Beautiful Futures Lab SUMMER 2025
The Beautiful Futures Lab (BFL) Summer 2025 program is a revolutionary approach to relational intelligence through the combined power of direct experience and global connection. The BFL centers around twice-weekly Oika Campfire Calls—intimate, invitation-only virtual gatherings that transcend geographic boundaries while maintaining the depth and immediacy of real-world lived experiences with nature and in-person connection.
The Global Campfire
The virtual Oika Campfire Calls offer a dynamic conversational space where authentic ecological intelligence emerges naturally across geographical boundaries. Participants from around the world gather in these digital circles to learn about and experience the fundamental principles of Oika:
- Continuity – The recognition that we are not separate from but continuous with natural systems
- Relationality – The lived experience of being in right-relation with all life
- Entanglement – The understanding of interconnection across scales and systems
Each call unpacks these principles through three consistent elements:
- Direct engagement with these core Oika principles
- Earth Stories happening in real-time from across our global networks
- Reportage from Embedded Oika Researchers actively engaging with diverse ecosystems (see below)
The Campfire Calls also serve as powerful interdisciplinary incubators where professionals from diverse fields discover unexpected cross-pollination and collaborations. Participants include educators developing new curricula, artists creating ecological expressions, media professionals reimagining storytelling, entrepreneurs designing regenerative business models, leaders transforming organizational cultures, wellness professionals and therapists developing nature-based healing modalities, and scientists bridging specialized domains, among others. Participants are encouraged to form breakout groups around shared professional challenges, creating field-specific communities of practice (and encouragement) within their respective disciplines.
Sign up to learn more
Get notified when the BeFuL launches this spring by joining the waitlist here: https://network.oika.com/
Principle Investigator: Dr. Rich Blundell
Oika Research and The Beautiful Futures Lab is founded by Dr. Rich Blundell based on his life spanning ecological fieldwork, cosmological research, and the communication of complex neurophenomenological insights. As a “systems whisperer,” Dr. Blundell has developed the capacity to read emerging patterns across scales and substrates and respond with insights that integrate nature’s wisdom. His life's work is to enlist Oika in the generation of novel value-meaning matrices, and to translate ecological intelligence into strategic narratives for expanding project reach, institutional resilience and systemic health.
As economic incentives collide with ecological imperatives, Dr. Blundell believes that leaders and organizations that engage the principles of Oika will cultivate the systemic awareness to navigate change, transform challenge into innovation, and create a beautiful future.
Beautiful Futures Lab Affiliates
Oika Research is proud to have affiliations at the following:
Maria Mitchell Association, Great Harbor Yacht Club Foundation, Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, Rutgers University, Smith College and MacLeish Field Station, The Organization of Biological Field Stations, American Anthropological Association, Syracuse University, The Museum of the White Mountains at Plymouth State, EcoMuseum Zagori, El Hondo Wetland
