Aims and participants Aims:

Building on previous workshops and gatherings, we wanted to move on to deepen our collective capability to make change towards the vision of the bioregion’s co-created food manifesto and the overall BWL mission (see recap slides and earlier reports). To do this we organised workshops to develop what we refer to as ‘emerging holistic concepts’, while at the same time acknowledging the importance of deepening personal relationships and maintaining inclusive open spaces for people interested in a more general understanding of what we are doing. To this end we undertook events at each end of the bioregion, on consecutive days, and delivered two concept workshops, one of them residential, and two open events.

The aims were summarised as follows:

1. To add value to emerging and existing concepts that could make major impact on 4 Returns (social, natural, inspirational and economic)
2.  To increase skills around communicating and presenting such concepts to funders and investors– for example at the Bioregional Funding event planned for September 8th 2023, EIPs or other co-funding opportunities.
3. To enable important stakeholders in the bioregion to get to know each other better than is possible at shorter events, and deepen our changemaking capacities
4. To have shorter open inclusive events for people wanting to gain general understanding of BWL.