Tyson Yunaporta on Hoodie Economics

In an era where simplicity often takes precedence, there are voices that beckon us to delve deeper, to embrace the intricate layers of our existence, and to understand the profound connections that shape our world.

Two such voices, Jack Manning Bancroft and Tyson Yunkaporta, offer insights that challenge conventional wisdom and urge us to rethink our perspectives on economics and relationships.

One (Jack) has a new book ‘Hoodie Economics’ that you can pre order below and the other (Tyson) sat down with us for an hour long yarn to talk about the book.

Listen to the full conversation with Tyson talking about Jack’s new book Hoodie Economics

Key conversation takeaways

On the hoodie

“The hoodie represents people from the margins of society. It represents the youth. It represents, you know, people from ethnicities that are economically marginalised. It represents people whose existence is criminalised, you know, they’re seen as… threats or problems.”

“It’s not about the hoodie; it’s about what the hoodie represents… It’s about relationships, not transactions.” 

On Jack and AIME

“You [Jack] are always looking forward, always pushing for change, always seeking solutions. I tend to look back, to understand where we came from, to find wisdom in ancient patterns. But I think that’s why our conversations are so rich. It’s like we’re looking at the same picture from two different angles.”

“Jack’s got this vision, and he’s always had it, of a world where every kid gets a fair shot. And he’s been able to rally people around that vision.”

“AIME has moved from just being about mentorship to actually changing the way we think about relations, about economy, about how we relate to each other in society.”

“AIME is not just another cog in the machine. It’s a force that’s challenging the very mechanics of the system, pushing us to rethink how we inspire and mobilise change.”

“AIME doesn’t just inspire; it transforms. It takes the raw energy of inspiration and channels it into tangible, impactful actions. It’s not about fleeting moments of motivation; it’s about sustained momentum for change.”

“Jack’s got this relentless optimism, and I’ve got this relentless pessimism. But somehow, when we talk, it’s like these two things balance out.”

“AIME… they’re rallying the margins. They’re not trying to move the margins to the centre; they’re moving the centre to the margins.” 

“Jack’s always been about systems change… He’s always been about changing the entire environment.” 

On design and patterns

“There are these patterns that are universal, that are in Indigenous cultures everywhere, and they’re also in complex systems science. They’re in nature. They’re everywhere. And it’s just about learning to see those patterns.”

“Everything is based on patterns… Everything that we think is solid and linear and structural is not” 

“There’s a design line, and anything outside that design line is marginalised.” 

“You’ve got this creative engine that’s driven by the tension between life and death.” 

“You’ve got to verify that knowledge all the time. You’ve got to test it.” 

On Empires

“Empires, they’re not sustainable. They’re extractive. They take more than they give. And they collapse. That’s the pattern. But what you’re talking about with AIME and with the hoodie is systems change. It’s not about creating another empire; it’s about changing the system.”

“When you’re looking at things from an Indigenous perspective, you’re looking at the relationality of everything. You’re not looking at things in isolation.”

On marginalisation

“There’s a lot of power in the margins… The margins are where all the creativity happens. It’s where all the innovation happens. It’s where all the diversity is. It’s where all the resilience is.”

“When you focus solely on the centre, you miss out on the vast landscape of knowledge, culture, and innovation that exists on the fringes. It’s in the margins where we find solutions to some of our most pressing challenges.”

“The design line is where decisions are made about who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s a line that’s been drawn by those in power, and it often excludes those who don’t fit the dominant narrative.”

“When you’re outside the design line, you’re constantly reminded of your ‘otherness’. It’s a space of exclusion, but it’s also a space of resistance and resilience. Those outside the design line have always found ways to challenge it, to redraw it, to make their voices heard.”

“The margins are where you find the richness, the diversity, the real stories. It’s where innovation happens, where change is birthed. The centre might hold power, but the margins hold potential.”

On finances and systems

“We’ve created a system where numbers on a screen have more value than tangible goods, where speculation can drive entire economies into recession. It’s a system that often prioritises profit over people, and where the real-world impact of financial decisions can be devastating for communities.”

“When finance becomes detached from economics, from the real-world activities of production and consumption, we enter dangerous territory. We see speculation, bubbles, and a focus on short-term gains over long-term sustainability.”

“We live in a world where extraction is the norm. Not just of minerals or oil, but of cultural knowledge, of human potential, of the very essence of what makes communities thrive. This extraction leaves scars, both visible and invisible.”

“When you take without giving back, you create an imbalance. This imbalance manifests in various ways – environmental degradation, social inequality, cultural erosion. It’s a cycle of taking that’s hard to break, especially when it’s embedded in the very systems that govern our world.”

“Economics, at its heart, is about relationships. It’s about how we relate to each other, to the land, to our cultures. When we prioritise transactions over relationships, we miss the essence of what it means to be part of a community, part of a system.”

“In Indigenous cultures, we’ve always understood the importance of balance. You take, but you also give back. You benefit from the community, but you also contribute to its well-being. That’s the essence of a relational economy.”

On death

“Death is not just an end; it’s a beginning. It’s a force that drives creation, that pushes us to innovate, to adapt, and to evolve. It’s the very essence of the creative engine.”

“In Indigenous cultures, we understand the cyclical nature of life. Death is a part of this cycle, a moment of transition, a phase of transformation. It’s about returning to the earth, nourishing it, and ensuring the continuity of life.”

