Becoming a Bioregional Weaver – The Why, How It Started, and How It’s Going [#31]

Do you sometimes have the feeling that the universe is conspiring to help you on your way?

In the last few years, moving from “traditional” marketing work towards something more life-affirming, more aligned with my intuition, I have been feeling the magic of the universe conspire: meeting the right people at the right times, bing in the right place at the right time, or as simple as coming up with an idea that aligns with what people I work with have thought about.

Call it divine timing or confirmation bias - something is happening. Let me tell you about it.

Last year, I was out of a job since February. I decided to change away from being a digital nomad towards growing roots. I moved to the countryside in the middle of nowhere. I took a break and followed my instincts. I knew what I didn’t want anymore.

That summer, I took a course in building a cob house. With my partner, I co-developed the dream of building a house with our own hands. During that time, I saw a post from one of my heroes in the regeneration space, Tijn Toelker​ , that offered 3 internships for work at the Bioregional Weaving Labs Collective. Earlier that year, in January, I took part in the “​Hope event​” organized by the same organization. And the event really did what it promised: seeing the bioregional way of organizing in action inspired hope in me. It planted a seed.

During the time without a job, I spent a lot of time reading and learning. I read “Designing Regenerative Cultures” by Daniel Christian Wahl, and it became apparent to me that in order to reduce the complexity of system change, we need to focus on bioregions.

“We can not save the world; we can only save places. The regeneration of planetary health can only happen ecosystem by ecosystem or bioregion by bioregion.” ​—Daniel Christian Wahl​

It complemented what I learned with working with Climate Farmers: a single organisation won’t change the world, we need portfolios of projects and innovations that are rooted in place to increase resilience and impact on a regional level, that than adds up to trans-regional systems change.

So there I was, scrambling together an application in between stomping cob and building a house with 15 people from all over the world. In the weekly sharing circles we did over the 5 weeks, many people shared how special it was that we are this diverse community coming together with a purpose and coherence when the world outside seemed to become more polarized and hostile.

I’m seeing systems and institutions unraveling around me at speed.

Politicians & corporates are clinging to power but not being able to handle the systemic volatility we are experiencing.

An old world that is dying.

I feel despair, anger, uncertainty, and sadness.

But then I see a movement of ​active hope​.

Changemakers all over the world are confronting the challenges of our time.

I feel hope, connection, coherence, and groundedness.

But also isolation of projects and lack of organisation.

A new world that is struggling to be born.

This is where Bioregioning comes in.

As a community resilience strategy.

As the act of living in a place, being part of and working with the local natural systems.

As a (specific) response to the meta-crisis, it entails economy, ecology, and social structures.

After all, it is an evolutionary survival pattern of our species, the exchange between place and people, based on relationships.

The “Weaving” part of bioregional weaving is the practice of connecting people and projects in synergistic ​and purposeful ways. It involves connecting people to each other and to a ​shared future vision (for the bioregion). It fosters collaborations for systemic impact and facilitates collective learning and iteration; and most importantly, it embodies the change we wish to see to a more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

The magic of this approach: WE DO NOT NEED TO WAIT FOR PERFECT CONDITIONS.

It’s available right now, it’s just a different way of being & seeing the place you inhabit: by becoming a steward of your place.

There is a whole network of bioregions all over Europe and worldwide that are prototyping new governance, financial flows, and bottom-up participatory processes. Shared learning, shared resources, shared vision.

I started working part-time with the Bioregional Weaving Labs Collective in September 2025. Now, after 8 months, diving headfirst into the world of Bioregioning, meeting amazing people, learning, and supporting, I can look back at a rewarding journey. And there is much more to learn, do, and be.

Just one thing we are sharing among those involved in bioregional work: we want to spend more time offline in the places where we live, feel our bodies, and connect with the more-than-human world. This goes against the online way of working that I need to connect trans-bioregionally.

How to bridge that gap?

By using my free-time on making local connections and build relationships.

From day 1 here, I wanted to get to know the region and its people. Since the village project I joined was already connected to the broader community, and I had time, this was fairly easy.

From ​workparties​ to walks at the river and local events, my network grew quite fast.

And what I felt was that there is a lot of energy. Many self-employed people are looking to expand or start other endeavours, like friends starting to make cider from an apple orchard that was gifted to them. A local consumption group to buy in bulk from local vendors. A world-wide known ​syntropic agroforestry project​ shaping food forest design locally and internationally. Cultural spaces. And of course, ​our regenerative village​.

It was all there. But … there was no coherence. Little collaboration. Isolation even.

The ingredients were laid out, but no cook to make a delicious dish.

I was thinking: maybe that is my role. But imposter syndrome told me: “Who do you think you are - you don’t even speak Galician - people won’t respect you. Don’t even start.”

But I felt a pull. Something else spoke to me: “You are the one you have been waiting for! You don’t need the full plan - just start, and you will find out!”

Backed with inspiration and learnings from my work at the Bioregional Weaving Labs Collective, I trusted that voice.

