Berlin, November 2018

The first Emerge Gathering took place in Berlin over the weekend of 9–11 November 2018, initiated by three non-profit organisations: the Ekskäret Foundation in Stockholm, Co-Creation Loft in Berlin and Perspectiva in London. Around a hundred people came – pioneers in complexity science, philosophy, spirituality, psychology, sustainability, creativity and wisdom – gathering to explore dynamic solutions to our planet's greatest challenges and to discover new ways of working, living and creating together.

The date was not accidental. The ninth of November is the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a day that carries in Germany a particular weight of historical rupture and possibility. It was a fitting moment to ask what might be breaking down, and what might be coming into being.

The venues were spread across Kreuzberg and Neukölln – the FvF Friends Space on Glogauer Strasse, the cocreation.loft on Schinkestr., and Klunkerkranich, an improbable rooftop bar above the Neukölln Arcaden. Production was by Sebastian Baier and Jan Stassen of cocreation.x, with creative direction by Steffen Stäuber and a facilitation team that included Anne Caspari, Indra Adnan, Bonnitta Roy, Pontus Holmgren and David Elliot.

Participants are like the blind people describing the elephant – each understanding something true but partial, because none can see the whole.Tomas Björkman · welcome text

His personal name for the work was simple: a more conscious society. The gathering existed to deepen each person's work and to begin connecting the parts – not to produce a unified vision but to start discerning the contours of what was emerging.

Friday was given over to workshops – eighteen sessions across three time slots. Daniel Görtz led a session on metamodern theory; Jonathan Rowson convened two, on spiritual sensibility and on a metamodern reader for the new Perspectiva Press; Erik Fernholm presented technology initiatives for personal growth at scale. Alexander Björkman ran an exploratory session on a metamodern college or monastery in Kyiv – a seed that bore fruit the following year.

Saturday moved to the cocreation.loft for collective sense-making and a marketplace of initiatives, closing with live cooking and jazz. Sunday ended at Klunkerkranich with an ecstatic dance set and a Sufi-inspired performance. The whatisemerging.com platform launched that same weekend – the network making itself visible to itself, and then to the world.