Reimagining Stewardship as a Living Culture
Eternal Forest: Reimagining Stewardship as a Living Culture
A participatory gathering by Harmonia & Eternal Forest
Building on our previous gathering, Stewardship as Belonging, we are going deeper: from exploring stewardship as an idea to asking how it can become a lived practice, supported by relationships, structures and a community of peers.
This online gathering is also the beginning of something more practical.
Eternal Forest and Harmonia are developing a future Stewardship Cohort for people who are already stewarding, or preparing to steward, land, communities and regenerative projects. This may include forests, farms, restoration initiatives, learning spaces, cultural projects, community-led places and other forms of work rooted in relationship with land and life.
The Cohort will bring together a small group of projects to learn alongside one another over six months, combining shared inquiry with practical support: project clinics, conversations with experienced practitioners, peer exchange, one-to-one guidance, resources and an international network of people facing many of the same questions.
It is also a pathway into the wider Eternal Forest ecosystem and network, particularly for people exploring how their land-based work might connect with a longer-term culture of ecological stewardship.
But before designing the programme around assumptions, we want to listen.
This gathering is therefore both an experience in itself and a sensing space for the future cohort. As part of joining, we will invite participants to answer a few short questions about the place or project they are stewarding, the challenges they are encountering, where they feel stuck, and what kind of support, knowledge or relationships would genuinely help.
Your responses will help us understand who is gathering around this work and shape the cohort around real needs rather than an imagined curriculum.
You do not need to have an established project to participate. You may already be stewarding land, be at the beginning of a project, be exploring a future sanctuary, or simply be asking how to bring stewardship more deeply into your work.
The Gathering
What if stewardship is not simply about caring for what we have inherited, but about creating the conditions for life to continue flourishing?
The word steward comes from the Old English stigweard, referring to someone entrusted with the affairs of a household or estate. At its heart is the idea of being entrusted with something that is not simply ours to possess, but something we are responsible for caring for and carrying forward.
Today, we are living within systems and structures designed for different conditions, different relationships and different understandings of our place within the living world. Many of these inherited ways of organising are showing their limits.
If we are serious about caring for forests for 1,000 years, we cannot only preserve or restore the land. We also need to reimagine the human systems surrounding it.
What structures, relationships, governance models and cultures are needed for stewardship to remain alive, adaptive and regenerative across generations?
This participatory gathering invites us to explore stewardship as a living culture rather than simply a responsibility. Through embodied practice and shared inquiry, we will explore belonging, participation, reciprocity, power, care and the often invisible conditions that shape how we relate to one another and to the living world.
This is not a lecture or a prescribed model. It is a space to listen, question, reflect and imagine together, while bringing the realities of our own projects and places into the room.
And beneath the larger inquiry sits a very practical one:
If we want a forest to live for 1,000 years, what kind of human culture and systems do we need to create around it?
Please take a few minutes to complete a few questions. Your responses will help us better understand who is joining this gathering and allow us to curate conversations that are rooted in the collective wisdom already present in the room.
Your answers will also help us shape the Eternal Forest Stewardship Cohort and identify a small group of projects that may be invited to take part in its first six-month cycle.
See you online soon!
Hadil & Evgenia
Hadil El-Baba is Lebanese-Canadian architect, systems thinker, and experience designer exploring the relationship between inner transformation and the systems we create. Through Harmonia, she is exploring how we intentionally design the systems, relationships, and environments that help people remember who they are, reconnect with one another, and participate in creating communities rooted in trust, belonging, reciprocity, and care.
Substack: https://substack.com/@harmoniaportal
LinkedIn: hadil-el-baba-a231a912a
Instagram: harmoniaportal
Website: https://hadileb.com
Evgenia Emets is an international artist, poet and founder of Eternal Forest Global. She works across drawing, calligraphy, language, ecology, film, artist’s books, performance and large-scale land-based works.
Her practice explores the relationship between human culture and the living world, with a focus on forests as places of memory, intelligence, transformation and long-term continuity.
LinkedIn: emetsjane
Instagram: eternalforestglobal
Website: https://www.eternalforest.earth/
Telegram Group Eternal Forest Community: https://t.me/eternalforest