Nova Helvetia

With the Corona crisis, we are facing an unprecedented disruption. Systems we relied on before are on the brink of collapse and immediate actions were needed on multiple levels. At the same time, beyond the much needed addressing of the symptoms, we urgently have to dedicate time and resources in order to understand the root causes more fully, become collectively more aware of their inter-relatedness and reflect together in order to create wise(r) actions. This is why, as a response to the crisis, by the end of April 2020 collaboratio helvetica has launched “Nova Helvetia” .

Nova Helvetia is a proposal to address the urgent need to reinvent the human-made systems that are causing and aggravating the current crisis, or being outed as inadequate by it. Based on the GAIA Journey initiated by the Presencing Institute, we have launched this 3 month process of engaging motivated individuals in sense-making, understanding the root causes and sharing reflections and possible solutions that address them. In the process thematic groups have been formed that work together, focussing on a specific topic or question to explore.

We have accompanied these thematic working groups in a deep reflection, research and sensing process in order to produce new stories, blogs and a reflection paper including main insights, guiding questions looking ahead, and first signals of the future. You can download the final reflection papers by clicking on the button below.

The exploration phase of Nova Helvetia culminated in the Swiss Forum on 28th of June 2020. On this day, the outcomes and outputs have been shared, as well as further cross-thematic exploration enabled. 

After the Swiss Forum, the working groups have further developed new ideas and solution prototypes. Due to generous funding from Migros Pioneer Fund, the prototypes could be supported financially to enable their success. The available financial resources have been distributed among the emerging prototypes by the participants of the working groups themselves, through a collaborative finance allocation process called cobudgeting. The prototypes have been implemented from October 2020 to June 2021. You can find out more about the Nova Helvetia prototypes in the working groups section below.

Nova Helvetia has been an intense and beautiful learning process on collective reflection and action in times of crisis. We have summarized our learnings in two workbooks in order to make them available to other organisations and collectives who want to implement a collective reflection process. Download our learnings on Nova Helvetia as a process and on cobudgeting as a way of collaborative finance allocation by clicking on the buttons below.

This blogpost was first published on the website of collaboratio helvetica. You can find more information about the project and its outcomes here.