Read the full transcript

0:00:00 – Tyson

Right, yes, we are recording so yeah so we’ll talk, have a bit quick yarn about the hoodie economics J&B’s book coming up, and then me and Steph want to talk about logical fallacies a little bit. So my warm up we’ll just to invigilate the yarn about Jack’s book and like, if we see any fallacies in there, we’ll point them out if we can. If we can spot any, yeah, we’re gonna move into that. And the symbols that we’ve been making about these things, about trying to make sense of it. Stephanie’s bored with them, though she thinks it’s just boring Anyway. So, ben, I had a look at the questions you sent me for Jack’s book. So you use these for a written thing, but let’s see if we can yarn through it. I mean, steph, it’ll be easier. If we can yarn, it’ll work better. So, steph, you are saying anything. 

0:01:21 – Benjamin

Yeah, hello, great to see you. I’ve been looking forward to a yarn about this. Not only this, but the overall things that are unfolding with the nation, a lot of things that I’ve been learning from the labs and listening to. The pods kind of come through and not really knowing what it means. So I think to get some of this in relation understanding from you, so I don’t feel like I’m just kind of floating out there kind of guessing, but it feels right. So I think there’s some good energy kind of coming through. 

0:02:02 – Tyson

So Ben Knight Go through them yeah yeah, how do you want to frame this? 

0:02:07 – Ben

Mate, if I can ask questions that’s awesome and you cats go for it then I reckon this first one is about trying to see how these are dissecting parts with the relational economy that Jack talks about with hoodie economics, and then like indigenous knowledge and patterns, that’s in Sand Talk. I guess there’s a lot of like discussion or like energy around Sand Talk ties and then hoodie economics. So just love to hear your thoughts on intersecting stuff between the two. 

0:02:51 – Tyson

Steph, do you want to kick off? 

0:02:53 – Tyson

Someone who’s probably more familiar with my book than I am and Jack’s book than he is or any of us are. Yeah, you, just what do you see in there? You’re from Newmark country. Oh, okay, that’s it. Nice, all right. 

0:03:24 – Steph

Well, let’s see what the western point of view hey, I guess, like my first impressions, like when I read Sand Talk, I was just totally lost back the first time. I probably read it about four times now, been going back into a couple different sections in more depth, trying to understand it more, like the patterns of thinking on their hand, symbols, and when I read hoodie economics it’s almost like this whole evolution of aim right and I’ve been around and in it for like seven years, so it almost feels like I’ve been written into the stories that I’m then kind of reading about and I’m living it like in my life. I was in New York when I kind of read the first draft of it and went through that a couple of times, but the main point that stuck with me was this phrase of like seeing economics like in its true form, like we’re all economists and some of us are just unrecognized and there’s all these different things that are being exchanged everywhere. So I see this into weaving of hoodie economics and Sand Talk is that there’s these more like this space between everything that we’re not recognizing. And one of the areas that I keep getting drawn back to in hoodie economics is these seven elements for this relational economy, and I’m really fascinated with that because I help, like the knowledge flows around aims, shaping up strategy and taking us from like I kind of decided on the weekend when I was thinking about this but I feel like I’m like decoding these metaphors, so taking people from, like, the vision down to the really practical, tangible knowledge and action that we do to get things from imagining to doing. It’s like a bridge and you’re going to bridge that space between them more, seeing that as like the relationships, not actually the nodes and the networks of the things that are there or what it looks like in between. 

And then the dreaming mind, way of thinking, the symbol that you wrote for that. It’s like a circle on one side and a circle on the other and something that meets it in the middle. And to me it looks like a character like we do a lot of work with puppetry as well and kind of looks like this space with these two big eyes on it and taking what we use as professors in ways to communicate these complex things to people, to simplify it but to give them a really good understanding of it. And yeah, I just saw a professor when I saw a dreaming mind. It’s a way to take you into an abstract way of thinking, but then you have to have that look into tangible knowledge, otherwise you just be stuck out in like this tormenting kind of vision, a dream that you’ll never, ever be able to achieve. 

Yeah, that’s probably two areas that I keep getting drawn back to most, and then just these patterns of creation that you spoke about as well. In hoody economics, like, just talk to everyone and listen carefully and then you’ll get to see the true patterns of creation. And I’m more and more seeing like the importance of being able to verify genuine knowledge, like being able to protect I guess, yourself from adopting thinking that’s not healthy for you. 

But how do we do that in this landscape that’s just so overflowing with information and you don’t know, like, what to believe, and it’s just, yeah, I guess, a difficult point. But knowing that there are processes, there is what’s keeping me hopeful, especially when I look at these fallacies, and it’s just this sense of dread, because how do you window these inherited patterns and ways of thinking and believing? This is just it. 

0:07:29 – Tyson

So you’re the same way. You know you’re somebody who’s read these books and you feel that hope in your heart like, oh, we could do this, we could have a human economy, and we can do it just by being human with each other. You know that sounds good and at the same time, even the most basic principles, like Susie has just said. Like you know, just listen to everyone. You know isn’t that lovely, but when you start to look at the discourse the people of bad faith are bringing to the table, you know people who are here to upset every balance and every protocol. 

They’re bringing just yeah. So like us too, looking at these fallacies, they’re bringing no argument, no policy, nothing, just fallacies. And the main fallacy they’re bringing is ad hominem, which is just no argument at all. It’s just attacking the other person. You know, if somebody’s just coming to the table and attacking you but then trying to set it up so that you can’t any kind of argument you make, you know responding to their argument is like seen as a personal attack and an infringement on their freedom of speech. So you know what I mean. Like people, so people like the bully at school. You know I’m starting to think you don’t listen to everybody. 

