness, this domain draws from spiritual traditions and neuroscience. Development involves tuning awareness and loosening unconscious mental ‘fabrication’ (assumptions, self-identity), cultivating less ego-bound modes of perception and a greater sense of interbeing.
Cognitive Development
Refers to progressive complexity in thinking — from basic concepts to abstract, systemic, and meta-systemic reasoning. Supports ethics, creativity, logic, and learning.
Growing Up (Worldview Development)
Progressive shifts in fundamental ways of conceiving world and self — from egocentric and ethnocentric to world-centric. Often linked to ego development and expanding circles of care.
Cleaning Up
Involves healing trauma and integrating shadow material. Rooted in somatic psychology and trauma theory, processing unconscious wounds and defense mechanisms supports growth in emotional regulation and relational capacity.
Showing Up
Translating inner shifts into active, ethical engagement with the world. Aligning insight and capacity with skilful action for positive change. Requires relational intelligence, moral imagination, and courage.
Any attempt to categorise the inner world is necessarily partial — a map, not the territory. The domains we describe are interdependent, each supporting the others, and their boundaries should be held lightly. Still, distinctions are useful: one can be cognitively advanced without much awakening, spiritually awakened yet unintegrated (‘spiritual bypassing’), or active in the world while neglecting inner work — showing up without cleaning up. Together, however, the maps and practices within these domains can equip individuals and communities with the qualities needed to become resilient amid breakdown, and flourish into new cultural shapes.
Sustaining collective intention
For this kind of growth to take root, dedicated spaces are essential; providing containment, community, and continuity.
From state to trait — Sustained practice is needed to integrate isolated experiences into stable, lasting change.
Communities of purpose — Like-minded support is critical to depart from the mainstream.
Psychological safety — Vulnerability and deep inner work require trust and mutual care.
Generative social fields — Group dynamics can be powerful catalysts for change.
Pockets of change — Cultural transformation often begins in dense micro-communities, where transformative ways of being, thinking and acting can seed future ways of life.
Precedent: Integrated approaches to inner development
Inner development is nothing new. While Western science has often been limited by materialist assumptions, Eastern contemplative traditions have preserved sophisticated methods of inner development. Psychology has begun to bridge this gap, revealing parallels between contemplative frameworks and cognitive science. More recently, European sustainability scientists such as Christine Wamsler and colleagues have emphasised (and systematised) inner capacities as essential for paradigm shift. The Stockholm-based Inner Development Goals initiative offers a research-based framework of transformative inner skills dimensions to meet complex global challenges.
Precedent: dedicated Developmental Spaces
Monasteries, folk high schools, Bildung centers and other intentional communities have embodied aspects of Developmental Spaces in different eras. In modern times, the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) has been a pioneer in bringing integrative approaches into higher education.
Transformation at scale
This white paper is offered hopefully, in service of a future evidence-based movement for Developmental Spaces, provided widely enough to serve large segments of populations. The vision is ultimately to see a replicable, scalable model with potential to influence the deepest orientation of societies towards a regenerative future — a ‘Second Renaissance’.
Explore the field of inner-led change…
A selection of events and opportunities recommended by readers, friends, and allies in the arena of inner-led regeneration.
👋 Help us to showcase the best opportunities and resources: please suggest items to include in the Events, Offers & Links or Jobs Board WhatsApp channels.
Upcoming Events
Developmental Spaces White Paper: Launch webinar
📍Online 📅 Wednesday 5 November, 5-6:30pm CET 💸 Free
“A webinar to celebrate the release of the Developmental Spaces white paper. The event will feature: a presentation by the paper co-authors; comments by invited guests; and questions and discussion. All interested in the field of inner development and inner-led social change are warmly welcome.”
Contemplative Wisdom, Transformative Action Conference
📍Online 📅 7-9 November 2025
“Hosted by the Garrison Institute Fellowship Program, Contemplative Wisdom, Transformative Action is a three-day virtual gathering that brings together contemplative practitioners, social change leaders, scholars, and visionaries. Together, we will explore how awareness-based practices can catalyze personal resilience, systemic healing, and collective regeneration.”
Wiser Futures Unconference
📍Newspeak House, London, UK 📅 Sunday 9 November, 1pm-10pm 💸 By donation
“Join us in shaping Wiser Futures! … This gathering of communities will explore paths to a planetary society defined by long-term thinking, collective wisdom and interconnectedness. … Co-hosted by Second Renaissance London and Long Now London the aim is to bring people together from a range of aligned London-based communities — as well as folks who are new to the scene but want to learn more and take part. Together, we’ll seek out commonalities, grow networks, cross-pollinate ideas, practice together and build the field.”
Second Renaissance Fair
📍Online 📅 Tuesday 25 November, 5-6:30pm GMT 💸 Free
“Think Science Fair meets Open Space, where projects, initiatives, and communities can share and showcase their work via a rotation of virtual booths. …A booth is your chance to show and tell — whether it’s a project you’re building, a community you’re growing, or an initiative you want others to know about, all coming together to create a vibrant marketplace of ideas, with people stopping by — via organised breakout rooms — to learn, connect, cross-pollinate and collaborate.”
