The Soil Journey: Preparing Soil Lab Activators to Bring Living Soils Workshops to Local Communities

Between 28 November 2025 and 20 April 2026, The Soil Journey – Living Soils Workshop Trainings took place online as part of the SoilTribes project. Delivered by The Living Soils Workshop, the training process brought together 21 Soil Lab Activators from SoilTribes partner organizations, including ERDN, INOVA+, POLIMI, TC-SA, Platoniq, OCE, and other partners.

The activity focused on preparing Soil Lab Activators to facilitate Living Soils Workshops within their local communities. Through this process, partners strengthened their capacity to support future engagement activities connected to soil awareness, soil literacy, and community participation.

Soil Lab Activators are central to the project’s local and regional engagement work. They help translate SoilTribes’ mission into action by connecting knowledge, people, and places. Through the Living Soils Workshop training, they gained the tools and preparation needed to bring the methodology into their own local contexts.

During the training process, Soil Lab Activators first attended Living Soils Workshop sessions and then received training to become facilitators.

This structure allowed participants to experience the methodology before learning how to guide others through it. It also created space for reflection, exchange, and adaptation, helping future facilitators understand how the workshop can be used with different communities and audiences.

By the end of the training process, Soil Lab Activators were better equipped to facilitate conversations and learning experiences around soil health, soil literacy, and community engagement.

Strengthening the SoilTribes ecosystem

The Soil Journey contributed to internal capacity building within the SoilTribes consortium.

By involving Soil Lab Activators from several partner organizations, the activity supported a shared understanding of how Living Soils Workshops can contribute to the project’s engagement strategy. It also reinforced collaboration among partners working toward the same goal: making soil health more visible, understandable, and actionable.

The next step is local implementation: bringing the workshops into communities, opening space for dialogue, and helping more people connect with the living ground beneath them.