AskNature Learning

Many of us feel a sense of separation from nature. We may also feel there is little we can do to protect the places and species we love, or to avert the downward spiral of the ecological, climate, and biodiversity crises. Some of us may even feel that humanity has become a blight on the planet. This course offers a different perspective, rooted in agency and positive action. Through a regular practice of deep nature reconnection, we can rebuild healthy relationships and empathy with the wider living world. We can grow a felt sense of interconnection and belonging, and we can develop intrinsic ecological awareness and wisdom which guides our work on behalf of the living world. In this way we can move toward the possibility of humans becoming a positive keystone species, addressing the longing in us all to make a positive and meaningful contribution, and leaving the world better than we found it.  

In this deeply practical and applied reconnection course we will explore how to enhance our sensory capacities and observational skills, supporting us to better recognise, understand, draw connections from, and be guided by nature’s patterns, principles, and wisdom. 

We will explore how to integrate regular and foundational practices of reconnection with nature into our daily lives, enhancing our ecological design skills from the inside out. 

By reconnecting with and better knowing our local places, species, and ecosystems through the cycles and the seasons, we will come to appreciate their gifts and services, their contribution to health and resilience, and the roles we can and do play as participants in these networks of life. 

Through these direct relationships and interactions with nature we will deepen our understanding of how and why living systems work the way they do, drawing on this to design more creative solutions to the challenges of today.

• Designers, innovators, and changemakers seeking more intuitive and integrated ways to learn from nature beyond tools and frameworks
• Educators, facilitators, and practitioners who want simple yet profound practices for deepening ecological learning without needing specialist biology or ecology training
• Professionals in sustainability, regeneration, and systems change looking to be guided by nature in more embodied, place-based ways
• Students and lifelong learners curious about biomimicry, ecological wisdom, and tuning into the living world
• Community leaders and organizers interested in grounding their work in deeper relationships with place and local ecosystems
• Anyone drawn to nature’s inspiration who wants to cultivate attentiveness, curiosity, and connection—no prior experience in biomimicry or nature connection required

Develop an understanding of –

The Importance of Deep Nature Reconnection 

1. The sense of separation from nature and how we can re-apprentice to life
2. Deep Nature Connection and why is it critical for Biomimicry
3. Becoming Keystone: the possibility of humanity as net positive contributors in our places and ecosystems.
4. Emerging wisdom from the nature connection movement and nature connection research.

Reconnection in Practice 

1. Establishing a Personal Practice: core routines of deep nature reconnection for relationality, sensory expansion, and enhanced observation
2. Reconnection as the practical foundation for intrinsic ecological awareness, deeper ecoliteracy and more effective nature-led design.
3. The Role of Community: peer mentoring, storytelling/catching, emotion-beauty-wonder, and building nature connected community, as pathways to deeper connection.

Module 1: The How and Why of Deep Nature Connection

Module 2: Reconnection for Personal, Professional and Planetary Change 

Module 3: Becoming Keystone – Reweaving Ourselves into the Web of Life

Module 4: Nature-Culture-Community: Integrating Nature Connected Design

Few industries command such global influence while intertwining as deeply with our daily lives as the fashion and textile industry, yet its rapid growth has exacted a heavy toll on our planet. The waste generated has further created a fundamentally broken system that is a significant contributor to humanity’s overshoot of Earth’s ecological limits and planetary boundaries. The industry operates on a linear “take-make-waste” model that depletes finite resources, generates enormous amounts of non-degradable waste and pollution, and operates with disregard for natural ecological cycles. Urgent action is needed to transform how we design and operate the fashion sector, recognizing that everything we make will ultimately return to the Earth. By learning from nature’s time-tested strategies, particularly the processes of decomposition through breakdown and transformation of materials, we can shift the industry towards a regenerative system.

This course will dive deeper into the current paradigm, and equip participants with the tools and inspiration needed to look to nature for solutions. Each week, we will host discussions and activities aimed at addressing the underlying challenges within this system as well as hear from companies leading the way in creating a life-friendly future. The Nature of Materials: Textiles course is a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in a community of biomimicry-minded sector-professionals and understand how to better translate strategies from the natural world to areas where they might make a real impact in the fashion and textile industry.

• Anyone in the fashion and textile industry ready to make a change
• Environmentalists and sustainability professionals 
• Designers, industry professionals, manufacturers, creators, company representatives, and other activators 
• Young professionals/university students
• No prior experience in biomimicry required, just your curiosity for nature’s inspiration

• Participants will develop a greater understanding of what it means to transform waste into a resource as inspired by nature and drive a related sector of the fashion industry to be more nature positive. 
• Participants will learn how to turn to nature for design solutions, and connect deeply with the organisms and strategies that they are inspired by.
• Participants will recognize the big ideas in this industry that can further help foster solutions towards the polycrisis of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Module 1: Understanding the Fashion Landscape 

Module 2: Learning from Nature – Introduction to the Biomimicry Process in Fashion and Textiles 

Module 3: The Solution Space Ecosystem

Module 4: Systems Shift