department of
dismantling
dismantling
department of
ENDINGS ARE MORE THAN THEY ARE CRACKED UP TO BE
our inquiries
INTERRUPTION
What happens when you divest from harmful structures and patterns?
GOOD ENDINGS
What happens when we stop fearing the end?
COMPoSTING
How do you accelerate needed closures by breaking down without breaking apart?
We’re demolition crews disassembling facades
Our Department works with clients to identify and carefully navigate endings for what no longer serves people, organizations, and broader social and planetary conditions. There comes a time when no iterative changes to structures and patterns are enough to save their own toxicity. Perhaps you already know an ending is coming or it has already arrived. This doesn’t mean you are prepared to welcome it. When the hand clicks to that historic moment on the clock, it's time to shift processes—from those used to build and accelerate ventures to those that help them end well. Embracing endings invites new kinds of responsibilities and accountabilities to the human, ecological, and financial resources that brought it into existence.
We are convinced that sometimes things need to end for the next to begin. Toxic sludge seems to linger behind façades of change consuming affective, cognitive, relational, and financial resources that stifle moving forward. We seek to repair and transition people and systems to create fertile ground for what comes after. This is why we describe the mission of our Department as freedom: to compost what was into something else.
frameworks
featured
Adapted from Bill Sharpe, CC BY-SA 4.0
Three Horizons
Identify qualities of the dominant paradigm and interventions strengthening business-as-usual
Toxic Waste Gallery
Artistic ways of presencing what creates poisonous affects on our organizations
WIND DOWN
ready to
THAT WHICH IS WOUND UP?
projects
featured
participants
SAY
“The Three Horizons framework was really good, the recognition of decline of base "dominant" business, and the growth of the alternative, and helping the stuff that needs to die, to indeed die. Great concepts, and really what we need to do.”
People Who Inspire Our Department
Vanessa Andreotti & GTDF
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Stewarding Loss Collective
The Decelerator
Vandana Shiva
Martin Shaw
Kate Raworth
Slow Food
Wellbeing Economy Alliance
Jason Hickel