what are starfish circles?
Starfish Circles are experiments for growing leaderless communities of practice that develop leaders the way the intertidal zone develops life. Being constantly at the meeting place of what is solid and what moves. We are practicing leadership the way shorelines condition everything that lives on them: through exposure, in celestial rhythm, with an ability to be still and the refusal to stay still. We develop ourselves as human catalysts to anchor in surge zones and let others attach, and encourage community champions to carry what’s viable past the breakwaters. Everyone in starfish circles learns to read relational currents. Everyone can regenerate and create a new circle. We believe leaders develop by showing up, in community, at the edges where their real work meets the world, getting tumbled until we learn how to hold.
WE make home together, not by talking about community, but by building and growing things that a community actually uses, from materials the land actually provides, with people who keep showing up.
communities of practice
Starfish Circles practice through craft and cultivation. Quilting, clay, soil building, gardening, agroecological practice, cooking and ways yet to be seen. The work of hands on land-based materials in land-based places. If economy is the management of home, what we practice is something prior. The making of home. The focus isn’t theory. It’s making things together. Peer learning and leading through doing and making things together, on a regular basis.