Join calls on April 18th or May 2nd 2025 prior to selection round in late may. More info below.
The Rhizome is a sponsored fellowship – your project will receive a scholarship for 8 months with learning sessions, travel allowance, personal advisory and access to tools and methodology that is worth 20,000 USD per project. You will not receive a personal stipend.
Open Call
Rhizome Fellowship 2025
Pathways to Regenerative Futures
Are you a narrative practitioner, artist, academic, journalist, storyteller, or activist working at the intersection of reimagining cultural narratives and systems change? Do you believe in the power of narratives to challenge dominant paradigms and co-create regenerative futures?The Rhizome Fellowship is an eight-month journey designed to equip you with tools and accompany you through a process of narrative-led systems change. Rooted in the Culture Hack Method, this fellowship provides a structured yet experimental space to develop and prototype narrative interventions that disrupt extractive models and seed regenerative futures.
More info
Pathways
This year’s fellowship is centered around Pathways to Regenerative Futures. These pathways emerged from a narrative research series Beyond the Carbon Fixation: Pathways to Regenerative Futures that set out to find pathways to liberate land, waters, ecosystems, and communities from the enclosures of capitalism and colonialism.
Through this research we found that beyond the carbon-centered approaches to the climate crisis limited by reductionist metrics and market-driven solutions are alternate pathways already embodied by living examples. These pathways, when interwoven, can serve as a navigational tool for systems change.
The Pathways to Regenerative Futures are:
Restoring Justice, Restoring Life – This pathway emphasizes the inseparable connection between ecological restoration and social justice. Addressing colonial and capitalist exploitation is necessary for healing ecosystems.
Economies of Regeneration – Moving away from extractive economies toward regenerative, circular models that prioritize community resilience and ecological wellbeing.
Land Back to Right Relationship – Advocating for collective ownership models, like Community Land Trusts, to return land to the stewardship of communities rather than corporations.
Bioregional Community Governance – Promoting decentralized, participatory governance structures that empower communities to manage their resources and environments in ways that align with ecological limits.
Healing the Spirit, Healing the Earth – Reconnecting with spiritual and cultural practices that honor the Earth and challenge the disconnection and alienation that drives exploitation.
We will invite fellows and projects that align with the five pathways to apply for the fellowship. There is no cost for participating in this program. Fellows will receive training on narrative change methodology, tools, guidance and support from practitioners and a community of shared practice. The aim of this fellowship is to learn the methodology and launch a hack by the end of our time together in November 2025. The fellowship should support and be integrated into your existing work or activism. Fellows must apply as a collective or organization with at least two participants.