Taking Action - AIREA 2025

The "Woke Walk" took place on day one the festival, consisting of conversations set up throughout the town.

What is AIREA 2025?

This last week I was lucky enough to be in attendance for AIREA 2025 in San Lorenzo de El Escorial. A city located about an hour outside of Madrid, Spain. While the travel was long and came with some hiccups, the experience that followed is one that I will never forget. Typically, a conference is a place to discuss ideas, new techniques and innovations that may change the way we think or act. Often that ends up being all it is. A conversation or idea. Those discussions are had and passed on to people who already know about the work that we do and eventually they fizzle out. What if we threw out this tradition and instead spent that time together actually doing what we otherwise would be sitting around and talking about. Creating memories that will never die which in turn sparks conversations we feel it is our duty to share. That is exactly what I experienced the last week at AIREA 2025. It took the idea of a conference and turned it into a neighborhood festival where everyone contributed, worked together and took action in the community. Before this trip to Spain I had only heard stories of the work and excitement that came from last years AIREA. This year, I was able to experience the magic for myself. Here is a quick overview of what we experienced and what we can take away from this trip to implement into our own community upon our return.

What did this years conference look like?

The whole idea of community connection that we would dive deep into during this week started before it even began. On our first day, Juan, a local from Madrid who moved to San Lorenzo de El Escorial 8 years ago had volunteered his time to take us on a tour of the Monastery in town. He was not part of the conference, but rather a neighbor who had connected with Ester at La Regedera and wanted to be involved. Juan would later take myself, Beth, Ashley and Lamika on a tour of Madrid the Monday before we left but that is a story for another time. That initial meeting with Juan was a small glimpse into what we would experience from neighbors and friends the next three days. We started each day together with a group meditation, grounding ourselves and allowing time to set intentions for the day. From there we were off throughout the community. Every event did not happen in a conference room but rather was set up throughout the town. We had discussions in parks and coffee shops. Together we created art in the alleys outside La Regedara. We visited a local pottery shop, candle maker and music events were set up throughout the day. It was through this experience where the words I have heard so many times resonated with me even more after seeing it in action. Visibility = credibility. A sentence I have heard and read many times but maybe did not fully grasp the power of it until I saw it happening. By being out in the community and not stuck behind walls we were showing up, initiating conversations from curious neighbors and offering invitations to participate.

How can we replicate what we learned in our own communities?

On our journey home I had a lot of time to process and think about what I had just experienced. I left Madrid feeling inspired and ready to take action to build on what I had seen and implement it in our own San Diego community. This takes effort and an intentional approach but what comes out of the work that is put into these connections is priceless. How can we be more visible in our community? How can we create a space that is inviting and welcomes interest from members of the community? How do we reach people who do not already have a connection to Life Works? The idea of joining came up often during our time together. Joining clubs, leagues and community involvement to increase our visibility. We started to explore this already, joining an intramural sports league playing softball and kickball. However, this came with its own challenges such as scheduling, physical limitations and in some cases just a lack of interest. Expanding these opportunities or creating a conversation around the importance of joining can ignite interest and motivate people to investigate finding a place of their own to join. Whether that is a club, a sport or a volunteer program they are all around us. The challenge is engaging in that search. So often it is easy to get bogged down or discouraged from the bad in the world we are constantly fed. Community, however, has so much good to offer. The bad is everywhere, the good you have to seek out. The main idea that stuck with me reflecting on our time together was creating an office that feels more like a community space. Currently, our office is in an industrial area that is not frequented by many community members. We have talked about new office space for a while and what if that new space was in the heart of a community, where our doors are open to all. A place that invites questions and conversations to build more on the work that we are doing.  

“Security is not achieved by building walls, but by opening doors.”- Urho Kekkonen

Lunch on our last day of the conference was held at Jaimes house. A local ceramist, who participated in the festival, and opened his home to us all.