In October 2026 we gathered together for Reforesting Minds, Relational Cartographies, a collaboration between Rizalab, MA Regenerative Design and Forest School at CSM, connecting Brazil and the UK through a shared enquiry into living systems, place and design.
To reforest the mind is to make space for different forms of intelligence, connection and interdependence, moving beyond the individual and human-centred perspectives that often shape how we understand the world. A forest is never one thing, but a living community of many roots, species, perspectives and forms of intelligence, interconnected and continually responding to one another.
We’ll explore what becomes possible when we look beyond the visible. When a place is not a backdrop, but a living network. When we begin to notice the relationships between species, soil, water, memory, materials, people and more-than-human life. And when roots become our guides.
Across three connected sessions in October, we move between online exchange and situated practice in São Paulo and London, sensing, sharing and translating the often-unseen relationships that sustain the places we inhabit.
This is not about creating the same map, or finding one answer. It is about learning to see differently. To become more attentive to place. To experiment with what it might mean to design with living systems, rather than simply designing for them.
How do we shift in design from mapping cycles, waste streams, material and spatial geographies to mapping relations. A relational cartography asks a different question. What is connected to what, and how do those relationships shape a place and inform our design decisions?
What does a root make visible?
What does a river make possible?
What can soil teach us?
Mapping becomes a way of learning, of asking new questions, noticing what might otherwise remain unseen, and cultivating new relations. A situated practice through which we expand our design capacities to notice, trace and propose relationships with living systems.
What might we design differently if we began with relationships rather than things? What becomes possible when we design with relationships, rather than for them?
Over three sessions, two communities, two gardens, one in Brazil and one in London connected together. We explored Relational Cartographies through the lens of root-led methodology and met Friday online to close; thinking back how it had begun, what place enabled, sharing what we noticed and how the gardens enabled enchantment.
In Brazil, we began in a circle with the root cards, took our shoes off and explored a garden and life and made maps through sewing, drawing and collage. In London, we gathered at R-Urban Poplar, a garden where communities meet and grow by working alongside each other. We collected, mapped and shared food, perspectives and the meal became part of our relational practice.
🌿 Many spoke of enchantment and wonder
🌿 Recognising the many intelligences, human and more-than-human, that shape the places we live in
🌿 Presence matters more than output. Slowing down and being open is its own kind of productivity and reciprocity
🌿 Putting relationship at the centre changes how we design, make and collaborate.
🌿 Nature is full of cycles. Composting, decay and regrowth remind us that nothing is ever finished.
🌿 We each notice different things, and sharing them widens everyone’s view.
🌿 Opening up our practices enables new learning spaces that live in our hands and bodies.
“Relation is the most powerful thing that we have.”
“We have a root inside us, in our spirit, in our body, in our existence in the world.”
“If you want to move towards a planetary civilisation, we have to listen deeply to other forms of intelligence, and not just put humans in the centre, but work together.”
“We can relate with the memories from those around us. We can relate from the memories from the territory.”
“The soup was part of the cartography as well.”
Workshop hosting and collaboration with
Bruna Cerasi, Thalita Campbell in Brazil
Inés Quiñones, MARD and CSM Forest School in UK