Yeah that’s listening to everybody is like giving a salesman a foot in the door. It’s worse. It’s like giving a vampire a foot in the door, a serial killer a foot in the door. You’re a bad people. Yeah, Jack and I are both guilty of like having these moments of hope. Yeah, oh no, we just trust humanity. You know, the humanity is great, but there are some things out there that are not good, you know. 

So here’s where you know, here’s where Jack just is so inspiring, Because me, I keep coming back to that all the time. I keep coming back to no, no, no, no. You know it’s this. This looks great on paper, this looks great in our relationships, but as it goes out into the world, there are mechanisms in place that will make us homeless and make us dead if you don’t honor them. 

You know, if we’re not here helping somebody take their capital and add value to it with their labor, you know what I mean. At least twice the value. At least twice the value. If we’re not able to do that with something that’s fair, doing it with knowledge or with our hands, skills or unskills or anything else, then we’re dead. You know we’re part of the massively growing unhoused, you know. But see, then Jack looks at that and he sees opportunity. He sees oh my goodness, so many people unhoused. This is a vast community. Of you know mobile people. Of you know people potentially who could have this relational economy and who are already living elements of a relational economy. You know he sees opportunity there to restart the world. But we start nearly crying and he, just like, keeps going. 

0:11:09 – Tyson

Well, it also fades into that breakthrough moment of emergence. Right Like you either break down or something breaks through as this creation. And is that, like homeless people who don’t have homes, something new form out of necessity from that? 

0:11:27 – Tyson

See, this is where, like so Jack and I are constantly in this, like this push-pull of him just being relentlessly loosely positive and me being relentlessly negative. So, you know, every time when he starts talking about emergence, I start going well, look at that carefully, is that emergence or is that something that you’re just noticing for the first time and it’s been there all along? You know, is it emergence or is it revelation? And he just goes both are great, both are great, both are useful, both are awesome. Yeah, that’s what this hoodie economics it’s, just like you know. It invites you to be cynical and horrendously, you know, skeptical and I don’t know, just have a puppet laugh at you while you’re doing it. 

0:12:25 – Benjamin

Hey Tyce, do you reckon there’s something specific from a personal experience you and Jack both have had different like connections with that have like, as you say, like changed the way in which you react to these transactional, relational things? Are there different things that you think have shaped your different paths to this point? 

0:12:46 – Tyson

Yeah, yeah. So like some moment or well long period of you know changemaking that’s that’s switched us around, that we could possibly generalize to other people and go here’s your training video to become a relational economist, I think I don’t know. I think it’s different things. For me it’s been a lifetime of abuse and responding to that with a, you know, a rejection of relation and just going, no, I can, just, I will beat all your bastards, you know so, having an aggressive response to you know decades of trauma and then you know, finding that, not working in the world and finding myself longing for, longing for that relation, that good relation, right relation, and then rediscovering that. And I guess for Jack it’s about being born into that and about meeting everyone he meets. He wants to bring them into it, so that’s how he’s constantly trying to bring me in there more and more. 

I don’t know. We’re both in really good and vibrant, intense, productive relation with vast networks of people, but they’re both very different ways of being in that relation. You know, there’s this there’s one that’s open, soft, loving, caring, and then there’s like another, quite fierce, fierce way of being in relation that I can’t quite drop, both effective His like brings in more people. But then mine reaches the people who usually wouldn’t be reached the other way, people who you know who would otherwise be like. No, I’m going to go over here and join this in cell community and I’m going to bone up on my bro science and have some supplements and work on my pecs. I can reach those ones just by shouting and swearing at them. Yeah. 

0:15:00 – Benjamin

I spend most of my time, I guess, with people expressing homelessness, right, like talking to them about what’s going on, and one thing that always sticks in my mind is the inability for people to listen when someone has something to say. And then I guess, like another perspective, like in third world countries, for example, where you kind of you kind of miss the point or don’t get a chance to get there what’s like? What do you think in terms of, like this whole relational economy, how does that that is something relational give people space to have a voice and be included, like? How does, how does? 

0:15:39 – Tyson

Someone who misses out. I think a relational economy is basically just what they, the idea that they already sell us that free market, capitalist economy is. It’s like they sell us this idea of how it’s a village and, you know, and everybody’s in kind of friendly competition with each other and, and you know, and the marketplace decides. You know, the group, it’s the most democratic thing ever because everybody’s got starting out on an equal playing field, everybody’s, like, you know, working more or less, or harder or softer, and having more luck or less luck, and but in the end it all kind of evens out and you know, and everyone becomes prosperous and it’s a rising tide that lifts all boats. And you know, then people who have more capital than their role in the society is to, you know, actually provide the infrastructure for people to come in and work and add value to this thing and grow it up together. That’s what they sell to us as free market capitalism. But you, you listen to that and you think, hang on a minute, that’s, that’s socialism, you know. So I don’t know. 

Here’s the thing I just think you’ve got to separate out. There’s a difference between finance and economics, and people get those things mixed up. Finance is something that predates on an economy and you know it eventually replaces it. You know to the point that you know, I don’t know, it’s like a demon possessed person or something in that person’s no longer calling the shots anymore. You know, at the moment, finance, global finance, you know which is not real money, but it doesn’t represent real value. It’s just people playing with magic and illusions into infinity at the expense of you know, half the world’s population or more. Yeah, that’s just rich people driving the planet like this doll. And what do you reckon stuff? I just feel it that way. 

