The way we work is the way we live. Widening Circles Collaborative is a reclamation of work as sacred.
In healthy ecosystems, our work is one of the primary vehicles to give our gifts, skills, and creativity forward and receive enabling resources in return. WCC is a platform that fundamentally reorients our relationship to work as a pathway to life beyond our basic survival.
It an act of courage to participate in liberatory models because it is such a profound paradigmatic shift away from the familiar, even if the familiar is harmful. This is why WCC is a heart-led, heart-forward movement: the root of the word courage is cor – the Latin word for heart. We don’t know a world built on love, built from the heart, but we see glimpses of it. It can be terrifying to give up all we know for the trust fall into a world fertile and abundant where all that has been denied us can thrive.
This significant shift requires us to re-pattern and heal. That’s why at WCC we do it together: we co-learn and co-regulate. We co-create safety as our dedication to one another, so that we can learn to live differently.
Learn more about our long-term vision here (link). Explore our offerings in the short term below.
This will be a video illustration of our model: Each individual in our collective is a circle held within the greater whole. Circles cluster in different configurations based on what work is called for. Circles can be self-contained for individual projects or initiatives, and can join in dynamic permutations to form catalytic collaborations. Circles are always part of the larger community where creative reciprocity is in constant unfolding.
Our model
We liberate labor by transforming the very conditions that have been presumed inevitable. We foundationally reimagine what an economy can be, leveraging past wisdom traditions and future-oriented emergence principles for the here and now. This isn’t just talk, this is practicing what we seek.
Autonomy & agency: Everyone that participates in the Widening Circles Collaborative mutuality economy has full autonomy over their days, over their lives, over their contributions. Participating in a healthy work environment is innately reinforcing and regenerative. We honor the dignity and humanity of everyone in WCC which means everyone is witnessed for their complexity – we don’t expect conformity or assimilation, we embrace diversity. Everyone is differently situated and thus has different constraints: someone confronting chronic pain needs different considerations and has different availability than someone who is a parent, for example. We do not believe in incentives and rewards to motivate labor, in the artificial premise of “work-life balance”, in monitoring or tracking behavior, in supervision or monitoring, in clocking in or timing out. We believe in humanity.
Community agreements for collective accountability: We co-create community agreements on a regular basis and ensure there is communal alignment, especially when new members join. Here are some examples of our current community agreements that support health and wellness in this ecosystem:
Name harm and navigate inevitable conflict to build relationships with integrity
Consent is at the root of all safety; safety is the ability to be intimate with our vulnerabilities
Fully feeling is a key to liberation: the body never lies so we honor somatic intelligence
Transformative justice models cannot only be intellectual; they must be felt and embodied
Equitable resource exchange: We are pioneering an innovative approach in which we pool resources for our offerings and redistribute them equitably to all involved, both on a project basis and within the ecosystem at large. The resources we receive through commission and co-creation work within this community will be allocated in a reparative model that recognizes past racialized, gendered, and other discriminatory harms to create justice and reconciliation across our varying trauma diversities.
Mindful of how the individual affects the whole: …
No leaders, no followers, no hierarchy: …
Creative expression at the core: …
Interact with us:
Widening Circles Collaborative has three distinct ways to interact with our ecosystem: co-create or commission a project, and/or join our community.
CO-CREATION ÷ come together
We come together as thought partners and collaborators to steward an effort or initiative.
We find resourcing together and engage in reciprocity: we seek funding or other compensation, such as quality of life resources, to provide the enabling conditions for this work. This could involve trade/exchange.
The joint nature of this effort means we create fresh and unique terms, agreements, boundaries, and visions together.
COMMISSION ÷ call on us
Count on us to contribute work for you as an individual or for your entity, on a project basis.
Like consultants, we are resourced by the sponsor of the project who provides funding or other compensation, such as quality of life resources, for our contributions.
The nature of this effort as client-based work means we form mutually serving agreements with unique terms that shape and define our engagement to serve both parties.
COMMUNITY ÷ connect deeply
Join the collaborative and gain a community where you are held within a multifaceted, dynamic, generative, supportive container with digital and analog dimensions. Give your gifts forward and receive in equitable exchange. Be a part of a paradigm shifting movement to liberate labor and transform the way we relate to ourselves, each other, other beings, and the planet. Come to virtual and in-person events, gatherings, and workshops. Participate in nurturing a potent mutuality economy.
