Before we truly go to the heart of this piece, I must first share my own context with you. I am Mugdha, a recent Facilitation Team member. This article is a reflection on the intergenerational (for now, focussing on elder - younger) transmission of knowledge, experiences and beliefs. I see that this occurs in many ways, from Assemblies to when we work within Working and Thematic groups together, to even while laughing and sharing about our experiences when we meet in person. It is very much a piece coming from the way I have experienced these transmissions (I am not only young within the GTA space, I am also one of the youngest members of the Facilitation team at 24). The GTA especially for me is a space of much learning because before this I had only really studied the conflicts many of our members are actively resisting against and engaging in alternatives for at very academic levels, which don’t mean a lot without focussed praxis and personal experience. ‘Intercultural’, ‘Decolonial’ and other such concepts were obfuscated through heavy jargon for me. But within the GTA, within this one year (and some months) I have learned and reflected on some of the things I expand on further below.

I have also attached a piece of my own weaving, knots binding together to form a representation of the Global Tapestry as I interpret it. There are five colours used in this piece: yellow, green, brown, white and red. For me, the yellow represents Crianzas Mutuas Colombia, the sun that nourishes us all, bringing a sense of justice and liberty to those who bask in its rays. The green represents Crianza Mutua Mexico, the seeds that are extremely important to this land along with greenery and the flourishing bounty of nature. The brown represents Vikalp Sangam, not just a colour but a way of life, a ‘desi’ (‘des’ meaning land, this word denotes ‘those who belong to the land <of India>). The white represents MASSA, as a part of the ASEAN flag and meaning purity, peace and steadfastness against extremely difficult natural and human-engineered crises. And finally, the red that connects us all as one Tapestry, joining these interweaving connections into one collaborative space.

Our larger Tapestry is created from ‘outscaling’¹⁾ as a way of horizontal networking. To paraphrase from Ashish Kothari and Shrishtee Bajpai’s article²⁾, collectives across geographies learn from each others’ experiences of transformation to strengthen their own processes, building collective strengths. Weaving is the way that the Global Tapestry then enacts this networking and connecting, creating solidarity between grounded initiatives: to remind us that we aren’t alone in this polycrisis, that people are responding and providing alternatives to situations contextually, these methods complementing each other.

For me, weaving is sharing knowledge. While global problems have manifested on the ground in localised ways, the answers to these conflicts have to be local ones, all existing in a pluriverse: a world of co-existing worldviews, belief systems and practices. I think this is collective activism in conversation (so to say) with individual change, building a common context through a shared value system. Alternatively, the shared value system comes together through past experiences, piecing together a collective warp. The actual interactions between the youngsters and the elders weaves this loom of shared beliefs, both building and strengthening our tapestry.

However, weaving is more than connecting. Ashish Kothari from Vikalp Sangam expounds, weaving for him relies on respecting the uniqueness of each thread being brought together, and interwoven through finding the commonalities of these different threads. Each thread intersects with another to strengthen, to bond, to build something new out of existing threads, adding in their own qualities, bringing their own local to reach across geographical and socio-political realities to create a global, a shared knowing, a shared way of being.

Following this methodology of ‘outscaling’, connecting smaller collective initiatives, a central part of this weaving process for me is sharing knowledge across generations. Weaving is an answer to the isolation faced in process and change spaces, as Alex Jensen from Local Futures adds, because modernity and capitalism has caused us all to get into compartmentalisation, isolating us from this larger knowledge of being: we need to undo the ‘I’ and rebuild the ‘we’. Our world has shifted rapidly in just a few decades, as ‘the Great Acceleration’³⁾ has changed our interactions with each other, other cultures and our relationships with nature as well. Thus, I think that weaving is both resistance and renewal, engaging in a process of simultaneous self-reflection⁴⁾ and self-reflexivity⁵⁾.

In this quick-changing landscape, the knowledge that is passed down from one generation to the next is vital because it creates an archive of narratives and stories, reminding the youngest of us that we are part of long histories of resistance, resilience and hope. When the elder talks to the younger (and vice versa, of course), sometimes shared beliefs are reaffirmed, sometimes new perspectives are gained and sometimes views are changed entirely. But because these interactions are woven into the shared loom of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, they strengthen our values and lead us towards response and change to the polycrises. In my opinion, these narratives anchor us within the paths of alternatives we seek, with a shared understanding of where we have come from to envision a future of radical transformations. The importance is to highlight how we “can get from this world to the next…to make life and ensure that life can be continuously made and remade for generations and generations and generations”⁶⁾.

Furthermore, I believe that intergenerational weaving can give us clues on how to weave better, warning us of pitfalls that could both be culture-specific or universal in nature. However, this can prove to be a challenge because a tried-and-previously-failed method may actually work in a different context. Dealing with these conflicts can strengthen the weaving process, new layers of experiences settling onto older ones, similar situations occurring but with different responses. Different understandings of overarching concepts can also lead to a more substantive building of the GTA; this includes cultural differences (and sometimes conflicts in these processes), as well as tapping into wisdom collected through these layered experiences, thus considering intergenerationality as looking beyond oneself.

To make more explicit what I mean by ‘knowledge’, which is a rather broad term encompassing many smaller iterations; I understand knowledge within this specific exploration as primarily experiential learnings, not just lessons learned from the past but also indigenous practices that have been witness and partaken in, and are being in part kept alive by this sharing. This is a living archive, an evolving one with every interaction adding in a new facet and layer of narrative.