0:17:52 – Tyson

Drive it like it’s stolen or is it stolen? 

0:17:55 – Tyson

Hey, hey. I can’t teach you at Australia, drive it like you stole it hey. 

0:18:02 – Tyson

That whole thing of like land and capital like being used for capital, that’s a pretty big fallacy. Like it, you can’t own it, yeah. So I guess it’s all these little illusions that people put in and just I just get a false equivalency fallacy, I think. I think I’ll see. 

0:18:23 – Tyson

I have to think that through. 

0:18:27 – Tyson

Yeah, I guess where I get, like I was all done all this is how many illusions are stacked up in front of this for us to have our daily scripts to go in and go work and do the school thing and do this and keep doing our daily thing for the majority of our lives, for all of that to be maintained and, like you, can’t get the chance to see through it because you don’t want to, like you said, die and end up homeless and not being able to have food or anything, and yeah, it’s just fear driven. 

So what is fear kind of? Maybe fit into the whole location as well, and maybe that’s a way to suppress our fear is to not look into it. Like I know, my whole journey going into this hasn’t been easy in my brains and melted like half a dozen times and building it back together. So, yeah, I get the reluctance of people who just want to get on with the everyday, normal things that they perceive as their reality. Yeah, I think it’s just, and I don’t know if I’m ready to go into the whole bright, dark side of however the world is run in these upper levels of society either, but I just get the sense that it’s. It’s very entangled and perhaps intentionally designed as well in some aspects, which is quite scary, knowing the reality that we all face and everyone’s kind of screaming to stop, for no one’s listening. 

0:20:08 – Tyson

I guess he been in a nutshell at some. You know, this vision of a relational economy is that it’s not a zero sum game. It’s not the lens or the field in which it sits is not a zero sum lens or a zero sum field. So in either what it is or what you perceive it to be, so each, any transaction you look at, there might be a give and take transaction and that’ll look like there’s a winner and loser in that. But in a relational economy, no, no, it’s just in that particular exchange the energy’s gone. You know this way, that way, in a favor there. But then there’s another relation that comes back around. That’ll be, you know that’ll be when you take and give after. So this a lot. So you look at. 

You know, in the lab with Jack we talk about natural relations and interdependencies, you know like, you know parasitic relations or predatory relations, etc. So you know, we identify all these different kinds of interactions like give and take, take and give, take and take and give and give. You know, so some interactions both benefit and then other interactions both lose out a little bit and vice versa. Sometimes there’s one winning out, other winning out. But what happens systemically is, you know, is that it all comes back around. So you might be giving while the other’s taking in one relationship, but you’ve got another relationship over here with someone else where you’re taking and they’re giving, and then you pay that forward with a give, give. You know that you’re doing with other people, and then you that comes back to you in the take, take, you know, as that’s needed. That actually benefits the other person as well and you both cash in from the entire system. 

So this only works if there’s a high velocity of a dollar in an economic system. So it’s a lot of people you know. You know within a lot of relationships where the dollar’s changing hands. If someone, if one millionaire, owns the entire supply chain, then they know all about the velocity of the dollar because they like to make it clunky and complicated, you know, and they like to waste money and energy in their supply chain because they own every part of it, from the shipping to the packaging to everything else. So the further that apple has to travel and the more money has to be spent, more fuel has to be burnt to finally get it to your apple pie, the better, because that’s that same millionaire spending the same dollar 20 times within his own system. And that’s how. That’s how he makes exponential growth happen for his ridiculous little, you know, cluster of zeros on a screen. But that’s, that’s the way. 

That’s that’s actually healthy as long as you keep it in an open system with a community. So we had a whole community running a, an actual free market economy. That would probably be a relational economy If it was, if we were running it the way it says. They say it right, so that’s, that’s the only way to do is to lean into that. 

0:23:39 – Benjamin

Yeah, I’m, I’m going to steal a bit of personal time here with a question. I hope that’s okay. I’m about. I’m about to go to Vietnam and we have lots of discussions at home at the moment with the kids around how to be in relation properly when you go to different countries, especially when it’s a new experience for them, not having seen a different place, a different culture and a different way of thinking. I was just, I was just wondering how this understanding of relations, culture and like, I suppose, like going somewhere else that is alien to you, and that approach of understanding, how do you be in relation with people and what’s the type of economy I guess that you participate in as part of that Like, of course, there is like tourism as a concept, but what is? What is that feeling of like, I suppose, spending time in another place and participating in that economy? In relation to, to, to, I suppose, moving from where you are to where, to a new place? Yeah, like, not talking about borders, talking about like people. 

0:24:46 – Tyson

You personally is really hard. So I mean, how do you establish yourself as a human being in a place where the imperial relation is so cemented in, no matter how sovereign or autonomous a village or a nation becomes? You know in Asia, like that. You know if you’re in Vietnam or Thailand or any of these places, that is an extractive relation that you’re in the

Tyson Yunkaporta:

Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. With a profound ability to bridge ancient Indigenous knowledge systems with contemporary thought, Tyson’s work challenges and reshapes the frameworks of many academic and cultural institutions. His groundbreaking book, “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World”, has been hailed as a template for a new kind of thinking, one that moves away from current systems and towards a more holistic, sustainable, and connected worldview. Tyson’s insights and perspectives are not just teachings from the old world, but profound insights into what our future can be.

