Creating Transformative Cultures focuses on the practice of connecting with others as the core of its learning journey. How we are able to connect lies at the centre of every human interaction, every collective project, and every culture — no matter where in the world. Building, maintaining, and nurturing healthy connections are key, no matter where your curiosity and passion may lead you.

Today, knowledge and techniques are easily accessible through courses, workshops, and online resources. But relational and emotional intelligence can only be cultivated through lived, embodied practice — in real contact with people who are also willing to embark on this journey. For us, this is the true gift of spending five weeks together: the opportunity to practice, again and again, a basic and yet essential art of being human.

We offer you a unique in-depth exploration and experience of community building as a key element of the much needed transformations in our current eruptive times.

We welcome you to a learning journey inspired by various approaches to social transformation, as well as over 20 years of experience of the Ecovillage Schloss Glarisegg, as a thriving community project. Each year’s course is a novel experience, as the constellation of 40 – 50 people coming together from different parts of the world in this particular moment in time will bring up unique questions and topics to discover and learn from.

How does this journey unfold?

Your five-week learning journey starts with You!
The course begins by deepening your connection with yourself, your nervous system and your emotions through various tools and methods.

• How do you face uncertainty and difficult emotions without letting them overwhelm you?
• How can you stay connected to what you care about in the face of socially learned patterns of self-numbing?
• How can you encounter another person from that place of authenticity and presence?

Building this emotional capacity will be central throughout the course.

In the second week, the focus widens to the collective group process. You will explore different ways on how to connect and collaborate authentically with others – and stay in relation – while acknowledging our different needs and perspectives, our unique paths and the stories we carry that can contribute to friction or conflict.

What is special about the course in 2027, is its immersive 4-days workshop in Community Building, informed by the work of Scott Peck. His approach offers a simple yet powerful framework through which people from diverse backgrounds can build trust, safety, connection, and mutual respect within a relatively short period of time.

Throughout the workshop, you will practice sitting in circle together, listening deeply, and noticing when you feel moved to speak. Together, we will pay attention to the themes, questions, and experiences that emerge within the group. In doing so, the workshop invites a different quality of togetherness — one that can deepen connection, openness, and collective insight. This approach is widely used in groups and teams worldwide and will be facilitated by the founder of Community Building International, Edward Groody, a former student of Scott Peck, and his team of facilitators.

We will continue practicing this and other methods throughout the course to create space for the many processes that appear when diverse groups of people come together. You will explore ways of noticing and engaging with emerging topics — themes, questions, or tensions that become present within the group, often times unexpectedly.

Creating space for emerging topics is a valuable practice for deepening trust and connection within a group. It also allows shared experiences and collective challenges to be explored with greater openness and curiosity. Developing the capacity to recognise, navigate, and respond to them and potential tensions is essential for groups and teams, as it enables new insights to arise, support the integration of differences, and fosters greater collective understanding and awareness.

The third and fourth week is particularly inspired by the framework of The Work That Reconnects by late Buddhist scholar and activist Joanna Macy which encourages reconnection with the Earth and each other in the face of ecological, economic and social crises, acknowledging the pain many of us feel when observing the states of the world.

• How do you relate to these crises and the systems that sustain them?
• How do your actions and choices contribute to them?
• What empowers and motivates you to respond differently and engage more fully in support of a world worth living for all life?

The fourth week will be in support of weaving the experiences and new perspectives gained during the course with your life and projects.

• What are new pathways that you might want to take from here?
• How can you continue to live into the questions that matter to you?

Both weeks will have numerous thematic workshops and diverse deepening sessions in which you will research relevant topics for a regenerative future while exploring new and ancient ways of seeing the world and ultimately aim to inspire you to engage in these extraordinary times with agency and care.

The fifth week is a unique extension of the EDE Glarisegg. It opens the space for previous participants to return and join in a co-created week of skill-sharing, networking, and collective celebration. In this way, the course weaves together a living network of over 400 people, expanding the ripple of community and learning far beyond a single edition.

Collaboration Groups

Throughout the course you will spend time in a smaller collaboration group setting on a daily basis. Here you will get to share, discuss, play, practice tools and take care together of our community tasks such as dishwashing & cooking dinner while continuously learning what it takes to stay connected when difficulties arise. These groups sit at the heart of the larger group experience and have shown to be a vital part of the journey.

What are you passionate about?