💚 SoilTribes Bootcamp Results & Wild Card Invitation

After an intense and inspiring first edition of the SoilTribes Bootcamp, we are delighted to announce the results and share the next steps in this collective journey.

Over several days of collaboration, creativity, and critical reflection, participants worked across disciplines and territories to co-design actionable ideas for soil democracy, regenerative futures, and commons-based innovation. This first Bootcamp embodied the SoilTribes spirit of creative contamination — where ideas evolve through exchange, intersection, and shared stewardship.

🏆 The Awarded Challenges

We are proud to announce the four Awarded Challenges, each of which will receive a €5,000 grant to support their continued development and implementation:

1. Reclaiming Urban Sealed Soils
   Addressing soil sealing in urban areas through community-led reclamation and policy engagement. The project expands the idea of unsealing beyond a purely material or ecological act, framing it as a social, educational, and community-building process. It reimagines soil restoration as a pedagogical and participatory experience, where ecological regeneration becomes inseparable from collective learning and local stewardship. In this sense, the project shifts the focus from unsealing soil to unsealing and nurturing our social relations with the land.

2. Mycelium – A Living Soil Story
   (from G3 – Soil Commons & Knowledge Platforms)
   Emerging from the fusion of two initially distinct ideas, Mycelium evolved into a bold, unified vision: a European platform enabling shared learning, monitoring, and funding for soil-positive interventions. The project connects land stewards, researchers, and policymakers through data-driven and arts-based collaboration. Its participatory narrative—linking inheritance, knowledge sharing, and soil care—beautifully embodies the conviction that “caring for soil means caring for life.”

3. Green Barriers
   Reimagining green infrastructure as ecological and social connectors that protect and restore biodiversity while fostering community resilience in rural environments. The project’s strength lies in its strong technical foundation in land restoration, supported by the project leader’s extensive experience in applied technologies for soil regeneration. This combination provides a solid and reliable basis for developing and implementing innovative, evidence-based solutions for restoring degraded soils.

4. Local Interdisciplinary Consortium for Generative Ecosystems (LICGE)
   (from G5 – Soil Resilience in Practice)
   Born from the merger of two complementary projects—Regenerative Agriculture as a Solution to Erosion (Poland) and Cover Crops for Wintering and Resilience (Romania)—LICGE proposes a transdisciplinary consortium linking farmers, researchers, and local communities to co-design regenerative farming plans. Rooted in participatory bioregionalism, it builds Living Labs for soil regeneration and data-driven collaboration across Europe.

Two of these Awarded Challenges emerged from redefined commons challenges during the Bootcamp, demonstrating how co-creation and dialogue can transform individual ideas into shared, systemic visions.

🌿 Wild Card Invitation

Alongside the Awarded Challenges, SoilTribes extends a Wild Card Invitation for continued collaboration and exploration within the SoilTribes Commons framework.

This year, the Wild Card Invitation is extended to:

• Kuku Alesam Majub and the project “Grounded Futures (Refugee-Led Soil and Sustainability Action)”, in recognition of its powerful vision connecting soil restoration, refugee-led innovation, and regenerative community building. The initiative exemplifies the spirit of collective stewardship and territorial justice at the heart of SoilTribes.

• El Trisquel del Sur: A Regenerative Peri-Urban Hub for Soil Literacy and Commons Stewardship, a project that forms part of the SoilTribes Community of Practice (G4 – Agroecology and Territorial Resilience). It will receive non-financial support from the Platoniq Foundation for its contribution to the inclusion of people at risk of exclusion in the Málaga area, through a training programme aimed at empowering young migrants.

Please note: Wild Card projects will not receive production funding but will be offered tailored support and visibility to continue developing within the SoilTribes ecosystem.

🌍 Looking Ahead

We are pleased to confirm the dates for Bootcamp 2 in Barcelona:
📅 Thursday–Friday, 19–20 March 2026 (arrival on the 18th)

Before we meet again in person, there will be two online sessions to prepare the next phase:

• One group session bringing together all Bootcamp participants.

• One individual session for each challenge, with mentors and contributors.

These sessions will focus on designing a participatory process on the platform — and yes, we’ll make it fun with interactive Miro games and creative exercises!

The second Bootcamp will deepen the collaborative work started here, focusing on soil governance, territorial justice, and participatory policy influence through creative and deliberative methodologies.

💚 Gratitude

Our heartfelt thanks go to all mentors, facilitators, challenge owners and contributors whose energy, creativity, and commitment shaped this Bootcamp. Your work has cultivated a fertile ground of ideas and alliances that will continue to grow across the SoilTribes network.