Week 4: Exploring new Paradigms of Finance - Bioregional Finance

Welcome to week 4! We are entering our second module with a ‘jump into the future of finance’ together with our guest 🙋‍♂️Leon Seefeld at community call 4. Leon will take us on a journey about bioregionalism and how it intersects with the world of finance. We will explore what capital supply and demand look like in the context of place-based transitions and how we might innovate the current financial system to better support the change that is underway.

Recommended Resources: Bioregional Financing Facilities

Check out the following resources to go deeper into the work of Dark Matters and learn more about the systemic approach being taken by many to change the financial sector to work for all, people and planet.

• 📗 Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet, Samatha Power & Leon Seefeld (Free Book)

• 📄 Dark Matter Labs website & initiatives

• 📄 Bioregional Weaving Labs - bioregionalism and weaving

• 📄 Contested Terrain - Ella Hubbard (article, 15 min)

• 📚Towards multivalent currencies, bioregional monetary stewardship and a distributed global reserve currency - Dark Matter Labs (article series, 30 min)

• 📗 Designing Regenerative Cultures - Daniel Wahl (book)

This week, there are no skill sessions scheduled - so there's more time to go through the great resources for the module & this week, catch up watching the sessions from the past 3 weeks, and maybe even connect to each other!

In order to do so, we prepared 4 fellowship socials for you. Those are drop in, unfacilitated spaces to share a coffee & some stories with each other! Some past Fellows might even join too!

Fellowship Socials

To sign up & confirm your attendance using the following invitations from Google. That way, you can see who else is joining for that session. These spaces are without any agenda, so make the time as you like.

#1 -​ Wednesday, September 25 - 12 noon ET

#2 - Wednesday, September 25 - 6 pm ET

#3 - Saturday, September 28 - 10 am ET

#4 - Saturday, September 28 - 4pm ET

How to organize the social spaces

Self-organize using the breakout rooms that we have created.

In order to be able to open the breakouts, one of you will first have to claim host privileges. In order to do so, use the code 217993 in the participant tab (click 'claim host'). This will let you open up the Breakout Rooms. Be sure to set the breakout rooms to allow participants to choose rooms.

This week, we would also like to introduce you to the opportunity of inviting another speaker for a Skill Session in November- or even hosting one yourself! If you’ve been curious to meet an individual/organization in the field or burning to share your own knowledge & experience with our cohort, this is your chance! Learn more here or just fill in this form & we will get in touch.

---

📹 Week 4 Recordings

Community Call 4: Place-based Transitions, Novel Asset Classes, and Bioregional Financing Facilities w/ Leon Seefeld

📹 Watch here

📓 Leon's slides

🙆‍♂️Leon's Bio:

Leon Seefeld is leading Strategy to Operations as well as the project portfolio of Dark Matter Capital Systems – the unit within Dark Matter Labs focussed on building the capital markets for urban and bioregional transitions to regenerative and resilient economies. In addition, he leads the financial innovation work of the Bioregional Weaving Labs consortium in Europe and is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of reframe.ventures, a consultancy firm focussed on regenerative business model innovation.

The book Bioregional Financing Facilities: Reimagining Finance to Regenerate Our Planet is a product not of Leon as an individual author but of the countless conversations he was fortunate to have with brilliant people at Dark Matter Labs, Bioregional Weaving Labs, and beyond. Following from the conceptual work of the book, Leon is committed to helping bioregional stewards across the world with the arguably more difficult piece: The practical implementation and constant iteration of new financial mechanisms genuinely in service to regenerative life. Prior to working at the nexus of finance and systems change as well as finance and bioregional regeneration, Leon has gained a breadth of experience across the topics of (Social) Entrepreneurship and (Social) Innovation, Sustainability (Strategy) Consulting and Corporate Purpose Consulting, International Development, Personal Development and Sustainability Education as well as complex multi-stakeholder alliance work in various contexts (including the national and bioregional scale).

Leon holds a Master’s degree in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden, covering topics from science-based sustainable development, systems thinking, and complexity theory to the systemic, participatory, innovative, and personal dimension of future-fit leadership. Before, he earned his Bachelor’s degree in International Management from Lancaster University, in Lancaster, UK, and ESB Business School in Reutlingen, Germany.