Kyiv, Autumn 2024

In the autumn of 2024, the Emerge Network returned to Kyiv – not as observers, but as pilgrims into a country at war. Five years after Emerge first gathered in the Ukrainian capital in 2019, following the civic awakening that grew out of the Maidan revolution, the network reconvened under conditions transformed by Russia's full-scale invasion.

Going to Ukraine during active wartime was itself the point: presence as a form of solidarity, and proximity as a condition for genuine learning.

Held in collaboration with Ukraine's New Thinking School – a global hub of the Inner Development Goals – the five-day gathering led participants through Kyiv's ancient treasures and the fresh scars of war, including the bombed town of Borodyanka and sites of genocide like Bucha, with sessions hosted amid the frescoes of the 11th-century St Sophia Cathedral. International participants joined members of the Ukrainian integral community to make sense of what was emerging, not just in Ukraine, but beyond.

Ukraine has become, literally and metaphorically, the frontline for the future of open societies.Kyiv 2024 · the wager

The wager was that Ukraine has become, literally and metaphorically, the frontline for the future of open societies – a microcosm through which the rest of the world might glimpse where it is headed, and what skills of solidarity, resilience, and collective action the coming century will demand. To witness this was not tourism. It was an apprenticeship in defending, and remaking, a world worth living in.

At its core, this was a study in world-making and resilience by Ukrainians. The pilgrimage drew out hard-won lessons: how agile trust networks formed overnight and proved effective where legacy institutions failed; what subjectnist – a deep sense of collective agency – makes possible; how resilience, adaptation, and even humour sustain a society defending what it values. Speakers such as philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko and Nobel Peace laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk were among the speakers to give voice to a nation refusing erasure.