Jack Manning Bancroft:

Jack Manning Bancroft is a force of nature in the realm of social entrepreneurship. As the founder and CEO of AIME, he has revolutionized the way mentorship can bridge the educational gap for Indigenous students. Starting AIME as a 19-year-old university student, Jack’s vision has since transformed the lives of thousands, creating pathways from high school to further education and employment. His latest work, “Hoodie Economics”, is not just a book but a movement, challenging the very foundations of our economic systems and advocating for a shift from transactional to relational economies. Drawing from Indigenous wisdom and contemporary insights, Jack’s writings and initiatives consistently push boundaries, inviting us all to reimagine our world. A visionary, a mentor, and a relentless advocate for change, Jack’s journey and work inspire many to believe in the power of relationships and imagination.

Annual Report 2022

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_m5TUSDeG8dGATtKVBMoG7dKoq_F2CS0/view

What is an Imagination Classroom?

June 15 2023

This is when you can trust … and this is when your imaginings can be realised, because you’re supported by everything – by Nature, by yourself, by the people you work with, by Country, by the whole collective.

Rhian Miller, AIME

Today, we visited St John’s Anglican College at Forest Lake. Yolande kicked off the workshop by doing an Acknowledgement of Country that involved movement and visualisation. This got the students thinking about connection points, the different elements of earth, air and water, how we move, why we move and the importance of story in the transmission of knowledge and in bringing us together.

Led by the students ideas, we explored what an imagination classroom could be. Living off Country, the students were drawn to thoughts about the love they have for their homes, the Land and their families. They talked about learning within nature and from nature, about the importance of being guided by Elders and family and about connecting with and caring for the land. They imagined classrooms connected to their kinship lines – and through this kinship (where people are in relation with all beings – all people, plants and beings, as in line with First Nations systems thinking), they would be brought into relation with Country and all its elements … being and learning together, sharing energy and being freed by the safety and trust that comes with the security of knowing you belong.

This is when you can trust … and this is when your imaginings can be realised, because you’re supported by everything – by Nature, by yourself, by the people you work with, by Country, by the whole collective.

Together, we developed their thoughts into poetry.

On Country
The floor is sand
The water is flowing
We can feel the breeze
And how it stokes the fire

The smells of
fresh air,
bush
and smoke

Good for the spirit

We connect,
We respect
We grow
We learn . . .
and
Together
We imagine

One of the students had a leg injury, so she worked with Will, recording the poem as a spoken word piece which was then woven through a music score. The music selected to accompany the poem was a piece written for Bangarra Dance Theatre’s production ID (2011), called Free and was composed by the late David Page. (Please note that this music has been used for educational purposes only)

While this was happening, Yolande worked with the other four students to create movement motifs, generating choreography to accompany the poem. Expressing the essence of the poetry through music and dance, they physically depicted the flow of the story. Moments in the dance all beautifully aligned with the audio track.

And when we finished creating the dance, the students were so excited and proud of what they had built, they said they wanted to perform this dance for their NAIDOC week assembly next term, which happens in the first week as school resumes.

It was quite incredible, really, what we all brought into being, from just an hour and 20 minutes of exploring, of imagining and creating!

Yolande Brown, AIME

Yolande Brown, Rhian Miller and Will Wensley from AIME, at St Johns Anglican College

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IMAGI-NATION {LABS} – Nature & Custodial Economics

Additional reading and listening

Parul Punjabi Jagdish, CEO fo AIME Inc + host of IMAGI-NATION {TV} 

The question I always ponder is like, how close am I to nature? How connected am I or how disconnected am I? And I’ve had the fortune of being in different countries. I was born in India, Indigenous to that land, the [check with PJ] people. I have a very strong relational web that pulls me back there. Italy has been home to me in some weird wonderful ways and now I’m beginning to find some beginnings of home here in New York and I’m like “this is the most I’ve been removed from nature. This is the farthest I’ve been”. And then when I look deeply and I question deeply, is that true? Is that really true? And the answer is “no”. The answer is like, there is nature within it. There is something inherently wild inside that cannot be tamed by the systems, by the landscape, by whatever. There is this connection that goes way, way back that I cannot intellectually understand even if I try to I cannot gather like how far, how deep this runs in my blood, in my veins, in my DNA and sometimes I just look up at the sky and I think, “wow, people would have looked up at the same sky thousands of years ago… people would have looked at the same stars, swam in the same waters, so there is this deep sense of continuity that nature provides to me”.

We are quite awake to the fact that humanity is creating quite devastating impacts to the climate. Is that our true role? Is that who we are? I think that’s open to debate, open to question. If we ponder over deeply, we’ll come to realise that’s not the role of humanity. We are an integral part of this ecosystem that we find ourselves in and, in fact, we are it. We are nature.

Where I see the greatest hope is the young people we work with and these young people have the answers already and our job [at] AIME is to unlock these young people.

I don’t want false hope, I don’t want hope without action ‘cause that can be misleading and that’s not what is required in this hour. We need to look at the biggest possible lens, we need to zoom out to the biggest possible systemic view.

When I look up and think of space… I think what space does in some way is dissolve national boundaries because if you are to look out from outside of planet earth and look back in you’d be like, “it’s one earth, it’s one planet, we have just created this fictional lines and called them nation states” and our job with this new nation, IMAGI-NATION is to rip apart some of those national borders that are completely mind-created and allow a nation state that connects without borders that brings people together. 

Nature is so inherently, intrinsically valuable that if it takes us a dollar sign to in the end say “hey, there’s value here”, that’s a sign that we’re pretty far down a rabbit hole we shouldn’t have been in the first place. How do we rewire that rabbit hole and what might this wisdom that we unearth from a million presidents feed into what we’re thinking of in terms of a custodial or nature based economy?

The story arc of the presidents that we just uncovered, how we built this new nation to unite rather than divide, we give the stage for young people around the world from outside of the margins… [and elevate] their voices into extraterrestrial space, giving them the space the lead and then having an installation. STEM is one thing that moves people but, there’s also art and there’s steam. When you add art it becomes hot and messy and fun and then you move people through energy, through action, through [story].

If we use currency as a portal – like, a dead whale is worth more economically than a live whale under current market conditions – and we use that reframed lens of saying “hey, a live whale is more valuable than a dead whale”, and if we do it through big story, through ceremony, hopefully there’s a way of moving people beyond the dollar, beyond the transaction and saying “hey, you’re part of this interconnect web of life”. What happens to the whale effets me.

If we don’t shift the economic frameworks of how we value things in the world, we’re gonna be stuck. We might get a bit of hope, a bit of false hope even, but the system remains the same and we haven’t turned humanity back to its custodial role in nature. 

Everything we’ve ever created as human beings is from nature. All of the global economies, everything is from nature and that’s who we are. How do we truly value something that’s invaluable?

We commit to bringing more unlikely connections by a factor of five for some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. We don’t have all the answers but, we’re really good at finding the people doing amazing work and drawing the lines between the dots and collectively reimagining the systems.

Stephani Beck, Vice Chancellor of IMAGI-NATION {University}

I work with Jack and the design team on the design of the NATION and looking at these processes of emergence and how we connect with other people.

I’ve been thinking about is Hope and how you pass that on as an energy and I feel like it’s in these action-focussed stories. If we’re going out and connecting with people with the intention to build relationships with them, it’s an action-focussed story that we go out with and then we make meaning and sense together in place-based locations. So, someone from Australia and someone from India coming together to merge this intelligence and then you end up with another perspective which is something that’ difference, like a different type of thinking which, according to Albert Einstein, can help us solve the problems that we have today.

Having that core of the network be young people [is really important] because they are a piece of the puzzle. They help us build our perspectives as well. I learned so much and most of what I’ve learned is how much I don’t know. These are the songlines and the pathways that actually weave the world together and we have a million young people coming in and giving them a way to action their visions, it could be a whole new game.

(in response to guardians of earth) Through re-wild your school, young people get to choose a champion animal and then understand that animals’ lifecycle. They go through a process of accessing what that animal needs to survive, what it prey’s upon, what prey’s on it and it’s place in the ecosystem and once a studen learns that, they’re able to apply that knowledge to any species. Then when they engage with [Guardians of Earth] and they’re playing , they can bring that knowledge about “ok, I’ve identified what’s around me and I’ve already got that system through re-wild your school to understand what I need to do to address that problem locally. If you imagine that being repeated thousands or millions of times, the power of that in terms of transformational change particularly in urban areas is really powerful.

(in response to Johny) One of the partnerships we’ve also developed is with the University of Adelaide and what we’re doing there is measuring nature based education and how that impacts positively on young people and outcomes and it would be really interesting to roll that up into a broader sense of how we’re measuring nature in the sense of nature as a healer and a process through which we can have better physical, mental health outcomes that are positive for everyone.

Everything is economics and the little that I know about it is that it’s just what we value. Having a global community of people shifting that they value is the tension point. There’s so many different ways and perspectives that people are looking at that so if we’re not sharing knowledge in a way that allows us to make meaning, reevaluate our values which then shapes our behaviour, we’re just living by the same script.

How do we build tools that are coded with a set of behaviour that is imagination as the door in to remove these reductive mindsets that we often look at each other through without even knowing. Not even eachout, a tree or a bird or any of those things.

James Forbes, CEO of Jane Goodall Institute (AU)

(on the interview) Everytime I watch it, it brings up quite a lot of emotion in me. I think the conversation that Jane and Jack are having is a really powerful and important one.  it brought up this notion of nature as a great healer  it brought up this notion of nature as a great healer. The fact that in the face of something as awful and as powerful as nature and the way in which we function or don’t function alongside it, that our role in nature  has become so disconnected that we’ve lost that connection with it’s healing power and we’re seeing an epidemic, a global epidemic, around mental health, narcissism, sociopathy, whatever kinds of mental disorders that are going on and nature is a great antidote to these issues that we’re facing psychologically and the way in which we’re building structures and institutions and societies or we’re deconstruction them by allowing these processes to be flourish and that’s not helping anyone. I think reconnection to nature is not just essential just for the sake of nature itself and the protection of biodiversity and respecting all living things, it’s also essential for our futures because think if we don’t have nature as a central part of the way in which we live and exist everyday then we are running ourselves our of business. We’re facing, as human civilisations have faced over thousands of years, we’re facing, and making are saying, we’re living in the middle of now, the sixth grade extinction and this is something that should concern everyone.

As Jane pointed out, one of her most powerful reasons for hope and the work that we’re doing with AIME is this nature studio. Our role in that – the roots and shoots program – which Jane started in Tanzania in 1991 and it’s been going for 30 years and has a presence in 60 countries. It’s guiding principle is all about giving agency to young people, putting the power to them to make the decision on what they see as the problem and solving it and working on the solution. By doing that, that’s engendering that hope into action… Hope on it’s own in somewhere pointless, Hope with action is what’s required.

What excited me about the work we’re doing together… is this idea that Roots and Shoots is a global movement that can funnel young people by giving them access to information about nature at a local level in classrooms across Australia and through a program that we’ve developed called Re-Wild your school. We want to give access to every young Australian and eventually spread that out around the world… That kids at school are learning about nature, learning about biodiversity, learning about their local connections and the values of those at a local level and that that can spread [out] into a broader community process and to business and into every aspect of our lives which is what we need to do if we’re gonna to address the biodiversity and climate crisis we face. These things can’t be handled just alone, they need to be thought of as every sector involved. And, every young person that we bring into Re-wild your school and graduate through to becoming a part of 1M presidents, that these young people are going to go out into the world and fulfil whatever vocational career that they want to fulfil but, wherever they go they take with them an environmental practise and a sustainability mindset. All of us rowing together is how we find the ultimate solution.

In 10 years time, I’d love to see every young person on the planet have as part of their education at school is integrated with nature. It’s not just about learning about maths and languages and history and so on but, that nature-based education is an essential and respected part of the curriculum and not some kind of add on… but, an essential part. I think the work that we’re doing here is driving toward that future state and in the wake of AIME’s death strategy that there’s a legacy of every young person in Australia and around the world who are learning about anture from the get go and then they’re passing that on to their children and their children’s children and it becomes inherently an aural tradition not just about what you learn from a text book or in written form.

Hannah Ashford, managing director of the Karman Project

The Karman Project is an independent and non-profit organisation that connects space leaders from all over the world. We work with… all of the different individuals that we need to empower to solve our collective issues as humanity / a group of stakeholders and a decision making level from both public and private sector in the space sector… who are having a quite significant impact on the future of humanity.

When you think about space you often think about space exploration and lunar missions and everything that’s happening outside of our planet… but, the vast majority of the space industry is looking at satellite technologies to map and monitor everything that’s happening on our planet, here on planet earth in real time and give us critical data to map everything from wildfires to deforestation to ensure that we can improve supply chain efficiency, coordinate disaster management, understand biodiversity and how that’s shifting and shaping in different critical regions around the world.

And it comes back to what Jack and Jane were speaking about which is firstly you need hope to inspire action but, what we also do is we work with leaders to ensure that they have knowledge to inspire action.

Another unique aspect of space is that it’s a really exciting and beautiful lever for inspiration. Every human on earth through all of the millenia’s of our existence have had these moments of looking up to the stars and dreaming and thinking about your place in the universe and I think that it’s also a very humbling experience. 

For children particularly, what we’ve also found is that space can be a great introduction to futures and careers in STEM and everything else that you need in space. Space doesn’t just need people coming from science and engineering. It needs lawyers, it needs policy people, it needs great communicators, it needs storytellers, it needs artists, we need everyone onboard to care about this collective future, we need environmentalists.

What we can do with space is we can inspire an entire next generation to really think about their place on the earth. Not just here on planet earth but the entire universe.

What we’re doing with AIME is connect with a great non-profit called Club for the future which is a non-profit branch of Blue Origin. There are a  lot of payloads that go up into space fairly often and what thye do is ensure that a certain percentage of payload is donated to inspire the next generation. What we’re doing with AIME is collecting all of the President speeches from the kids around the world and taking them on a little journey around space, delivering them back here to earth and then we’re going to make a big mural at [AIME’s IMAGI-NATION {Factory}]. Whatever the youth want to dream about in terms of their future as Presidents of this new NATION that can go on a journey, it can keep them engaged because they know that what they’re creating and what we’re envisioning is not just stopping here on this paper, it’s going out of this planet on a journey that is so unfathomable, even to adults. We’re also looking at curriculum with AIME and how we can develop professor space which we’re working on and looking at really bringing critical education around the future of science, engineering and all of these topics.

We’re talking about shifting huge global mindsets and… connecting humans with the digital and understanding the power that digital understanding and mapping can have for all of the critical, acute problems that we’re facing as humanity.

We’re taking [a group of space] leaders out of our boardings, into Maldives in direct proximity of all of these issues which we speak about all the time, understanding how to utilise satellite technologies and space technologies to map an monitor and better understand everything from the mangrove ecosystems to the illegal fishing which is impacting the region. This knowledge mean nothing without tapping into that local, Indigenous knowledge that exists there. You need to paint this global picture of what’s happening there and digital technologies and digital understanding can only take you so far.

The idea that these initiatives won’t be needed anymore because we would have made so much impact together with all of our networks and all of these relations… that is so beautiful and so powerful and so potent and I deeply hope that we’re in that position. We need to become more nature centric and I think that we will – I really believe in this next generation.

I hope that in 10 years time [Indigenous Knowledge] is not a conversation about “whether” or “if”, that it’s part of everyone’s life and it should be leading the way.

Johny Mair, Co-Founders of Ethic

There’s some really good thinking. The first thing is, “what can you actually measure?”. At the moment, especially in the financial space, it’s reductive of how they value nature. It’s very much from an extractive point of view. As we’re seeing different models come through we’re seeing people starting to think about ecological system services and then as we start to progress through the different models of thinking about the species, species richness, the interconnection between those, some of the work we’ve been doing with the Labs has brought out this custodial indicator species and it’s a very interesting journey of getting people to reconnect and rethink how we are connected with nature and a very exciting project we’re working on all together.

