Four Rivers

“Campus Co-Evolve 2019 started me on a fresh new journey into self-exploration. The joy I feel about the 4 days of the retreat cannot be described with words! The thoughtful selection of materials, the location, nature, the food, my co-evolving partners, all will make this journey unforgettable. My transformation is the shift from consumer to co-producer so that I can continue to play my part in the symphony… To be continued….” – Leona Liu, China

“This most special program nurtured my spirit, mind and body. I feel invigorated to embark on a new journey of exploration, to bring out the best of myself, to support others to bring out the best of themselves, to support organisations and to serve them becoming more enabling organisations.” – Hong Mei, China

“A transformation encounter, an opportunity for personal & collective growth, with an endless field of opportunities through its co-creative nature. It is the first time I joined a program  as a co-creator rather than as a consumer. The 4 day retreat program gifted me with friendships, the experience of personal growth, enjoyment of healthy food and the spectacular natural beauty.” – Bowen Li, China

“If you wish to evolve beyond the personal and thus let your evolution become a contribution for the larger whole, then this is for you.”– Mathias Weitbrecht, Germany

“My personal learning journey with the Four Rivers course has challenged my understanding of how we as change makers can truly learn and co-evolve in a very organic way. I find it to be a welcoming home for people who really want to have an impact. In the course I find evolutionary friendships, soulful inspirations, and huge potential to enable even bigger change by working together.” – Yiqing He, China

“Sensing into the wickedness of complexity – responding with essential momentum & plans, transformational cutting edge knowledge, a truly meaningful space to grow for every soulful r.evolutionary.” – Jan Maisenbacher, Switzerland

The 4 Rivers course, is both an inner journey into one’s own personality, leadership style, way of approaching others, and a tool for crafting deep inner and outer community, while exploring processes for deeper engagement and unlocking communal and collective intelligence in a group. I was deeply nourished by the wisdom, enterprise and example of others, and by the slow secure process by which a group of us was steered through self and other discovery through reading resources, collaborative work and shared conversations. This has been a powerful opportunity for all of us to learn the tools of co-creative design, collaboration, dialogue, story-telling, wisdom harvesting, knowledge gardening and engaging with new tools for personal development, self-management, and self-mastery… What a privilege it was to learn in the community… May our proposed Transformative Community of Practice blossom and thrive…” – Marthe Muller, South Africa

“It has been such an interesting journey and I learned a whole lot more than the curriculum! I really enjoyed meeting you all and I look forward to our Community of Practice. A special thank you to our facilitators for all the support. It is humbling and inspiring to engage with new ways of looking at the world.” – Ruth Mattison, South Africa

“I feel I evolved as a changemaker, by broadening my knowledge and understanding (conceptual lenses) about changes in consciousness (awareness). Both required integration and evolution as a practitioner and as a changemaker. Slowly but surely, I have experienced and witnessed palpable personal behavioural shifts about what it means to embrace collaboration and co-evolution as a  lived experience. New and more integrated awareness, greater confidence and deeper experience of what it means to express and embody two essential requirements for changemakers and evolutionary facilitators: collaboration and co-evolution.” – Barbara Nussbaum, South Africa

“The 4 Rivers Course has enlightened and expanded my life and consciousness. I am a different person to the one who enrolled 4 months ago. The content inspired me to weave the depth of learning into my life and work. My perceptions of myself and what is evolving in this exceptional world have transformed. Highlights are: collaborating, learning and sharing in a virtual classroom, deepening relationships and connections. This has inspired my vision to take my workshops online.” – Nidhi Chaitow, South Africa

“I feel like I was able to lean into the learning community and pivot slightly from the “rational” and productive mindset part of myself. This was one of my learning objectives, which I feel I started to stretch towards. Now that it’s in motion, I believe that I can be more tolerant with complexity and community work and that I will be able to create really interesting inquiries through “knowledge networking.” I also think that what I learnt in the course will become clearer and clearer as I continue my path. I still have a lot of materials to read, practice and consider in my future work.” – Stina Heikkila, France

Transformative Media Creation & Reception

“I felt so privileged to be a participant on this Transformative Media Creation & Reception course. I was moved, stimulated and inspired by the generous sharing and collaboration of wonderful minds and hearts. The extraordinary wisdom and value in the work of each fellow participant opened up new worlds for me. Through the rich course content and expert guidance of visionary Mark Allan Kaplan, and Jonathan Steigman, I have come away from this journey with a renewed understanding of audience engagement, and a more perceptive respect of the vital force for healing and change we have in media, and our responsibility as filmmakers, story tellers, while also having expanded my own worldview and perceptual field.” – Gina Bonmariage, ex-Dean, AFDA (Film School) South Africa

