Held annually in Athens, Roots Winter School (RWS) is a three-day progressive learning programme designed to cultivate hope, widen horizons, and catalyse action. RWS aims to push the boundaries of participants’ thinking, abilities, and imagination in order to foster global societies dedicated to planetary health and well-being. The program integrates critical theoretical thought with urgent political, socio-economic, ecological and cultural matters and experiences of struggles through a multifaceted methodology.
The methodology reflects the character of these sources of knowledge too: approaches coming from formal-education context (e.g. lecture, presentation, seminar) and non-formal processes of learning are mutually supportive. Our key objective is to amplify the program’s collective educational impact through encouraging co-learning experiences among the participants.
This Year’s Topic: Strategies for socio-ecological transformations in times of uncertainty
This year’s theme focuses on strategies for socio-ecological transformations in times of uncertainty, with a particular emphasis on socio-spatial justice. What are the relationships between global socio-spatial systems and local lived experiences? What is the role and implications of economic growth? How can we use the critical frame of degrowth to look through possibilities, policies and actions towards sustainable and equitable ecosystems that challenge mainstream perceptions of sustainability, including circular economy, smart cities, and green technological innovations? How intersectional, decolonial, and transfeminist processes can prioritise the needs of humans and beyond humans contributing to alternative socio-spatial visions across scales? What could be the diverse personal, collective, and institutional processes in such transformations?
Dear Life, I was not aware, when I was born, that I was born onto a battlefield. I was not aware, as I learned to walk, that I was stomping over the habitats of many creatures. I was not aware, as my mother drove me to school, that we were riding roughshod over the unmarked graves of our fellow humans. I was not aware, as we flew around the world, that I was attacking my child’s chances. I was...
By Panos Petridis and Angelos Varvarousis “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will” (A. Gramsci) We might err, but we believe that in the night of the elections in January 2015 a symbolic “tipping point” has been reached in Greece, signifying a break with a one way pre-dictated future, and adding vital fresh wind by pointing to the possibility of multiple al...
By Ashish Kothari As it becomes abundantly clear that humanity as a whole has crossed the ecological limits of the earth, and that countries like China and India are fast joining the already-industrialised nations in stressing the planet even more, the search for radical alternatives is humanity’s most urgent quest. There is no doubt that, as [...]