It was getting to December, and an event showed up around social entrepreneurship, which was held at a local cultural space. I felt it was a good opportunity to get to know people interested in social entrepreneurship.

If you want to start bioregional weaving, a good start is to just get to know people and projects in your region and follow the energy of people who want to do something to change the status quo. Get to know your local changemakers.

A rule that I learned from Igor, a Bioregional Weaver in France, is the 90-9-1 rule: 90% of people are just watching, 9% are engaging, and 1% are making things happen. Search this 1% of the population of your region to start.

And then the divine brought us together.

Lucas, the guy who organized the social entrepreneurship event, sensed something and asked me to have a beer after the event.

We clicked immediately.

When I told him about my work on bioregional weaving, his eyes lit up.

He told me that he has been working like this for the last few years, but struggles to put it into words.

And he humbly revealed that he has been working to transition the bioregion towards food sovereignty and regeneration through his food system innovation agency, Prato_Do.

I think I fell in love that day. Not in a romantic way, but in a love for life and gratitude for what the universe is guiding me towards.

2 weeks after Christmas, we organised a potluck event at our village. More connections were made.

Lucas presented me with Eduardo and Pepe, two guys who are doing cultural work from ​capturing contemporary Galician culture​ in pictures to converting an old cow stable into a theater for the rural area "Teatro das Cortes A.C. Volta e Dálle".

That day, I met a woman from the district council working towards equality among men and women who helped set up a seed bank led by women in our region.

A cook looking for different work than traditional restaurant business, now collaborating with the snytropic agroforestry project to make delicious food from tree-based nutrition.

More people from the ​local bridge house​, which often functions as an entry point for people in the region.

It is on.

We just started by meeting weekly to connect in person and go on this journey together.

I learn about his process of the last few years and tell him about the Bioregional Weaving Lab approach. He shows me a list of 200+ stakeholders he worked with in the past, and I see the value of those relationships.

So, how to bring order into this creative chaos that he has been carrying pretty much alone for the last 10 years?

I am bringing some structure - something I am good at.

The simple act of organizing Lucas' thoughts and local actions through the process we co-developed at Bioregion Weavling Labs, providing an online workspace to collect the explicit work, and being a sparring partner already gets things going.

We joined the ​Ashoka Multi-Stakeholder-Collaboration Course​, which provides us with more theoretical and practical help for working with the multiple stakeholders in the region and cohering them towards regeneration.

I learned that Lucas is full of surprises. With his friend Añon, who is the director of the MERYCSE (Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy, Climate Change and Sustainable Development at the University of Santiago de Compostela) and who lives close by, he has lined up a weekend in the bioregion.

A bioregional residency prototype.

We envision the weekend to be an activation of the ecosystem, too. We invite local changemakers, foundations, and other aligned actors.

And the funny thing? This doesn’t even feel like work.

The weekend comes, and I am way too excited. We sleep in a beautifully ​restored place from the feudal times​, which exhibits a lot of local art and history.

Friday is a big success. We convened 35+ people from the local ecosystem and had everyone share why they came and what they want out of this. People shared their story, their gratitude for organising the event, and their love for the territory.

Call me a hippie, but when stewards of wealthy foundations talk about love in this setting, we have done something right.

Saturday, we visited five local projects.

• The Panaderia de Galdo: a local bakery that’s keeping the traditional way of making bread
• Estación Agroecoloxia Vieiro: the syntropic agroforestry school where I ​took a course in February​
• Museo de Identidade Gallega: an exhibition of contemporary photos from the last years about Galician culture
• Theatro das Cortes: the said theater that was once a cow stable
• O Cadaval: the old village that we are rebuilding

That day was exhausting but also fulfilling. When you hear students share that it blew their minds and showed them different ways of living, organizing, and producing food, it touches you.

And this was not about the students. It was about an opportunity to plant some seeds, to come together, to see ourselves as part of a larger ecosystem in the bioregion.

From new ideas generated, to expressed gratitude and openness to go on this territorial process together. I felt a lot of energy.

Where do we go from here?

We just grew the core team with Eduard, our narrator and photographer (and starter of the identity museum - Galicia Latente), who took amazing pictures this weekend. (All pictures in this article are from him.)

I am sending this after the (Bioregional) Learning Summit in Romania, organized by Commonland and the Bioregional Weaving Labs Collective, where 27 Bioregions of Europe convened for a week. There, I met other bioregional weavers and partners who want to support our region.

We will follow up with all participating stakeholders of our bioregional immersion, gather feedback, and carry out interviews to identify the critical shifts we want to tackle as an ecosystem in the region.

And then we plan the next bioregional immersion and ecosystem convening for local stakeholder groups around more concrete topics and initiatives in the region.

And lastly, we need to find some financing for our core team to do this work for the next few years. :)

The direction is clear: regenerative systems change on all levels: individual, relationships, village, bioregion, Europe, and worldwide.

I hope this got you some insights into bioregional work. I will share more of it in the future.

Happy regeneration,

Jonas