kula labs
Kula Labs is a regenerative design laboratory serving those who are tending to their neighborhoods and landscapes. Through Kula Labs, we build partnerships and facilitate fellowships to leaders and weavers of regenerative projects and enterprises all over the world.
At Kula Labs, "patterns," form the core methodology for connecting with and collaborating with our partners. ReLocalize Creativity and Awakening Lands are a set of tools and practices we use to observe natural and social systems and recognize the recurring structures and dynamics within the neighborhoods and landscapes of our partners. These patterns reveal how people, projects, and environments naturally interact and evolve. Kula Labs then aligns at the right times, and places, with those whose work reflects authentic service to each other and the Earth. With these partners, we cultivate resilient networks that foster meaningful, long-term impact rooted in the organic flow of the neighborhoods themselves.
patterns
Kula Labs offers a fellowship to individuals inspired to do regenerative work in their neighborhood and landscape along the lines of our focus areas. We are interested in supporting individuals who have a bias towards action in their communities and those who are designing systems that can be replicated by folks in other landscapes around the world. If interested in joining Kula as a fellow, please fill out this form.
fellowships
Christian Ramirez
Founder of Libertad Farms
Driftwood, Texas.
Annie Spade
Founder of OASIS at Big Country Ranches
Dripping Springs, Texas.
Josh Thiboddeux
Founder of Nurture Nature
Austin, Texas.
Lisa Apfelberg
Coordinator at Agrihood Working Group
Austin, Texas.
Desmond Lowe
Founder of Fertile Foods
Driftwood, Texas.
Anna Castonguay
Founder of Awakening Lands
Buffalo, New York. Anna is a collector and curator of stories that traverse the airwaves at the speed of an unladen swallow. As she weaves these stories of place, our forest of support grows.
Benji Ross
Founder of Awakening Lands
Benji is half monk in a cave and half party host in a forest. He is an incredible navigator of uncharted waters all while keeping one eye on the horizon of tomorrow, and the other on the land of today.
Amanda Ramirez
Founder of Libertad Farms
Driftwood, Texas.
Kula Labs partners with organizations that are driving long-term, neighborhood-led initiatives. We are eager to provide tailored support through funding, resources, and strategic guidance to help our partners bring their visions to life in the following focus areas:
Ecological Storytelling and Advocacy: Through compelling storytelling, educational content, and advocacy initiatives, your organization fosters a deeper belonging between people and their environment, driving collective action towards conservation and sustainability.
Bioregional Regeneration and Neighborhood Development: Your place-based organization works to promote sustainable land management, restore water systems, and foster biodiversity. Simultaneously, local neighborhoods are supported in creating self-sustaining, nature-based solutions that enhance food security, water access, and provide regenerative livelihoods to the region.
Our collaborative approach strengthens the impact of each initiative, fostering sustainable growth and resilience into a regenerative enterprise in service of Earth. If your organization resonates with our focus areas and would like to receive our support, please get in touch with us, here!
partnerships
ReLocalize Creativity
ReLocalize Creativity is an open platform presenting a living global pattern repository, and sharing tools, skills and methods training. It is intended to enable creatively thinking together and acting together to relocalize patterns that are important to us. At Kula, we use the ReLocalize Creativity framework to see patterns in the systems we are a part of and determine the nature of our entanglements (if any) with patterns from other systems. Kula Labs itself can be seen as a pattern: one that observes, weaves, and supports other patterns in service of Earth.
Leads: Marc Pierson and Kerry Turner
For more, please visit Kula's ReLocalize Creativity FedWiki
Awakening Lands
Awakening Lands is embarking on a journey of regenerative storytelling and movement building, working towards a happier and healthier way of being human on Earth. Pioneering the “Place Attunement Practices” the team has developed a way to build deep belonging and trust, identifying “gifts” that reveal ways for people to come together to regenerate a landscape, and themselves. When nurtured, these gifts can transform into regenerative projects and initiatives. This organic, bottom-up approach ensures that the support is not only well-aligned but also well-timed.
Leads: Benji Ross and Anna Purpera
For more, please visit the Awakening Lands Substack
Fertile Foods
Established in 2023, Fertile Foods is a sanctuary within the Roy Creek Watershed in Dripping Springs, Texas. The 23-acre property plays a critical role in preserving water quality and ecological balance at the headwaters of Roy Creek, which feeds into the Pedernales River and eventually supplies Austin with drinking water. Through sustainable land management, spring restoration, and the creation of a food forest, Fertile Foods is dedicated to revitalizing the ecosystem and ensuring a healthy, biodiverse future for and with its community.
Leads: Desmond Slattery Lowe and Victoria Albertson
For more, please visit Fertile Foods
Agrihood Working Group at Green Gate Farms
In our neighbourhoods, we have largely forgotten how to take care of each other, how to grow our own food, how to build our own houses, how to protect each other, how to educate our children and one another, how to work together for and with people we know, how to care for our elders and children and less fortunate ones, how to be healthy, and how to take care of our place on the Earth.
Hosted at Green Gate Farms, the Agrihood Working Group is a neighbor-led resilience network where we (re)learn how to belong with each other and nature. We aim to empower our neighborhood to develop a deeper connection to our local food system and work towards more sustainable and regenerative ways of living.
Libertad Farms
Libertad Farms is a 1-acre homestead in Driftwood, TX, dedicated to regenerating their land and nurturing a deeper appreciation for regenerative agriculture within their community. Through initiatives like community garden spaces, educational programs for veterans, and dynamic workshops, Libertad Farms provides hands-on opportunities for people of all ages to connect with the land, discover the importance of healthy soil, and forge meaningful connections with nature. By creating an engaging learning environment, Libertad Farms aims to empower community members to become active stewards of the environment.
Leads: Christian Ramirez and Amanda Ramirez
For more, please visit Libertad Farms
Platform of Community Action and Architecture
POCAA is a platform for the exchange of knowledge, formed with a dream to create a network of communities in Bangladesh engaged in self-initiated community architecture. Through the process of "Let's co-create our community?", they facilitate community movement and empowerment by exchanging academic knowledge, available resources and living wisdom within their societal system. Together with POCAA, we are attempting to redefine the image of low-income communities and set examples of nurturing healthy, creative and sustainable environments with limited space and resources.
"What is Community?" a community photography exhibition
Capturing the story of belonging in Gabtoli City Colony
For more, please visit POCAA