SLOW DESIGN & BUSINESS IMMERSIONS
Mallorca
Spain
EXPERIENCE SUSTAINABILITY
MISSION
Nomadic Thread Society is pleased to facilitate Slow Design & Business Immersions, purpose driven professional retreats supplying active educations in the business of sustainability and conscious lifestyle. We invite you to step from your boardrooms and company HQ’s into the fields and studios where the sustainability revolution is rooted.
ACTIONABLE TAKE AWAYS
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Fluency in the language of sustainability, across varied sectors, translating to engagement, commitment, and relevance at home.
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Exposure to conscious sourcing, design, and solutions thinking – where all parts of varied small operations are in view – they’re not in white papers or happening in factories and subsidiaries in other countries.
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First hand meetings with founders at the forefront of the sustainability revolution, creating a refreshed professional network and community.
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Vibrant, story-based content to share with teams and customers at home.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Immersions are co-hosted by a roster of inspiring, ethical, independent entrepreneurs, designers, artisans, makers, scientists, and experts. Lived practices and philosophies are witnessed and participated in first hand at workshops, farms, and businesses across the island. All this occurs during 6 day group stays in historic fincas.
Group facilitation serves to fine tune and integrate the learnings; participants receive support in applying them to their own agendas. Visual content, documentation, and action plans are created to take home and plug in to their own businesses, industries, and lives.
These are very personal experiences – seeds of ongoing relationships are born while learning and collaborating in a close group. A collaborative and convivial environment awaits.
WHY MALLORCA?
Mallorca is the mothership of the Balearic Islands, a diverse island and cultural microcosm in which a broad variety of smaller, sustainable design and business models can be experienced closely, held by layers of history and breathtaking landscapes. Absorb the very ethos of sustainability during a highly immersive and engaging working retreat.
WE PROPOSE..
When planning to adopt more sustainable practices, it’s useful to look at how they’re applied in simpler circumstances, relearning how to think things through. Based on the re-discovery that the ancient tradition of regenerative agriculture is the way forward for today’s sustainable food production, we believe that going back to basics – studying heritage wisdoms and smaller, local ways – will produce solutions across all human activity.
WHO ARE THESE IMMERSIONS FOR ?
Founders and designers with their teams, advertising and marketing executives, culture makers, influencers, sustainability and innovation departments, angel investors, CEO’s, students, and creative souls who wish to gain first hand knowledge and adopt practices of sustainable design, enterprise, and living.
ADD VALUE
Getting fluent in the language of sustainability gives companies an edge in both attracting and communicating with younger generations of customers, employees, and executives.
The NYU Stern Business School Center for Sustainability hosted a panel in 2019 in which the CEO of Vanguard and Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review briefed a room full of investors on how ROI is best served by adopting sustainability throughout company practices, citing talent retention as the driving factor. The adoption of more equitable, ecological, conscientious business practices is practically a mandate for the future.
SCHEDULE
• Day 1
– ARRIVAL
– ORIENTATION
– YOGA
– WELCOME DINNER
•Days 2,3,4,5
– YOGA
– BREAKFAST
– WORKSHOP OR EDUCATIONAL VISIT
– LUNCH
– WORKSHOP OR EDUCATIONAL VISIT
– EARLY EVENING REST
– DINNER
– ENTERTAINMENT OR GROUP ACTIVITY SOME EVENINGS
• Day 6
– BREAKFAST
– OPTIONAL ACTIVITY
– DEPARTURE
* Yoga is optional and self lead.
What does conscious, slow design and culture mean?
Both conscious and slow are terms interchangeable with “sustainable” in the current zeitgeist. These ubiquitous, important current concepts can and are being applied to fashion, agriculture, animal husbandry, energy, food, urban engineering, architecture, forest and land management, the politics of labor, economics and all their varied sub- sectors. They call for heightened attention to all aspects of human activity on the planet, asking us to engage in responsible capitalism, to work towards equity and inclusion, to safeguard ecosystems.
On September 20, 2022, The New York Times Summit on Sustainability hosted Al Gore among it’s speakers. He declared a veritable sustainability revolution in the making.
Making the case for small business, independent creatives, and sustainability.
Going big, scaling, maximizing profit – these have long been the mantras of the business world, and have certainly contributed to an era of over consumption. It’s time to reconsider. Scale can come in the form of a web or network of responsible businesses delivering goods to their communities, rather than the mass producers we are accustomed to.
The global handmade market grew to $752 billion in sales in 2022, expected to expand to a staggering $1,152 billion by 2028. These numbers reflect a network of small businesses and makers who are succeeding in the sustainability movement.
Small enterprises are more nimble with process – consuming less materials and energy, managing less supply chain, creating less waste, and setting an overall softer pace of consumerism.
Commitment to company ethos and personal, respectful management of human resources are more readily achievable.
Personal satisfaction, creative freedom, and mental health become the bottom line, creating soulful reverberations and a baseline of fulfillment for indie founders, makers, and their customers.
ABOUT NICOLE GULOTTA
Program Director & Facilitator
“I have an anthropological angle on creativity, opportunity, and enterprise. What do people seek, want, make, do, wear? How do they express themselves? What materials are available? How is the work done? And the most pressing question, can this all be done responsibly? “
Nicole’s studies in Art History at NYU planted a deep aesthetic appreciation and set her on a humanistic trajectory early on. Twenty five years as a NYC- based fashion and wardrobe stylist followed, an independent creative and business person was born.
Her tree-hugging nature drew her into the deep end of the world’s heritage hand-made sector in 2009, when Nomadic Thread Society was founded. As a lifelong entrepreneur and global citizen, her classroom has always been the world of shops and showrooms, ateliers and makers, markets and manufacturers in every city, town, and country she’s been lucky to explore.
These days Nicole applies her cultural curiosity, activist nature, and independent business chops to consulting and mentoring in the conscious design and culture spaces.
Tara Mohr’s Playing Big FacilitatorsTraining gave her the impetus to formalize this program and bring it to life.
DO GET IN TOUCH TO RECEIVE FULL PROGRAM DETAILS, PRICING, AND DATES.
