Over the past two years, as part of the Regenerative Futures Programme, Unearthodox has been exploring what regeneration means to people across geographies, cultures and lived practices.
Through the reframing phase of the programme, which included storytelling, art, music, poetry, science, and immersive dialogue, Regeneration emerged not as a single definition or way of doing, but as a practice influenced by context, relationships, and culture. The inquiry surfaced recurring themes on relationships, embodiment, plural ways of knowing, care, interdependence, and the need to move away from extractive approaches for transformative change.
But this inquiry also surfaced another question…
What is needed to move regenerative thinking from ideas to action?
This question sits at the heart of our Sparks of Regeneration Incubation Journey.
Many innovators, especially those working in the nature-society space, are navigating complexity, uncertainty, and exhaustion while attempting to foster shifts in relationships, stewardship, trust, culture, governance, and ways of seeing. These kinds of transformations rarely unfold in linear or accelerated ways, so the question that emerges is whether the current systems, institutions, and support structures available are equipped for the long-term regenerative work to flourish.
As the Incubation Team describes it, unlike dominant incubation models that are often designed around speed, measurability, and scale, the Sparks of Regeneration incubation journey has been intentionally designed to create time, space, and a shared container for people working toward regenerative futures. Led by a team of experts with complementary expertise across systems change, strategic design, facilitation, and transformative learning, the programme leans on peer learning, meaningful reflections, collective inquiry, and a collaborative approach grounded in place and relationship.
“The programme does not prescribe a single pathway or set of answers; rather, we are exploring four relational dimensions (as depicted in the infographic below), co-creating meaning, supporting one another, and practising distributed leadership.”
- The Incubation Team, Sparks of Regeneration
The incubation process is organised around four interconnected relationships:
The foundations of this thinking come from two of Unearthodox’s research publications: Scaling conservation innovation: the role of incubators and accelerators, a report by Cristina Chaminade, and Nurturing Innovation: Weaving Containers with Care and Courage for Collective Change, a report by the Post Growth Institute.
These reports explore how systemic innovation takes root and flourishes, asking the key question: What conditions help the people behind ideas thrive, rather than focusing solely on bold new ideas?
It advocates for approaches rooted in care, courage, and context, recognising that transformation rarely unfolds in predictable ways and cannot always be understood through metrics alone. In this sense, the container created to support the Sparks of Regeneration Cohort itself matters.
As the Incubation Team describes it, the work asks what may need to be unlearned, reoriented, or reimagined within ourselves, between one another, and in relationship with place, time, and the more-than-human world. Across all elements of the Incubation journey, there is an intention to strengthen participants’ capacity to work with places as living systems and to engage more attentively with social and ecological relationships.
Given the current social and ecological challenges, the question of how systems innovators are supported becomes increasingly important.
Through the Sparks of Regeneration Incubation Journey, Unearthodox is experimenting with an Alternative Incubation Model that creates the conditions for deep reflection, systemic thinking, collaboration, unlearning and learning and creating conditions where regenerative ideas can thrive rather than managing outcomes.
This incubation design is, therefore, itself an experiment in practising regeneration in the way innovators and their ideas are supported, not only with resources and expertise but also through relationships, shared inquiry and as a community of co-travellers.
Over the coming months, we will share reflections, stories, tensions, patterns, and insights emerging from across the cohort to provide a glimpse of what regeneration can look like when lived and practised in real-world contexts.
Know more about the 2026 Cohort of innovators > Meet the cohort
Know more about the philosophy behind the incubation design > Reports: Nurturing Innovation & Scaling Innovation
Know more about Unearthodox’s three-year Regenerative Futures Programme journey
