We are living through wild times.
Across the UK and beyond, our communities are facing deep uncertainty, rising polarisation, growing inequality, and increasing pressure on the people and places that hold us together. It would be easy to look around and feel overwhelmed. Or, like us, you could organise an unconference, a joyful, practical and energising gathering for grassroots communities from across the UK.
Grassroots communities have always known how to find possibility in difficult places.
In every neighbourhood, movement, campaign, mutual aid network and community space, there is extraordinary wisdom, imagination and humour. There is also deep practical knowledge about how people organise, protect each other and build something better, and we need this now more than ever.
That’s why The Social Change Nest is hosting The Wild Times Gathering.
This gathering is for the people who know that we are more powerful together. It’s for those holding communities through crisis, fighting for justice, building alternatives, resisting division, creating care, and keeping hope alive in difficult conditions.
The Wild Times Gathering is both a celebration and a call to action. By coming together to network, self-organise, learn and belly laugh side by side, we can fuel ourselves to do the crucial work that’s needed to tackle what lies ahead.
If the world feels wild, then our response must be rooted, courageous, creative and collective.
Convened by
The Agenda
What's in Motion
We’re co-designing the programme with our partners and community. Across the day, sessions will respond directly to the conditions we’re in. The programme will be viewed from four core lenses:
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Looking after ourselves.
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Looking after each other.
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Looking after our communities.
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Looking after our democracy.
These are not fixed tracks, but ways of exploring the systems that shape our work — from personal wellbeing and resilience, to solidarity and collective care, to place-based action, and the wider forces we’re navigating.
This will not be your traditional conference where you’re spoken to or at for most of the day. It will be led by and for peers, it will be participatory, generous, honest and rooted in the wisdom already held by the people in the room.
The Wild Times Gathering will create space for open and frank community-based dialogue in a time of polarisation. It will support people to explore what it means to organise and tackle power-holders, what our communities need from us, and how we can keep going without burning out or becoming isolated.
The gathering will be shaped around three loose topics, alongside the lenses of care and looking after:
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Movement building.
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Place-based work.
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Regenerative futures.
This is just a starting point. We’re inviting workshop and speaker ideas from across the community and welcome your input as we shape the programme. The full agenda and speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.
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Thank you to our generous partners for making this gathering possible.
Partners
If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, email the team if you would like to join us in backing the people and organisations working to shape a more regenerative, just future and stand in solidarity with changemakers across the UK.
Wild Times is convened by The Social Change Nest as a platform for supporting grassroots movements, organisers and communities to build power and create change. Our mission is to provide the infrastructure, tools and support needed to help people organise, fundraise and grow their impact.
