The art of the learning village

— A lived inquiry into trust, pace, and remembering our humanity

We opened the year with a gathering — a Learning Village gathering.

Sixty people came from across the world to Kufunda, into a gathering where we let the land hold us:

The trees. Time. A simple structure: celebration, space, and an invitation — for each person to bring their gifts, their questions, their longings.

In that cauldron, the conditions were set for something quiet yet profound: remembering our humanity.

So simple. And yet, utterly radical.

Before arriving people kept asking, What’s the programme? 

And we kept answering, We make the programme.

That is the art of the Learning Village

What stays with me are not outcomes but moments:

the 7 am morning dance,

the hosho (shakers) holding the mbira,

Shelani’s fire dance in the depth of the night

Daily time by 'our' tree - in listening

Shared art making - expressing what is moving now

These were not side activities. They were the learning.

Delphine Oliver from South Africa reflected afterwards:

“I said yes to a week at the Village Gathering at Kufunda Learning Village without an agenda — only with the wish to lean into community and see what might return.

What I found was simple and profound. Days shaped by shared meals, long conversations, dance, music, time in nature, art, laughter, silence.

No optimisation. No fixing. Just people practising how to be human together.

Slowly, the hum returned.

Not as a rush or a high, but as a quiet settling. A feeling of being more inside my body again. More present. More available to life.”

What made our week together radical was the trust.

Trust that if we created the space for each person to follow a deeper impulse, something of real value could emerge.

Trust that we didn’t have to over-structure and plan every moment, or be guided by predetermined outcomes.

There was a trust that community, our shared humanity in nature is not only enough, but that opening to that actually allows something miraculous to unfold in the space between us.

And it did.

And it did.

One of our visitors, Martalia Lo, who joined us from Cambodia, wrote afterwards about what she encountered.

She had arrived exhausted, frustrated, disoriented — delayed flights, lost luggage, challenges at the border. And then she wrote, in her own words:

“At Kufunda, I was welcomed with lots of smiles, held by friends, celebrated through the rhythms of mbira, hosho and ngoma, loud and joyful songs; it made me move and dance regardless of how I look. I have arrived not as a guest but officiated as part of a community…It doesn’t take much to feel alive actually; food, laughter, music and dancing, the warm embrace of others.”

What struck Martalia most was the reversal of expectation:

“It was the first time in my life, to BE SHOCKED and IN AWE that in the learning gathering at

Kufunda, our expert guest speakers were THE TREE, SOIL, WATER, AIR, FIRE

The rigid construct of planning and structure from what I’ve experienced before in other places

or events, were replaced with offerings, open space, co-creating, breathing, dancing, cooking,

art-ing, massaging, and clay masking using COW DUNG!"

Her reflection ended with remembering - that resonates with me and many others in the gathering:

“I am human, I am nature, I belong to a family, a community.

This was a moment to remember, to learn and experience truly, what it means to be human.”

Another participant, Dion Mukapi, wrote in a poem of how this week of shared offering taught them that:

“When spirit falters, someone arrives. 

We are everything we need.”

Together we discovered what becomes possible when trust is placed at the centre and presence replaces a predetermined programme.

This is the lived inquiry we are attending to now at Kufunda. 

Asking, and living, the questions: 

What truly becomes possible when we trust? 

What are the conditions that allow that trust to unfurl in shared community?

We lived it for a week.

What would it mean to live this each day? 

What would it mean to live it in your day?

We are learning something about pace. 

About pause.

How might we create more moments of stopping together — long enough for tree, wind, water, and rock to be our teachers?

How might we create more openings where each person finds their way to bring their gifts, their resources, their presence fully into offering?

These are simple questions.

And perhaps the answers are simpler than we know. 

Simpler than we know.

Simpler than we know.