Community of Practice
Since April 2024, I have been facilitating the Practices of Composting and Hospicing Community. This community grew out of Stewarding Loss, a UK-based field building initiative, that was spurred by the belief that endings needed to be designed as processes rather than simply endured as painful experiences.
The community comprises a Slack community along with a monthly, virtual gathering with an international slate of guests from across civil society — from museums, to cemeteries, universities, and even theaters.
This work has been supported through a generous gift from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Emerging Futures Initiative.
You can find our calendar here or join the Slack. Summaries of past gatherings can be found below!
January 2025 – A Progress Report from The Decelerator – One Year In
In January 2025, we were visited by our friends from The Decelerator, a ten-year initiative to support better endings and transitions in UK civil society.
December 2024 – Knowing When to Quit with Sarah Weiler
Sarah Weiler is a coach, a facilitator, a musician, a podcaster, and much more! She describes herself as a “carouseller”, or someone who is “all about honouring and focusing on the things that feel alive” for her. In December 2024, one of the things that made our community feel alive was being joined by Sarah to learn more about the fantastic work she is doing helping people think through frustration, persistence, quitting, and crafting all sorts of beautiful endings.
November 2024 with Anna Shneiderman of BLACspace Cooperative
Anna Shneiderman was a co-founder of the Ragged Wing Ensemble, a theater company, and The Flight Deck, a cultural space in Oakland, CA. In 2020, after 17 years in operation, the group made the difficult decision to close. In this riveting session, Anna shared her experience with Ragged Wing and The Flight Deck and how she’s carried out those learnings into new projects.
October 2024 with Catarina Moreno, serial interim ED
Catarina Moreno is a Vancouver-based nonprofit executive who has served as interim director for several nonprofits. She shared how she successfully worked to wind down several nonprofits and transition the mission-driven programmatic work to partner organizations.
September 2024 with The Endings Project
The Endings Project is an initative of the University of Victoria’s Department of Digital Humanities. It has created tools, principles, policies and recommendations for digital scholarship practitioners to create accessible, stable, long-lasting resources in the humanities.
Some of the questions they are attempting to answer include “how should we preserve projects to retain their dynamic features” & “where should projects be archived?”
August 2024 with Sarah Wambold and Rem Moore
Moore and Wambold used their article “Only Loss” to lead the group through a discussion and interactive exercise on digital loss and the possibility of intentional degradation.
July 2024 with Naomi Hattaway of Leaving Well
Naomi is a consultant and serial interim nonprofit director. In this session, she spoke about her platform for crafting graceful leadership transitions.
June 2024 with Erin Richardson of Frank and Glory
Erin Richardson, PhD runs a museum services consultancy and used the session to ask: who, what, and how long are museums for?
May 2024 with Stopping As Success
We had a lively conversation with members of the Stopping As Success: Locally-Led Transitions In Development Consortium (SAS+)
Since April 2024, I have been facilitating the Stewarding Loss Community of Practice as part of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation‘s Emerging Futures Initiative. Here are the write ups for these sessions
WaterSHED was a a 10-year old time-boxed initiative to increase access to clean water in Cambodia.