Learn more about our community here.
We invite you to send us a note or schedule a free 30 minute phone call to inquire about any of our offerings.
Cultures of belonging, economies of care
What are quality of life resources?
This is how we honor that being holistically held in a mutuality economy includes access to a diversity of resources, not only financial. Vitalizing food, access to healthcare, comfortable housing, educational/skill-building opportunities, cultural production (art, music, adornment, etc), child care, and more are all critical enabling conditions for a thriving life.
No one is left out of Widening Circles Collaborative. If you do not have funds to give, or if you do not seek funds to receive, you belong here in an economy much vaster than financial capital can contain. Everyone in the WCC community participates by naming their needs in exchange for giving their gifts forward. When you join the WCC, you will be in reciprocal relationship that ensure that your whole self is supported and that your gifts are received in exchange.
Current offerings
WCC is in motion and in emergence. We are an adaptive organism that is constantly evolving through new projects and partnerships. Every new link in our circles infuses, shapes, and molds WCC and what it can offer.
WCC is a container, a model, that can support every kind of labor imaginable approached in a liberated way - it is limitless in its capacity, yet we are moving slowly to ensure we can remain in integrity, alignment, and right relationship. We are in no rush. yet we know the times are urgent.
Our offerings grow as more join the collaborative and bring new resources and skills to share. Our current community members are exceptionally skilled in the following areas and we look forward to expanding into new realms.
Organizational development
Strategic advising to support short and long-term organizational vision and planning, direction setting, values creation, and way-finding organized around belonging and seven generation thinking.
Program development to help improve the effectiveness and impact of programs and offerings to scale and broaden your reach, rooted in intentionality and centered in values, so your efforts can expand naturally through their magnetism, coherence, and resonance.
Lifecycle support to manage change and transitions with ease and follow organic cyclicality, recognizing that for any organization, project, or initiative the cocoon is just as important as the emergence. We help you nourish your soil, soften into hibernation, and/or expand your web so that you can tend to the depth as well as the breadth, sustaining your commitment for the long haul.
Research + analysis of trends, developments, policies to advance organizational impact and remain expansive and transformative in your thought leadership to serve the wellbeing of all.
Evolve internal structures through systems-design to be more adaptive, responsive and resilient.
Community weaving
Implement participatory, community-driven design practices and processes to foster a co-creative environment to generate programs, experiences, policies, etc. with deep and rich involvement & interaction that center the most marginalized/invisibilized and move outward, based on principles of targeted universalism*.
Facilitate exceptional gatherings, workshops, events, and courses that promote skill development, creativity, fulfillment, meaning, and purpose.
Access robust toolkits & resources designed by experts across countless fields to help promote belonging that centers the most marginalized/invisibilized and moves outward
Enhance internal culture through democratic practice, meaningful inclusion, and collaboratively-designed structures, policies, and processes with staff and leadership through belonging-based strategies that support mutuality and diversity, strengthening into a larger collective effort.
Support longevity through deepened equity throughout your organization which enables and empowers all individuals to feel seen, heard, respected, cared for, and supported in putting forward their best selves.
Ecosystem cultivation
Create compelling communications to hone values-aligned messaging and storytelling that helps more people and communities find their place in your offerings. From copyediting to collateral production to outreach strategy, ensure your internal and external communications serve your fullness in stunning ways.
Develop and strengthen partnerships to expand your ecosystem and strengthen your organization through critical connections within the movement you’re part of at large.
Cultural + artistic production
Collaborate with the many talented artists in the Widening Circles Collaborative community - including graphic designers, tattoo artists, photographers, illustrators, writers, painters, jewelry designers, wood workers, and more. Co-create a vision with our artists to breathe life in to an initiative or idea.
Commission a specific piece - whether a work of art, a musician for your next gathering, a piece of jewelry, a tattoo, a logo, and much more.
Learn more about our artists and cultural producers here.
Widening Circles Collaborative holds a bold vision of belonging. Anyone who wants to be part of the mutuality economy has a place in this ecosystem.
If your interest is sparked, we would love to learn more about how we might collaborate with you in community, or on a co-created or commissioned project.