Transmission is everywhere, but one of the hopes of our Tapestry is to facilitate change through local transformations; in my opinion, intergenerational transmission is one of the ways to facilitate this change. Intergenerational transmission exchanges prior experiences to then re-contextualise them in a different local context, building new connections within the shared Global Tapestry and further building our network of networks. Intergenerational weaving also has multiple understandings of the same concept that affect the larger Tapestry (as we have discussed before). These take form in substantive discussions, such as through the Periodical, and the discussions within the Facilitation team on the larger issues of (for instance) Democracy; thus, different understandings of larger concepts leading to substantive weaving of the GTA.

These are overarching ideals, but what do their earthy manifestations look like?

The GTA is a network of networks, with different structures upholding this Tapestry: the WeaversThey are local, regional, or national networks or organizations that connects or consists of multiple Alternatives on different themes/spheres, in an inter-sectorial way. A global network cannot be a Waever, neither a thematic one. It should be a collective process of some kind, rather than only a single individual or single organization. By being a "weaver", they are committed to participate in the GTA, developing ways of dialogue, interconnection, collaboration and solidarity with other Weavers. GTA promotes the interconnection of the Weavers, identifying [[:weavers:criteria|a series common criteria for the weaving of Alternatives]]. Examples: Vikalp Sangam and Crianza Mutua., the EndorsersThey are organizations, collectives or thematic networks that publicly expresses its support to the GTA process and it's approved by it. Examples: [[endorsements:index|Full list of current Endorsers]], the GTA’s Assembly as a decision-making body, and the Facilitation team (formerly called the Core team). I want to specifically focus on the latter for this particular piece, as the anchoring space for our Tapestry. While the Facilitation team is constituted through some people from the Weavers, some from the Endorsers, within the FT they bring in their individual experiences of movements, academia and activism, in a way acting as a subset of the GTA as a whole; I am (and have) including/ed in this article responses from some of the elders of this space.

Platforms of these manifestations are highlighted within the Global Tapestry, like Post Development Academic-Activist Global Group (PeDAGoG), a group that emerged during the pandemic years to discuss ways of alternative learning, especially transformations that previously worked for their contexts and could also be initiated in other contexts (please refer here for an example: the Time-Banking experiment enacted by Melanie Bush and Pallavi Verma-Patil in their respective academic spaces). Other manifestations include the Working Groups that have emerged out of the Kenya Assembly, resulting in many diverse individuals as part of our Tapestry who come together to Weave new projects; the recent Pluriversal Dictionary of Alternatives Working group, harvesting terms from around the world by reaching out to our networks, is one of them. The Toolkit for Weaving, a space for both strengthening existing connections and establishing new connections by bringing together ways of weaving in our own movements together to complement and regenerate new ways of connecting, working and being together. I have, through my experiences within the Pluriversal Dictionary of Alternatives Working group, not only learned about composing budget proposals and piecing together invitations as well as distributing responsibilities, I have also understood the cultural nuances that come with every member participating in the group; what financial resources mean and how they should be used, how alternatives are shaped, and where we see this project going.

Within the larger global context, global dynamics as necessarily related to capitalism, what we’re trying to create is a ‘counter-capitalism’, as Lina Alvarez of Crianzas Mutuas Colombia says; we need to focus on local transitions; a different kind of global, one that focuses on local pluralities and spaces rooted within those local pluralities. These are achieved by specific local practices connected to age. Specifically, the Assembly and the Facilitation team provide the necessary reflection spaces for this sort of exchange, through not just sharing of experiences but also talking about practices, and through initiatives such as PeDAGoG.

These are spaces wherein intergenerational knowledge transmission occurs in many ways; not just as ‘direct’ knowledge (like for instance through webinars, initiated dialogues, and lectures) but also as ‘indirect’ knowledge, like experiential learning through organising the GTA’s participation in the recent World Social Forum in Nepal (in February 2024), or holding the upcoming gathering on Radical Democracy; as well as banding together based on common intent, like the Working and Thematic groups. Specifically, my experience at the WSF was a fascinating one because I actually conducted two of the interviews for this article with Ashish and Alex therein. Our conversations actively referenced our context of the WSF. Alex mentioned ‘enabling plurality’ as an important facet of weaving, which especially came alive in the sessions we held on Radical Democracy and Autonomy, along with grappling with the questions, ‘What comes after Resistance, and how do we help build Renewal?’ Similarly, I had a poignant conversation with Ashish, in which he talked about transmission also being non-verbal and even just existing in the same spaces together, along with looking, observing, and bringing platforms like the sessions on Radical Democracy to fruition.

Thus, I find that there is a deep connection I feel with the Global Tapestry, knowing that I am but one thread of this Tapestry with much more experienced threads helping, guiding and facilitating its weaving. This sort of intergenerational sharing can take many forms, through dedicated platforms for exchanging a certain sort of knowledge, or spaces wherein elders are connected to younger generations for open dialogue and learning. And thus, in my own experience at the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, I have felt hope, inspiring me to participate in collectively dreaming this future.

About the Author

Mugdha Trifaley is a member of Kalpavriksh, Vikalp Sangam and the Global Tapestry of Alternatives Facilitation team. She helps support processes such as PeDAGoG, the Dictionary on Pluriversal Alternatives Working group, and also supports the Periodical process.