School of Talents

The ideology, the sustainocratic way of working together in multidisciplinary teams and the results obtained are being published in open access through local and international channels such as Springer, New Horizons, etc but also through YouTube, Vimeo, Civitas, etc. 

Human regional development consists of 4 layers. The first one represents the basic infrastructure which usually the identity of the community that develops around it. Think of a harbor, a market place, a mine or logistic cross road..... The second layer is the one in which infratsructures integrate to save and optimize space and resources. Layer is three is referred to as the smart layer as in Smart Cities. In this layer technological instruments are introduced that help the purpose driven interaction between the infrastructures and users. Here a discussion moves in as choices appear. One the one hand smart applications can help governance and bureaucracy with controls and regulation. On the other hand the smart solutions can be triggering the engagement of the users and citizens. This is the emerging forth layers: the participation society. Sustainocracy positions itself at this level.     

ORIGINE

School of Talents or the STIR Learning coopeation found its origine in the life's story of founder Jean-Paul Close. His own learning process was a chain of events that graduately opened up his awareness as he has to struggle mentally and emotionally with the core values in the personal choices he was facing. Eventually he arrived at the insight that human beings and communities share such common challenges but gradually had grown apart. Community management was captured by political and economic layers of self interest that ended up destroying our human relations and natural habitat. He decided to define Sustainocracy and invite anyone with the same level of awareness to join and form society together.  

When Jean-Paul was invited by Prof. Paul de Blot to do a guest performance within the chair of business spirituality of Nyenrode University he became inspired and developed his own version of the human complexity of learning and evolving. The remarkable simplicity of basic understanding of the complexity as well as the cyclic, spiral dynamic evolution, shown as a sinus shape on a timeline, became powerful instruments to help people understand the patterns in our daily lives and even learn how to anticipate. Choices can be made now while dealing with the complexity without the need first to go through chaos or a crisis.   

After 27 years of living and working abroad in different countries around the world Jean-Paul arrived back in his country of birth in 2001. He was shocked by the evolution into a society driven by greed, regulations and money. The awareness explosion he went through open up his curiosity to the human complexity and the way communities evolve and what would be needed to safeguard sustainable human progress instead of local money dependence and vulnerability? The financial crisis of 2008 confirmed his vulnerability theory and opened the doors for his innovative initiatives. STIR was founderd in Februari 2009. His living lab has been the city of Eindhoven and province of North Brabant.