The Epoch Institute began as a conversation between four friends who were all working professionally to make the world a better place. The decision to create a co-working space with other like-minded individuals and organisations seemed to materialise organically and that sense of flow has continued in creating the Epoch Institute. The question: “How do we live in a way that is purposeful in the ways that we interact with each other and the living planet?” helped to shape our aims and objectives. We started with the idea, and have now created a space where people can come together and do amazing things for the world. Beyond a Co-Working space, we have now opened our beautiful boutique workshop space for external users to activate and broaden our network of collaborators to re-imagine a new epoch.
During the covid pandemic, the city was emptying its commercial buildings and stories of people never again coming back to offices became the norm. A new era of working from home had begun. Now workers are again returning to offices full-time or part-time, because working together has many benefits. There is also great efficacy to workshop spaces for think tanks, strategic planning, staff training and the like, being off-site.
Our builder Jason Rahilly turned up in bare feet and curated a “sustainable building site”. Before day 1, he had a sign up declaring “no single use cups on site”. At the end of the build he drove up to Cape Tribulation and planted 140 trees to off-set our carbon and biodiversity foot print. Our electrician Justin Stiles, was also cut from the same cloth and was likewise so excited by the vision that he installed all the wiring to the roof for solar panels. Our architect Adrian Light, had such attention to detail and a belief in what we were doing that he made sure we were nominated for the Premiers Award in sustainability. The Epoch Institute was a finalist in the sustainable building category.
Our co-working space is one of the most beautiful places you could hope to work in. We co-work with many other individuals and like-minded organisations and the Epoch LAB space, is also being used for workshops, team building sessions and meditations.
To ask the question “what is Epoch?” is to open up a rich conversation about possibility because it means so many different things to different people. Epoch is a period of time. And we are in a unique time that many people believe is THE threshold moment for humanity - the ultimate fork in the road where we need to make big choices about how we live with this planet and how we live with each other. From that perspective, Epoch is about naming that truth, in the conversations we are in because we are living in deeply challenging times where people’s resilience is being pushed to new limits and yet we need to find ways to be in the world consciously, creatively and with a lightness of being. At the same time, we need to be awake to the realities we face. So exploring ways that we can show up that are life-nourishing, compassionate and that help us to connect across our differences is both a big challenge and an exciting opportunity.
The Epoch Institute is a network of amazing people and organisations with open hearts and minds. It’s a gathering space, both virtual and physical. It’s a statement about what could be and a conversation about how we might get there. We envisage inspiring people and organisations working on new projects in collaboration with others they may never have worked with before, trying new ways of working and offering support to the wider population through creative workshops, information evenings, training programs, and the like.
Perhaps more than anything, the Epoch Institute is about support, connection and finding meaning in a time of great uncertainty. We will need to learn how to communicate across sometimes very big differences. We will need to learn the art of deep listening. Our indigenous brothers and sisters will be critical to our collective healing and our ability to learn the power of listening to the land itself and remembering our own place within nature so that we can work with life, not against it.
We hope that you see yourself in this Epoch story and that you can both offer something and find something to help you be an active participant in this adventure that we are all being taken on.