Services Overview
Ascentia offers services through a range of modalities. We truly believe in the power of multi-disciplinary perspectives, and therefore teams are created based on the nature of the projects. Using a model known as the beehive consultancy, we draw together unique talent under the umbrella of the Ascentia Collaborative. This team includes a sociologist, novelist, visual artist, engineer, filmmaker, urban designer, and biologist.
Ascentia is also a ‘shapeshifter’ and ‘shadow dancer’.
Shapeshifting and Shadow Dancing
The art of shapeshifting is the ability to take on different forms to try things, pilot new approaches; not in a big out there brash way, but in ways that are quiet, thoughtful and that bring others to the table. This form of collaboration creates new models that are diverse, well rooted, and shared. No one person or group has to own it. Shapeshifting is a key talent of the new curve so that the outcomes reflect the ideology of the new curve, and aren’t just the status quo on steroids. Ascentia is a shapeshifter.
Shadow dancing is about not having to be in the limelight, changing things while being in the shadows. When the sun shifts over, one is ready for what is to come. Also when the sun comes out it shines on the broader horizon of opportunity. The nature of the changes we see maturing require a very different type of nurturing. Some may need a building approach, some a gardening mode, while others require a choreographer’s methodology. Many of the projects, actions and activities are being carried out in isolation of each other. They are also being cultivated in the shadows as current government policy, large corporate mandates and ways of operating could easily snuff them out. However as these changes begin to grow, they need to be connected by orchestrating movement in an elegant and different kind of way. Orchestrating the movement with a choreographer’s touch will bring about a critical mass in a way that will ignite a tipping point that shifts the status quo in a compassionate and intelligent way.As a shadow dancer, Ascentia is able to bring fresh innovations into the light of day in a gentle, collaborative and nudging way.
The Turquoise Economy
We sit at the threshold of breakthrough creativity. This isn’t just technological innovation, we are also experiencing an innovation of meaning. This can entail rediscovering the value of things we have taken for granted like food and water. It can also be the finding of new meaning and purpose for physical things or aspects of ourselves. This new curve is being shaped by some fascinating pioneers who have struggled to leave behind the thinking and belief systems of the Industrial age, to carve out a new path.
We have to move beyond green. We have to move beyond agendas, be they environmental, social or economic. We have to work with a kalaedoscope that reframes and integrates the traditional domains. We have to learn to partner with nature, to explore its intelligence and learn how to live in a synergistic way with our natural world, as well as each other.
As a blend of green and blue, Turquoise follows green in the colour wheel. Turquoise carries great wisdom of basic truth within it. It is one of the oldest stones known. For thousands of years, Turquoise has spanned all cultures, prized as a symbol of wisdom, nobility and the power of immortality. Among the Ancient Egyptians, Persians and Chinese, Aztecs and Incas of South America, and Native North Americans, Turquoise was sacred in its adornment and for power, luck, and protection. These are much needed in our world today.
In the Human Energy System, turquoise is the colour of the 5th energy centre, the place of truth and creative expression.
Social Innovation
Social innovation is a buzz word that is showing up everywhere. It is however a methodology and approach that Ascentia was founded on in 1998, and continues to evolve. Social innovation uses a ‘pull’ approach by sending out flares and signals of radically new mindsets, along with triggers and inspirations of new approaches, and then ‘calling in a new public’ to come join an innovation. Given that the majority of innovation is conducted in the cracks between the sectors, this drawing in of ‘a new public’ mines that innovation and integrates the ideas and people from different sectors and disciplines.
Ascentia experiments with and applies social innovation methodology in all of its projects such as profiled in the Projects Section. One example is The Naked Truth, a clarion for change in the Lake Simcoe watershed initiative that mobilized over 300 citizens to showcase how people care about where they live, and how willing they are to get behind positive action. The Naked Truth was FOR something, not against. This was a distinct diversion from the typical environmental perspective of guilt and redemption.
The Science Of Change
Over the past number of years scientists and physicists have confirmed what spiritualists have known for centuries -that everything that is alive pulsates with energy and all this energy contains information. Our physical bodies are surrounded by an electro-magnetic energy field that is both an information centre and highly perceptual system. We are constantly “in communication” with everything around us through this system, which is a kind of conscious electricity that transmits and receives messages to and from other people’s bodies. The wealth and depth of information that is held in this energy field is one of the sources that Ascentia works with.
This human energy field that surrounds us carries the emotional energy created by our internal and external experiences -both positive and negative. This emotional force influences the physical tissue within our bodies. In this way -our biography -that is the experiences that make up our lives -become our biology, and direct our behaviour.
Behaviours don’t just happen on their own. They are informed by an internal environment that includes a belief system that contain assumptions, attitudes, values and perspectives. These belief systems form complex default program primarily in our subconscious mind that controls our behaviour.
Belief transformation is a new frontier of human change.
Youth Entrepreneurship
In the past, youth unemployment has been addressed through part-time work or minimum-wage jobs with limited growth potential. Our youth, like the generations before them, have fundamentally different views on most topics, and entrepreneurship is no exception.
Ascentia’s view of youth entrepreneurship however has a twist. We believe that many of the young people who have significantly challenged every system: family education and legal are in fact a new breed of entrepreneur. They possess brains that structure and process information in unusual ways. Their brains are literally shaped differently – changes in head shape and in many cases internal brain structures and processing modes have altered.
They have new types of intelligence emerging. To understand the intelligence factor, we need to recognize that the major source of intelligence in the body is the heart – our fifth brain. Ironically these Kids are also angry – they have a peculiar kind of anger which exists as an undercurrent just below the surface and is even found in the most loving kids. Anything that doesn’t fit, is phoney, hype, doublespeak, exaggerated, dishonest, or not genuine can trigger an anger response that is unlike patterning in previous generations.
They are made to order revolutionaries, rebels, activists and change agents IF this anger is transformed. This is the focus of Ascentia’s work in this arena. Check out ReWilding Youth Entrepreneurs as an example.
Innovative Public Engagement
Ascentia thrives on designing and implementing unique forums for learning people’s dreams, thoughts, perspectives, beliefs and viewpoints. Many of our perspectives are hidden to us, until we come into an experience that gives them a voice and form. Rather then conducting conventional open houses and workshops, at Ascentia we delve into creative and engaging ways for people to uncover their points of view and share their knowledge. We bring people together from all walks of life to help shape public policy through carefully designed engagements: from developing a food strategy while learning how to cook in a professional kitchen, to creating future scenarios with action figures, lego and video. All the engagements are based on state of the art research into the various trends that are shaping the future, as well as undercurrents that are beginning to bubble to the surface. Together with the research and the engagement, a fresh context is created which provides a new framework and foundation for future planning and relevant and sustainable public policy.