A time for connection: three powerful reflections from the members’ retreat

With the environmental movement facing an unprecedented level of opposition, how can philanthropy step up to meet the current global moment?

In late May, almost 100 funders and conveners from across the UK gathered at the beautiful Wortley Hall near Sheffield for the annual Environmental Funders Network members’ retreat to slow down, to come together and to consider how they could meet this challenging moment. I’m an activist-scholar and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, and I was excited to receive an invitation to join this gathering in support of my research, which is exploring how philanthropy can support grassroots biodiversity conservation movements.   

Over workshops, panel discussions and field trips, a lot of ground was covered, but three key themes stood out to me: the role of storytelling, the importance of relationships, and the critical need to re-imagine for transformation.

Storytelling, creativity, and language

“We as a collective have to share in our stories because they are very wise … ‘we’ is very important, because ‘me, me, me’ is going to lead to us and them. And we can’t have that.” – Ben Haggarty, Storyteller, Crick Crack Club

Storytelling, and the language we use, was a key topic of discussion and focus, embedded into the design of the retreat.  For instance, in one workshop led by Oscar Brennecke-Dunn from EFN, participants invented and performed as imaginary characters who were opposing environmental progress, using theatre games to explore the values and nuances of a group that environmentalists may be tempted to “other”. Author Sarah Hall led a workshop that had participants create their own nature poems to explore how creativity, joy, and storytelling can foster and strengthen our connection with nature. 

We were prompted by many of the retreat’s speakers and facilitators to critically interrogate who the storytellers are that get platformed, and who remains unheard. We were asked to question whether language or stories is enough to move the needle for environmental systems change. Panelists from a discussion on language and the environment emphasised that it is relationships and experiences, not language, that change minds, and that funders can foster this kind of change by supporting the social infrastructure that act as “gateways” to the environmental movement. This was encapsulated quite memorably by author Sarah Stein Lubrano when she said, “I’m tired of talking about systems change. I want to do it now”. 

Connection, relationships, and collective action

“The point of the retreat is to bring people together and see what we can do.” – Oscar Brennecke-Dunn, EFN

The importance of coming together and being in relationship with one another was the second overarching theme of the EFN retreat. Connection and relationships were highlighted in some way by almost every speaker and facilitator at the retreat. 

When sharing how they are working to engage local farmers in climate adaptation during the field trip, the Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust explained that “Pie and Pint Night” was by far the most effective strategy to bring people in. Similarly during a discussion on the state of politics in the UK, Amy Mount from ECF repeatedly emphasised the importance of funding wider ecosystems and supporting communities to come together and organise collectively. 

The retreat itself was an opportunity to practice coming together, and there were many moments of sharing and bonding. The most memorable moment for me may be the pub quiz at the end of day two, which included a very challenging “match the endemic bird species to its island” round, which I did quite poorly on! 

The work funders can do to better collaborate and fund a wider and interconnected ecosystem of environmental solutions and change-makers was clear – so much of the success of the environmental movement depends on us coming together. 

Re-imagining for transformation 

“What future can I currently imagine? How is my vision limited by the status-quo?” – Evie Muir, Nature writer and Founder of Peaks of Colour

The final overarching theme that emerged from the EFN retreat was the need to deeply re-imagine our current systems and ways of doing things, if we are to foster transformative change for nature and people. 

During a panel on the international context of environmental philanthropy, Susanne Moser from Antioch University of New England emphasised that funders must look to the margins, where good ideas are being developed and tested, because that is where transformation occurs. Alex Hayes from NPC, agreed, and challenged funders to fund what others won’t, to look to the grassroots, and fund with a long-term vision for change in mind. During her workshop, Joycelyn Longdon from the University of Cambridge explained how she had to re-think the ways that we listen to each other when building a research partnership with members of a Ghanaian forest community for her PhD, which led to her developing a justice-oriented design listening framework. 

The deep importance of reimagining was perhaps made the most clear for me during day two’s workshop on abolitionist principles for radical imagination, led by Evie Muir, author and founder of Peaks of Colour. Evie challenged us to critically examine the norms and worldviews that guide funding practices within environmental philanthropy, and the ways they might actually stifle transformative change. When the future we can imagine is limited by structures of oppression that make up the status-quo, we need to unlearn these structures in order to actualise transformative and just futures. Evie guided the participating funders to understand radical imagination as abolitionist praxis, sharing that the “biggest project of abolition is to dream and imagine something that currently isn’t”.

Final takeaways 

So, how can philanthropy step up to meet the current global moment? The role of storytelling, the importance of relationships, and the critical need to re-imagine for transformation emerged as three potential pathways environmental philanthropy can use to bolster the environmental movement, both globally and in the UK. The challenge now is to take what was discussed, and the new connections and relationships that were made, and have the courage to build from here.

Maja Groff from the Climate Governance Commission offered us all a message of hope: “We are unbelievably wealthy at the international level” she said. “We have enough imagination and solutions”. Connecting those that hold the imagination and the solutions with those that hold the wealth – this is the project of philanthropy.