Today is spring equinox, when day and night are in perfect equilibrium. From here (in our hemisphere), light defeats dark as the sun crosses the celestial equator and we turn closer and closer toward its life-giving light. Life stirs in response; green shoots pushing up through dark earth, early blossoms popping bright against still-grey skies, the chatter of songbirds filling the slowly warming air. It’s a time of renewal and rebirth, an invitation to throw off the constraints of winter and cultivate new possibilities.
Exactly five years ago, over spring equinox 2019, we gathered a group of thinkers, makers and doers at the cutting edge of their fields to explore how we might meet the historic moment of upheaval and uncertainty we were living through. New Constellations was born.
This spring equinox offers us another inflection point. Over the past five years, a beautiful and powerful body of work has emerged through thousands of hours of care, love, collaborations, conversations and hard work. We now share the feeling it is time for it to evolve. Over the coming weeks we will be closing this cycle of New Constellations, taking the organisation into a phase we are calling chrysalis: a time of quiet metamorphosis, as yet unknowable. You can read more about this decision and our plans in this blog.
Before we tuck into our chrysalis, we are here to answer any questions you might have, and would love to hear what New Constellations has meant to you, however closely or distantly you have been involved. You can leave us a short voice note here or on our free phone line 0800 118 2604 if you are in the UK (or just reply to this email if you prefer).
We will be sharing more stories and learnings via this mailing list and our substack over the next few weeks. If there is anything in particular that would be of value to you, do let us know. Meanwhile, we have some brief news of recent work below.
It remains to say that we are so, so grateful to every single person who has helped shape, support, challenge and inspire New Constellations over this five year cycle. More soon…
Iris, Gemma, Jo & Lily
New Constellations
In January we had the great privilege of holding our first journey for under 25s; a voyage of discovery into a future imagined by and for young people and future generations. Together we explored the challenges facing young people in the UK today, the glimmers of hope we want to keep in our sights, and a beautiful future animated by seven kinds of love. Do listen to the crew’s inspiring journey in their own words here.
This journey was created in partnership with the brilliant Northern Soul to enable a group of young people to contribute to Kinship Discovery: a programme of exploration, research and insight-generation Paul Hamlyn Foundation is running to inform a major new funding initiative focused on young people and hope for the future.
The wonderful crew who journeyed with us were Amira Hayat, Cassie Robinson, Charli Ivy Perkins, Dami Fawehinmi, Ella Greenway, Felix Miller, Gage Oxley, Halima Ali, Jane Hamlyn, Jason Wong, Kaya Birch-Skerritt, Lilia Hakem, Moira Sinclair, Nathan Holmes, Nirushan Sudarsan and Olivia Gable. Special thanks to Ruth Ibegbuna and India Morgan for so lovingly co-creating this journey with us.
We are excited to share more about the Mycelium Fund: an experiment we have been developing and conducting over the past year. The Mycelium Fund is exploring the possibility of a self-distributing resourcing system mirroring the vast network of interconnected fungi that nourishes and sustains the natural world. The Mycelium Fund Principles, which inspire the form and activity of the fund, were compiled by Jo and Rithikha Rajamohan following extensive research with mycologists and other experts.
From interconnection and recycling to mother trees and distributing resources according to need, it has been wonderful to see how these beautiful principles have inspired participants and their projects so far. This blog by Rithikha outlines the research and Ecological Principles that underpinned the design of the Fund.
This has been a closed experiment supported by Arising Quo, and is still underway, but we look forward to sharing more learnings once the work is completed (this will happen over the coming months even as the rest of New Constellations enters our chrysalis); we will add these to the webpage. Please note the fund is not open for applications at this time, but do get in touch if you have any questions about it.
Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir has been a beloved collaborator of ours since that very first gathering five years ago, co-creating two of our journeys with us, recording this beautiful audio encounter and deeply inspiring us with her work around InnSæi.
Pronounced 'in-sy-eh', this Icelandic word for intuition means the sea within (the flow of our unconscious mind), to see within (how we introspect), and to see from the inside out (how we navigate the world). InnSæi has become a central and deeply resonant reference within our New Constellations journeys, and is a concept we feel we can all be resourced by as we navigate these times. Hrund has just released her poetic and practical book InnSæi: Heal, revive and reset with the Icelandic art of intuition, and we couldn’t recommend it more highly.
Thank you for reading, and for all of your remarkable support and encouragement over the past five years. We would truly love to hear from you if you have any questions or reflections for us as we prepare our chrysalis.
New Constellations exists to help people imagine and create better futures; futures in which humanity and the planet flourish together. If you like what we’re doing, you can help us by:
