THE BIG PICTURE:

‍Have you looked up at the sky and pondered the wisdom of the stars and constellations, and their capacity to inspire and unlock our imagination? In Indigenous knowledge systems, it’s not the shining stars and the lines we make across them that form our constellations, but rather the dark spaces in between the stars and the patterns they form. Perspective unlocks our freedom. Here’s a little 1-min hand trick that shifts the value of our knowledge systems to find the right pattern with nature
‍‍

What do you see?

If you see the pattern, and if you are one of the network leaders invited to become a part of the IMAGI-NATION Custodians constellation, the lessons are clear - we as individuals or even our individual groups / organisations are not special and will not figure out the solutions in isolation. It’s in the space between us - in our relations - that the necessary pattern will emerge. So, this is your invitation to be one of the custodians of that space between - of our digital nation.

IMAGI-NATION brings systems-change makers all working on centring Nature in our mainstream systems - including leaders in Indigenous knowledge systems, education, governments, corporations, youth and everyday citizens - across continents through unlikely connections, creating opportunities to deepen exchange between those inside and outside of the margins, thus modelling a healthy relational network and economy which reawakens humanity as a custodial species. You as a Custodian of IMAGI-NATION will be one of the network leaders that shepherds our NATION into the future where we all thrive, humans and more-than-humans.

‍THE JOURNEY OF CUSTODIANS - OVER 12 MONTHS / TILL MARCH 2033 / AND LIFELONG: 

‍Welcome to the Custodian VISA - your pathway into a governance and stewardship role of this digital nation we have built for humanity,  fusing ancient and modern wisdom, based on Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the best of the internet, to bring us into right relationships - within ourselves, with each other and with the natural world, of which we’re a key part. We are custodians of Nature.

Your commitment as a Custodian has three phases:

1. An active 12 month journey of stewardship where you commit to link the stars together between Earth and IMAGI-NATION, meaning you actively engage with other Custodians and the knowledge shared across the network, help recruit the right people within IMAGI-NATION and ensure that the work translates into real world-impact globally. 

2. Beyond the focused 12 month period, the Custodian makes the commitment to take responsibility for the health IMAGI-NATION until it's intentional death set for March 2033 to set limits for health of the network and prevent from the current limitless growth mindset, which is a key part of the problem in the world today.

3. Beyond March 2033, you commit to carrying on the Custodial role for human kind after IMAGI-NATION dies. A lifelong commitment to relations this is! Because once you have a ceremony into relations, there is no ceremony out.

‍ROLES - RECIPROCITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF CUSTODIANS:

‍Through your active 12 month journey within IMAGI-NATION, you will receive the following opportunities and commit to the following responsibilities:

Join a monthly ‘Unlikely Connections’ Zoom where you’ll support a small pod of “unlikely connections” x 5 group, connecting with 4 other people across ages, races, genders, time zones etc. that you’ve never met before and yet all of who are identified by us as systems-change leaders. Together all 5 of you will form a micro nucleus of change and there will be many such groups globally joining us.

Engage in the monthly knowledge tools & resources mailout from the world of IMAGI-NATION and plug them into your world, and the world at large, where relevant.

Lead the change for the specific area within IMAGI-NATION that you are stewarding as a Custodian. That said, if there are other areas you can be helpful, feel free to offer and jump in and be a custodian across the full stack of IMAGI-NATION for we’re a troupe that supports each other and moves together.

Speaking of troupe energy, you will be invited to attend Australia Big Story end of October/Start of November and you’ll try and join us when you can (Ideally, you can cover your own transport to get there & contribute to accommodation, but we don’t want that to be a barrier and if you can’t afford this, we can look to get your travel sponsored together).

Attend Global Big Story - jumping across 5 cities outside of Australia which we jointly identify and light up as places / hubs of IMAGI-NATION (Ideally, you can cover your own transport to get there & contribute to accommodation, but we don’t want that to be a barrier and if you can’t afford this, we can look to get your travel sponsored together).

‍LIMITS AND LOGIC BEHIND OUR CUSTODIANS MODEL:

‍We have limited the maximum number of custodians to 150 p.a,. based on the Dunbar number, which also maps on to our Indigenous kinship system and the ideal size for a healthy community. From 2024-2033, over the lifetime of IMAGI-NATION, we will have 9 sets of 150 Custodians, each set renewing over 12 months to maintain vibrancy and fresh energy moving through the system. Totally, there will be 1350 Custodians (including AIME staff and Boards)  to help recruit, steward and support the 5000 action visa holders within IMAGI-NATION, broadly following Dunbar numbers again,  representing the world of education, employment, governance, wisdom and civil society, consisting of a 1000 each of:
‍
a) schools
b) young people from historically marginalised backgrounds
c) Indigenous knowledge holders
d) corporations & governments
e) everyday citizens
‍

We will grow the system only to the limit that it can maintain its health, and thereafter we will move towards our intentional death, and in the process, like the mother tree in a forest falling, enrich the soil and the ecosystem around us which we would have curated and activated over our lifetime. The outsized impact of our 1350 custodians collectively stewarding the 5000 action visa holders will impact at least 25 Million people conservatively, based on Metcalf’s law, which states that the “value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system”. The actual impact is estimated to be substantially higher than the 25 million people because unlike traditional networks, IMAGI-NATION is founded upon the concept of ‘Unlikely Connections’ because we have reversed the algorithms of our current extractive, distracting social networks that tend to put us even deeper in our silos. So, within IMAGI-NATION, you will get connected to people and ideas you will never likely encounter otherwise. And for people within IMAGI-NATION, no one gets limitless connections - every human joins a small group of ‘Unlikely Connections x 5’ (UNCx5), and each of the 5 are designed to be as unlikely as possible, connecting you across culture, race, age, gender, nationality, time zones, experience etc. These 5 are fractalised across the entire ecosystem of IMAGI-NATION, meaning each pod can self-govern, and together, we form clusters of governance that are interconnected, interdependent and autonomous. Sounds like theory? Well, it’s happening already and we have tested this deeply. You will get a real-life example of a form of this in action when you join us for our monthly ‘unlikely connections’ call.

If you want to dig deeper on the UNCx5 model, listen to this podcast featuring Robin Dunbar, Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta and AIME founder Jack Manning Bancroft. We are also in the process of developing a paper on this in partnership with the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Labs that maps the true impact of our Indigenous ways of kinship mapping, fused with Dunbar numbers, and Metcalf's Law.

But the limits to growth are not only on the size of the network but on the lifecycle of the network as a whole. To counter the current limitless growth mindset & model a healthy regenerative sustainable system, AIME & IMAGI-NATION have an intentional death date set for March 2033, after which we cease operations & return our IP back to Nature and the ecosystem around us. This isn't an ending, but a powerful act of regeneration and knowledge transfer for overall systems health. Economically, the objective of IMAGI-NATION will be to unlock the case studies and breakthrough pathways to the $700B+ deficit in the nature market through the below actions, forging the pathway towards properly valuing the $125 Trillion of ecosystem services Nature provides us, and the priceless value we derive from our healthy relationship with Nature that sustains and nurtures all life on our planet.You ready to do this with us?

Let’s return to our custodial ways together!