In terms of sequencing, so much of it is the way that we design. We have been designing form a user-centric experience and we have been trying to get outcomes that sometime aren’t very good for humans – taking people’s attention and designing things for that – we’re moved over to a more human-centric approach and it’s forgetting everything else and designing things for the comfort of humans and we’ve seen how that can also have a very negative effect where we’re not incorporating the externalities. We’re moving over into a life-centric design trying to incorporate all different species and life into the design of a product and going one step further is the Indigenous systems knowledge design which is what we want to get to.

After the 10 years, not only enjoying the journey through the path with AIME because it’s already been such a blessing for myself but, how do we create and put Indigenous Knowledge Systems Labs in every organistion, in every University so that design can be utilised by everyone to help us create the future that we wanna believe we can live in.

Mallika, Guardians of Earth

We’d like to develop technology that brings people closer to nature because at the end of the day we’re all creatures that want to have fun, want to enjoy with our close friends and we also want to feel closer to nature. The way we do it is as a game. We’re all quite immersed in our screens and if we look around everyone is looking at our screens every time of the day. Why don’t we use that medium to get people close to nature?

We know maybe 30% of the lifeforms alive on our planet and of that, a majority is from the developed work and of that about roughly 80% is from within 2.5km of a paved road. In other words, the world is a black hole for us. We don’t really know what’s living and where it is living. We’re making that all of these beautiful people are collecting data on the biodiversity that is present around them so that we can go and give that to scientists and researchers to say “ok, now you have the information now start making use of it and figuring our ways of what’s most important and where”.

It’s important that humans are understanding biodiversity and humans are aware of biodiversity… once humans become familiar with diodiveristy there is no way they’re going to go back and say “no, I don’t like nature, I’m just going to stick to my concrete spaces and my technology”. It is a natural progression and once you become aware of it, you’re intrigued and more curious and eventually you fall in love and then there is no going back from there.

10 years from now I’m hoping we don’t have to do this, I’m hoping none of us exist as these entities and we’re just human beings enjoying living on this planet in harmony. I think we’re working collectively towards that future.

Professor Song

I’ve been lucky enough to work with PJ to help shape and deliver this as a project and I can’t wait to get in, do some painting and spin all the ideas around in my brain and pour them out, put them on the canvas and see what everyone thinks.

What is an Imagination Classroom?

MAY 9 2023

Today, we visited Nimbin Central School. We were welcomed by Elder Uncle Rory, who we spent an hour or so with, yarning, laughing, listening and learning. He helped us feel grounded and connected to this special place, before we headed off to meet the students.

Waangenga started us off with a fun movement workshop … helping us connect to each other, our environment and ourselves … while tuning in to the question

What is an Imagination Classroom?

You’re only limited by your mind

Alejandro Velazquez

The students ideas flowed and we explored all the different ideas that sprung to mind … they unravelled a whole lot of ideas they feel are really important to learning. These happen to be things that aren’t strongly focused on in a more typical classroom.

• In an Imagination Classroom, education is connective – the classroom fosters connections between the students and each other, their teacher, nature and their limitless imagination.
  
• The layout of a classroom should support these connections and facilitate the building of relations between peers and also with the teacher so that students feel that they are not silos being spoken at but that they are learning together. The types of furniture and the layout of this can help the space be comfy and feel nurturing.
  
• With an Imagination Classroom, outside time is important – building in time to learn outside, from nature, the greatest teacher we have and have time to oxygenate the mind and body with fresh air, and also exercise our long-distance vision and observational skills in natural lighting.
  
• An Imagination Classroom prioritises regular walking breaks. Learning tasks encourage students to move through the room as they explore, discover and learn. Also, ways of learning don’t always fall back on having to look at a white board. Learning through story and presentation are valued. For instance incursions with theatre groups might be scheduled allowing knowledge to be shared through story.
  
• An Imagination Classroom is mindful of emotional well-being and is structured to promote this.

We want more one on one conversations – especially with our teacher

Student

And when the Nimbin Central Students minds were flowing with Imagination they said:

We want to learn about things that are important to us and our world at this time … and we want more one on one conversations – especially with our teacher … we would love our teacher to be interested in listening to us and to try to understand the world from our perspective.

We want to be able to connect with animals (so many ways this can be explored and so many things to be learnt!)

We’d love to learn how to build a rollercoaster (think about all the engineering and physics that could be explored here, plus the health science looking at the importance of finding healthy ways to let out adrenaline!)

We’d love a place to dream up the seemingly impossible, like a a pool filled with M&Ms and an incredible, magical, Elon Musk wallet that you can open up and money just pours out of it (think about all the creative writing that could be developed!)

And to bring today’s session to a close, we gathered around the towering, protective grandmother tree (pictured above) and thought about all we’d explored, discovered and shared … the students wondered about the next steps towards breathing life into this space…

We look towards the school’s moto:
Success Through Diversity

These words further open our minds to consider how an Imagination Classroom will celebrate and foster a rich ecology of diverse thinkers, and how these ideas can go on to contribute towards the betterment of our collective future.

We hope to return to Nimbin Central School in the near future and see how this Imagination Classroom has been brought to life!
…


And to sum up our experience:

Today we created something amazing. I feel so good with what came out of the Kids, the teachers, and Blake and Waangenga (AIME).

Alejandro Velazquez

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