One year in
A year ago we published the first Voices of Emergence conversation. We had a question, a microphone, and an intention to show up.
Twelve months later: 33 episodes, 300 people in the community, 40 countries, and 60 of us in a room together in Brussels. None of that was planned. Mostly it happened because people kept showing up.
This post is a thank you.
The conversations
We wanted to slow conversations down enough for something real to be said.
Giles Hutchins opened the year by asking how you see an organisation as a living system rather than a machine. Daniel Christian Wahl reminded us that “we are life creating conditions conducive to life at our very best.” Bayo Akomolafe taught us to look at the cracks. Sophie Strand asked us to compost the lonely hero. Helena Norberg-Hodge told us that singing in a group is one of the most healing things we can do, and we still think about that one.
Carl Hayden Smith said it is more important to be kind than clever. Mamadou Kwidjim Touré brought ubuntu. Lucas Buchholz brought ten years of relationship with the Kogi. Samantha Sweetwater named us as humans tied in a mutual destiny. Hajar Tazi offered care over control. Canay Atalay said there is no system outside of us.
And some of the conversations that moved us most came from people you had probably never heard of. Emerging voices doing extraordinary work in their own communities, who aren't well known and probably should be.
To all 33 of you: thank you. You gave us your time and said what you actually thought.
What grew
It didn't stay a podcast for long.
Episodes turned into conversations in our WhatsApp circle, which now holds 300 people across 40 countries. Entrepreneurs, technologists, regenerators, facilitators, coaches, artists, systems leaders. Those conversations turned into our Emergence Circles, a session on AI ethics, a Cards for Life workshop with Thomas Mansfield, and a book launch for Samina Vabo Ansari.
Then came two learning journeys. Liminal Soil, co-created with Nathalia Manso, walked Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects through gratitude, grief, seeing with new eyes, and coming home. AI, Leadership & Agency, co-created with Lisanne Buik, asked what agency means when the tools start acting.
And in June, The Invitation. Three days in Brussels, co-created with Samantha Sweetwater. 60 of us in one room for the first time. We started in the forest. We shared meals, sat in circle, and remembered how much easier all of this is face to face.
Underneath all three ran a common spine, the Enactment Arc, which Alex developed over the course of the year. It gave the courses and the gathering a common way of tracking how something goes from a first flicker of attention through to action, and then to living with it.
Nathalia, Lisanne, Samantha, Thomas: thank you. You each built something with us that we could not have built alone.
What we learned
These things kept coming up:
Change starts in the body before it reaches the world.
The future emerges through the quality of our relationships.
What looks like collapse is often a threshold.
Insight matters only when it moves into action.
You cannot force emergence, you can only cultivate the conditions for it.
Year two
We are keeping the conversations going, and building more room around them.
Membership is opening, so that more people can be part of this properly instead of just dropping in. New cohorts of both learning journeys are forming. We will gather again next year, so we can stay together longer and go deeper. And we are beginning to bring this work into organisations, where people are asking the same things, just not in the same words.
We are also going to say more about what we actually think. In year one we held the mic for other people. In year two we step out a little further. Feel free to hold us to that.
Thank you
To everyone who listened on a walk or a commute. To everyone who posted in the circle at midnight. To everyone who came to Brussels, and everyone who wanted to and could not. To everyone who introduced two people who should know each other, and to the two of them.
You're the reason this turned into more than a podcast.
As Bayo said, “Follow your soul to wherever it might lead.”
Here is to year two.
Rudy and Alex
About Voices of Emergence
Stewarded by Alex de Carvalho and Rudy de Waele, Voices of Emergence is a learning ecology for times of profound transition.
What began as a podcast has evolved into a living space for dialogue, learning journeys, gatherings, circles, and shared inquiry - exploring how we stay human, coherent, and responsible in a rapidly changing world.
Through relational practice, regenerative thinking, inner development, and systemic awareness, we cultivate discernment, relational intelligence, embodied leadership, and meaningful forms of action in complex times.
Rather than offering fixed answers or ideological certainty, Voices of Emergence creates conditions for deeper listening, collective sensemaking, and new ways of being, relating, and leading to emerge.
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