From 4 to 6 November 2026, GreenFormation is taking part in No Limits to Hope: Sense-making for alternative futures, the international conference of the Club of Rome and the Romanian Association of the Club of Rome. The event also marks the launch of Constellations of Hope, a global collection of transformative learning stories to which our colleague Ágnes Zólyomi contributed together with partners from the DAISY and PLANET4B projects.
Why this conference matters
Over fifty years after The Limits to Growth, the Club of Rome continues to ask one of the hardest questions of our time: we know a great deal about the ecological and social crises we face, so why is it so difficult to act on that knowledge? No Limits to Hope puts this question at its centre, exploring how humanity can bridge the gap between knowledge and action, reimagine education and learning, and build the cultural and material conditions for a just and regenerative future.
The three-day conference is hosted by the National Bank of Romania in Bucharest and runs both in person and online. Its programme spans transformative learning, finance for regeneration, AI for collective intelligence, materials and resources, population trends and planetary peace, with contributions from educators, economists, central bankers and researchers from around the world. The gathering also pays tribute to the upcoming centenary of Romanian scholar Mircea Maliţa, co-author of the landmark 1979 report No Limits to Learning, which first argued that learning itself – not only technology or policy – is key to closing the “human gap” between the complexity of our problems and our capacity to respond.
Constellations of Hope: our contribution
Constellations of Hope is the outcome of the Club of Rome’s No Limits to Hope initiative, developed with The Fifth Element and the WEEC Network. It brings together case studies from classrooms, communities and institutions that show how learning can challenge established ways of thinking, foster collaboration and help drive transformative change.
Several DAISY partners contributed insights, experiences and perspectives from the PLANET4B project on transformative approaches to learning: Alex Franklin and Claire Lyons (Coventry University), Eszter Kelemen and Karmen Czett (ESSRG), Ilkhom Soliev (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) and Ágnes Zólyomi (GreenFormation). We are proud that this work – rooted in years of collaborative research on values, care and biodiversity – now sits alongside inspiring practice from educators and practitioners worldwide.
Why it matters for GreenFormation
Transformation is in our name. Whether we are assessing the socio-economic impacts of nature conservation, co-creating urban biodiversity solutions or researching how societies can change course, our work keeps returning to the same insight: lasting change depends not only on what people know, but on how they learn, relate to each other and to nature, and act together. The conference is a rare opportunity to connect this practice with a global community that is rethinking education and economic life from the ground up.
We bring to the discussions our experience from two ongoing Horizon Europe projects:
- DAISY, which investigates how mixes of digital, technological and social innovations can drive transformation for biodiversity and equity, and
- DRAGONS, which tackles the “Dragons of Inaction” – the psychological, emotional and structural barriers that keep biodiversity awareness from turning into action.
Both speak directly to the conference’s core challenge of bridging knowledge and action.
Explore further
- Discover Constellations of Hope and inspiring perspectives from educators and practitioners around the world: vist.ly/5raq5
- Learn more about the conference on the Club of Rome website
- Interested in transformative learning? Explore the Care-Full Transformation resources developed through PLANET4B and DAISY on Care-full Courses
We will share our key takeaways from Bucharest in the coming weeks – stay tuned!
