The ReimaginED Conferences
The emerging futures for education
About ReimaginED
The ReimaginED Conferences enjoy a reputation for being among the most progressive educational gatherings in the Asia-Pacific region. The beautiful Mornington Peninsula in Australia provides the home base for the conference series, with a second event traveling to visit iconic and emerging hubs for innovation in the region each year.
ReimaginED brings together creative communities of teachers, students, parents, school administrators, community leaders, parents, researchers, business people, artists, and musicians with a shared goal of nurturing the transformation of learning, teaching, and educational leadership.
Unlike more traditional events, the conferences are highly participative, creating space for dialogue and deep learning through the use of structured time for contemplation, collaboration, and co-creation.
The ReimaginED Conference have become important gatherings for innovative thinkers and first movers looking to connect, be inspired, recharge, and find ways to collectively address the challenges that matter for the emerging futures of education.
The Emerging Futures for Education
The ReimaginED Conferences create nurturing spaces for the emergence of a new global renaissance in education. This purposeful movement is driven by innovators who recognise the urgent need to respond to the wicked challenges being presented for education (mental health crisis, rising inequity, outdated curricula) and our communities (conflict, polarisation, climate change).
Where the model underlying the old narrative for education is economistic, individualistic, and extractive the new narrative for education is holistic, collective and regenerative. The creative paradigms for thinking, ground-breaking practices and pioneering case studies shared at the conferences offer fresh perspectives, celebrate promising innovations, and provide insight into the emerging futures for education, while supporting transformative systems change.
Connection and creativity
ReimaginED has thrived over the years due to the growing desire among innovative thinkers and first movers in the field of education to engage in deep reflection and dialogue with peers who share their aspirations and face similar challenges.
The programming for ReimaginED consistently features leading-edge thinkers and inspiring practitioners from around Australia and across the world. The provocations, workshops, and spotlight sessions help expose participants to transformational concepts and pioneering programs, with opportunities to consider new ways of thinking and understand the hard work and messy iteration that sits behind the development of a ground-breaking innovation.
Critically, while speakers play a vital role in the experience of ReimaginED, the learning design for the conferences acknowledges that the most important aspect of the gatherings is the quality of the participants’ engagement with the ideas being shared and their interactions with each other. For this reason, the conference intentionally creates a safe space for risk taking, deep collaboration, transformative learning, and the emergence of the new.
Generative Social Fields
The design for ReimaginED draws on theory, tools, and practices from the fields of systems thinking, organisational learning, social-emotional learning, mindfulness and activism.
Where farmers focus their attention on cultivating the quality of the soil in their fields, the events invite participants to focus attention on cultivating the quality of the social field - the quality of the relationships they have with each other and their collective ability to address real world challenges and opportunities for innovation in education.
A distinctive feature of ReimaginED is the way in which the generative social field created at the gatherings spreads out into school, organisational, and community contexts, nurturing practices, partnerships, programs, and projects that support systems change.
The Power of Place
Since its launch in 2019, the bushland environment of Woodleigh School’s Senior Campus has provided the home for the ReimaginED Conferences. The unique setting offers expansive indoor and outdoor learning spaces that are welcoming, beautiful, and support participants to reflect, relax, re-energise and refocus.
The locations for ReimaginED are selected to immerse participants in the unique experience of a place and its people. They provide learning experiences that are grounded in local communities and contexts, and invite participants to explore ways of thinking, learning, and acting through a distinctive and authentic set of social, cultural, and environmental lenses.
Importantly, ReimaginED also helps build local and global networks that can transcend the traditional silos and barriers for change in education. The conferences connect innovative thinkers and first movers from around the world to enable the exploration of leading-edge research and practice.
In this way, ReimaginED aims to catalyse, enable and support localised innovation, while building our individual and collective capacity for leading wider systems change.
Steering Committees
Melbourne
Dr Richard Owens
David Baker
Jonathan Walter
Fremantle
Dr Richard Owens
Cameron Thorn
Japan
Dr Richard Owens
David Secomb
Global
Dr Richard Owens
David Baker
Progam Committees
Melbourne
Dr Richard Owens
David Secomb
Fremantle
Dr Richard Owens
Cameron Thorn
Yokohama
Dr Richard Owens
David Secomb