“The Transformative Media course was both mind-blowing and heart-warming for me. 
My turning point began when Mark shared his story about stuttering (which led to him making a film about stuttering). It opened up the space for everyone to share their own life stories, and gave me hope that I could find my voice too, by embracing my shadow and weaknesses. For me, the most transformative moments with your campus were your Community of Practice sessions you facilitated (which helped to nurture deep mutual trust among participants). This is something I don’t see in other courses. It felt like we bonded as a family, united to heal humanity. A rare combination of Deep Caring (e.g. holding space for our differences), and High Ideals (e.g. transitioning humanity to #GameB). As everyone shared our common love for films (e.g. Inside Out, Her, Sense8), we began to share deeper parts of ourselves too. It felt like ‘melting our masks,’ connecting more deeply with our hearts/guts, and becoming more sensitive to the needs / pain points of society.” – James Lee Thenerd, Malaysia

“The Transformative Media course was enlightening, transformative, enriching and powerful. So much knowledge and wisdom, paired with fun, community and insight into myself and others. and all this relevant for our global situation. I understand that media is maybe the most powerful tool for change, since it is so broadly used and universally understood (archetypes, hero’s journey etc.) which leaves me empowered.  I worked on my overall project in order to really understand what I wanted to transport. This helped me sharpen my idea and develop my overall project (of which the video project is a smaller part) to a state where it now can be rolled out.It was astonishing for me in how many different ways one can immerse in transformative media projects. It’s so full of portals to dive into. Amazing. Being together with the whole group on a regular basis was so enriching and uplifting. The way we communicate and work together and work/feedback each others’ ideas and progress is very helpful.” – Kaa Faensen, Germany

“The Transformative Media course changed EVERYTHING! I see media completely differently. I didn’t have the slightest idea of how powerful and impactful the (media) tools I was playing with really were. Now that I’m more conscious and aware of the huge difference a transformative media can make on our world, I approach them with different eyes. Two of our draft videos changed the fate of the Steel Trades Coalition, that we didn’t even know was fading away. With huge surprise, not only our transformative media (project) resurrected the coalition, giving it a new hope, making it stronger than before. Moving images are perceived very similarly to dreams in our brains, so we’re not just making videos, we’re shaping dreams!? WOW! ……..so many different opinions, points of view and feedback…with such a wide variety of people coming from different countries, cultural backgrounds and social contexts. This sharing is what allowed us to grow, to absorb and learn so much about the world we live in today, to keep expanding our consciousnesses. Let’s make that collective awakening possible, together!” – Victor Lopez & the Squadra Righello team, Switzerland

“Four key things I carry away with me, all start with a ‘C’. Content, which was extraordinarily rich with frameworks, expertise and knowledge passed on from Mark & Jonathan. I still feel I am holding it in some container spaces, a repository of information to dive into and to make use of moving forward. Collective intelligence, a group coming together to learn with people of very diverse backgrounds, experience, culture but with a common intention, to change the world for the better, and even different levels of progress. Collective intelligence has fed back in a way which would not have happened if we had studied separately. Connection between participants was very strong in all of the various sessions. Container space was so well crafted. It was organic and fluid, for good peer to peer learning, deep respect, allowing diving into very safe and personal spaces, very strong.” – Rachel Hentsch, Italy

“I really liked the co-creation process. The co-creating environment is very powerful. Very impressed by the kind of people on the course, all different, very diverse, different cultures, but with a common way of feeling things. Good listening to diversity, making efforts to understand the roots of what every co-creator is bringing to the course. Humble approach. Mark and with all the other co-creators brought me, a scriptwriter, this new element of thinking, of how to use the different channels for communicating with the audience, not only writing but sound and time as important elements of a movie. Listening to others was very enriching for my ideas, and I was also able to contribute to other projects. Very strong. Working with the levels of consciousness, offered layers to complexity and ways to discover the truth, through images and stories. I was struck by the idea that one can create stories, movies that are very complex, but accessible to a large audience. Nuances to stories which can be received by larger audiences.” – Dino Maggioni, Italy