In this Project Onboarding session for Coherence 2025, Alex Lion Yes! (PREBRANDING) meets with Jay Cousins of Canopy for a visionary conversation about collaborative systems change, regenerative infrastructure, and how to scale solutions without sacrificing coherence or care.
Jay shares Canopy’s founding inquiry: why do so many regenerative solutions remain isolated and fragmented — and how can we weave them into an integrated ecosystem? Together, they explore Canopy’s multi-layered approach to connecting builders, ideas, and infrastructures — from modular commons in urban spaces to affiliate-powered open business models, all grounded in a philosophy of “serving those who serve.”
Key topics explored:
🔹 Canopy as a network-of-networks supporting regenerative solutions and infrastructures of care
🔹 “Serving those who serve”: prioritizing care for ecosystem stewards
🔹 Modular Commons: transforming unused urban buildings into living labs of regeneration
🔹 Solarpunk business models: enabling mass collaboration through open structures
🔹 The role of storytelling and sensemaking in growing a mycelial movement
🔹 Scaling without centralization: how AI and decentralized organizing can help ecosystems self-propagate
🔹 Social technologies like talking circles and real-time knowledge sharing
🔹 Reimagining collaborative design through the lens of fungi: adaptive, relational, alive
🔹 The role of Coherence as a prototyping field for ecosystem-wide coordination
This is a deep and enlivening conversation for anyone building systems of regeneration, designing shared infrastructure, or seeking to amplify the power of connection across movements.
🔹 Coherence 2025: https://coherence.tv/
🔹 Jay Cousins: http://linkedin.com/in/jaycousins
🔹 Canopy: https://www.canopy-projects.com
🔹 Alex Lion Yes!: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandra-lewtak
🔹 PREBRANDING: https://www.prebranding.wtf