The Explorations were a set of learning-oriented investments designed to illuminate what is taking shape at the edges of systemic change, and how resources might travel toward it more transformatively.
Rather than funding outputs in a conventional sense, the focus was on what could be learnt — about practice, infrastructure, and the conditions that allow deeper change to take root.
The work was organised across three areas:
Micro-demonstrators explored other ways of moving resources in practice — including participatory many-to-many funding, mycelial flows of capital, and the foresight potential of platform data.
Signals of emerging interestidentified fields worth attending to and resourcing — sites of new (and very old) cultural practice across Europe, more-than-human governance, and collective imagination as soil work.
Pre-conditions for transformative work invested in the groundwork that has to precede systemic shifts — relational breakthroughs across different parts of the field, the European wealth narrative, and the conditions for a stronger solidarity economy in Europe.
Keep scrolling to see our learning and insights from The Explorations.
Unsettling Wealth. An exploration into European Wealth Narratives in collaboration with Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures and Terra Adentro.
More-than-human governance experiments in Europe. A collaboration with DemNext to illuminate and connect up the nascent but growing field of people and places exploring how governance and policy design can draw on more-than-human and planetary intelligences.
Ecological Principles for Wealth Redistribution.A collaboration with New Constellations to explore how ecological intelligence principles could be used in the design of how resources flow.
Many-to-Many Governance. Arising Quo was an early investor in the Many-to-Many governance system being developed by Dark Matter Labs to support collaborations tackling complex, entangled challenges where disrupting norms and values, ownership, and power is essential.
Growing Collective Imagination Capacity in Europe. Arising Quo contributed funding to the Collective Imagination Practice Community to seed and grow a wider field of practice specifically in Europe.
Sensing the Third Horizon. Seeing, Feeling and Funding Alternative Futures. Two collaborations - first with Panthea Lee , when the work was known as Exploring Relationality, and then work with Milly Shotter.
Sites of New (and very Old) Practice. In collaboration with E-Werkand Lucia Pietroiusti, Arising Quo tracked sites of cultural resurgence — investing in a network of spaces across Europe where artists, culture-makers, political and ecological thinkers, practitioners, and educators are seeding this work.
Illuminating the Solidarity Economy in Europe. A collaboration with Caroline Woolard to map what is already being practiced and what would support its growth.
Weather Vanes for Anticipatory Wealth Redistribution. A collaboration with Open Collective to explore how their data could be used to spotlight early signals for where wealth flows are needed.
What did we learn?
There are three ways into the learning from the Explorations:
A summary of our learning — what we found, and what we hope is carried forward.
The strategic story— a slide deck reflecting on the Explorations and the orientations they opened.
A summary table — a cross-cutting view of every exploration: what it surfaced, the insight, and where it pointed.