Creating Transformative Cultures: 5-week course
📍Schloss Glarisegg, Steckborn, Switzerland 📅 8 Jan-14 Feb 2026 💸 1950-3950 CHF
“Creating Transformative Cultures, EDE Glarisegg is a five weeks experiential laboratory, where you are encouraged to pose the questions most relevant to our times. You explore what it means to be alive on this beautiful but wounded planet. How to hold the complexity of a world in crisis? Within yourself and others? … Our programme is a carefully curated, holistic five-week learning journey. It weaves together workshops, group sessions, skill-sharing, time in nature, moments of silence, music, dance, and morning routines, along with both individual and collaborative explorations in large and small groups. … This course is rooted in, and certified by, the global framework of the EDE curriculum (Ecovillage Design Education).”
Tools for Thought: Building new tools for interdisciplinary thinking
📍Tyrol, Austria 📅 14-17 November 2025 💸 350-850 EUR
“We’re organizing an interdisciplinary gathering in the alps, in which we’re bringing together a radically interdisciplinary collection of thinkers to build, hack and prototype together on the central question: can we invent new Tools for Thought We’ve had a few last-minute spots open up, which we’re keen to fill with thoughtful, creative individuals from the arts, humanities, social sciences and media in particular.”
Jobs & Opportunities
Climate Psychology Alliance: 4 part-time paid positions
📍UK-based remote working 📅 Application deadline: 31 October 2025
CPA are hiring for 4 part-time paid positions: Administrative Coordinator (10h/week); Inner Climate Response Alliance youth coordinator (8 hours/week); CPA youth coordinator (8 hours/week); Inner Climate Response Alliance community resilience coordinator (11 hours/week). “Three of the four posts advertised here have some or all of their funding from the Inner Climate Response Alliance, a new partnership made up of the Mindfulness Initiative (MI), the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA) and Climate Majority Project (CMP). The Inner Climate Response Alliance is bringing together the first UK-wide community of practice for people holding the inner dimension of our climate and global crisis.”
ENVIRON-MENTAL project: Postdoctoral researcher
📍Institute of Anthropology, Leipzig University, Germany 📅 Application deadline: 1 November 2025
“We invite applications for a postdoctoral researcher position (m/f/d/x) with the DFG project “Environ-mental health: Experience, ethics and poiesis of ecological grief amid wounded environments in India” (ENVIRON-MENTAL). … ENVIRON-MENTAL is an ethnographic study of affective reactions to (anticipated) environmental damage and loss in India and beyond. It explores the experience of grief, the ethics and politics of grieving in wounded environments, and the potential grief has for the transformation of relations in a more-than-human world. … The postdoc will conduct ethnographic research on ecological grief and distress in contexts such as everyday lived experiences, the clinic, or environmental activism in India or another location.”
Mind-at-Large Project: Call for Abstracts
📅 Submission deadline: 15 January 2026
“The Mind-at-Large Project is a three-year, multidisciplinary exploration into consciousness and its role in the nature of reality. … The first gathering, “A New Dawn,” inaugurates this unfolding inquiry. … We invite papers that engage creatively and critically with the re-emerging paradigm of “mind-at-large,” traversing multiple thresholds of philosophical, scientific, and cultural discourse, including but not limited to: Philosophy of Mind … Mind & Matter … Biology & Consciousness … 4E Cognition …Indigenous and Animist Perspectives … History of Science & the Disenchantment of Nature … .” Open to Undergraduate, MA, PhD, and early-career scholars (within five years of degree completion).
Second Renaissance
*“Second Renaissance” is one way of framing current times as a period of civilisational crisis and potential renewal – and of pointing to an ecosystem of people and organisations working to catalyse the emergence of a new, regenerative, cultural paradigm. If you recognise terms like metacrisis, Metamodern, Regenerative, Liminal Web, Game B, Integral, conscious evolution and so on, then you’re on familiar ground. Explore the core thesis and theory of change in more detail here.
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This month marks the launch of the crowdfunding campaign for the Second Renaissance Magazine!
The magazine is not just a publication, it’s the foundation of a Second Renaissance: a living platform where artists, writers, and thinkers come together to shape meaning through art, ideas, poetry, and essays that alchemise meaning in a time of crisis.
We are raising £17,500 to bring the next two issues to life. Your support covers curation, editing, design, and printing — but most importantly, it ensures that the artists who share their vision and labour are fairly compensated. Every contribution brings The Second Renaissance Magazine to life. Here’s what your support makes possible:
$25 helps cover editing and printing costs for a few pages of the magazine
$50 supports one of our designers or writers in shaping a visual story or essay
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With your support, the Second Renaissance becomes not only visible, but sustainable. Together, we can midwife this cultural shift.
Finally, we leave you with some —
Art to nourish the soul…
Thank you for reading the ninth issue of Seeds of a Second Renaissance.
Spot on. This is like Pilates for your brain literally!