Webinars
Each term we have a free webinar along with 3-5 more sessions on Fridays through the term. Our Webinars are low-cost community gathering spaces where we practice skills together and dig deep into core concepts. These are discounted or free for our Patreon members and retainer clients. The topics that we choose for these webinars are often representative of the growing edge of our work, resulting in highly generative discussions. Below are our upcoming webinars & you can access our archive of all previous webinars available on bluelight.academy
All webinars happen from 5-6:30pm EST/4-5:30pm CST/3-4:30pm MST/2-3:30pm PST. A captioned recording of each webinar is made available via our bluelight academy platform for registrants who are unable to attend webinars live or registrants who would like to refer back to webinar content.
We also present private webinars! If you are interested and would like to request our collective members to participate in a panel or serve as a speaker for an event, please reach out to us with the event logistics.
WEBINARS & RETREATS
The things that actually shape how your team feels, from who gets to rest and who absorbs the slack, to how and when you can say no, are rarely written down. These norms too often live in what's assumed, not what's said. This webinar is guidance and practice on how to codify care practices and make the implicit, explicit.
Most of us were never taught how to give feedback well. This too often means we avoid it, soften it into meaninglessness, or even wield it like a weapon. In horizontal or shared-power structures, who gives feedback to whom? What makes it fair? How do you hold each other accountable without recreating the top-down dynamics you set out to escape? This webinar is about doing the hard thing: having real feedback conversations that build trust instead of eroding it.
Groups tend to seek and find someone to blame. When things go wrong — or even when they're just hard — leaders often become the screen onto which a whole team projects its frustration, disappointment, and unmet needs. In mission-driven and social justice spaces especially, this dynamic runs deep, tangled up with our histories, our expectations, our tense relationship to power, and everything we wish leadership could be. This webinar takes an honest look at what happens beneath the surface of our relationships to authority, and how naming those dynamics can create more leaderful, equitable, and collaborative movements.
We are wrapping up the Year of Generative Conflict with a free webinar featuring the bluelight academy team sharing back the biggest lessons, themes, and core tools from across the entire year of programming. We have completed 11 brand new customized webinars, 11 days of retreats, and completed 3 cohort programs: a summer Transformative Justice cohort, a fall workplace conflict resolution cohort, and our first yearlong liberatory conflict mediation program (with 1 cohort of 20 participants across turtle island, and another cohort of 20 participants from around the world)! This webinar will also announce the theme for 2027’s bluelight programming with a special discount for those who attend live.
Virtual Retreats
Our public retreats take some of our most requested content from our work with groups and organizations, and make them available to a broader audience. Upon completing a one-day retreat, participants will leave with both theoretical frameworks and concrete resources to support their work within their community. You can book any of our retreat topics for your private org or group.
On access: these retreats are virtual, offered in English with closed captions. All of our daylong retreats take place on Fridays from 8:30am-2:30pm PST / 9:30am-3:30pm MST / 11:30am - 5:30pm EST with an hour break included. Our new 2-day Harm Systems Design Retreat will take place each designated Friday from 10am-2pm PT / 11am-3pm MT / 1-5pm. Written and captioned video materials to prepare will be shared in advance. If we cannot meet those needs, we will reach out and offer a refund and alternate options.
All retreats come with a 1:1 coaching session with a Spring Up consultant as well as access to retreat materials on our bluelight academy platform.
Friday, Oct. 2nd 2026
What skills do we each need to learn in order to make conflict a generative force in our lives? How can conflict prompt us to learn more about ourselves, other people, and how the world works?
The daylong retreat is great for anyone who is interested in deepening their understanding and analysis skills of conflict. Within the retreat, participants will examine fictional scenarios and engage with tools to support empathy building, understand and map power dynamics, investigate the scale of the harm, and discuss the choice points available throughout the conflict.
Friday, Oct. 23rd + Oct. 30th
Harm is pervasive in communities and institutions, how an organization responds to the harm is it's accountability in action.
The 2-day retreat is great for organizational leaders, people from Human Resources or community accountability teams or entrepreneurs thinking about how to create systems in their endeavors. Through an examination of Organizational Accountability, what harm looks like in the participants’ context, and consideration of the legal liability requirements of organizations, participants will leave with a tangible prototype for how they will respond to harm given their unique context. Registration for this retreat also includes a group coaching session for the 2 or more registrants from the organization to make sure they have a workable system to implement moving forward.
Friday, Dec. 4th 2026
How do we navigate power and difference equitably? What personal skills and collaborative tools can we each learn in order to practice consent with ourselves and one another? Are you curious to know more about sociocracy and practice consent based decision making in real time?
This daylong virtual retreat is great for anyone who is interested in deepening their understanding of power and skills of consent based decision making. Within the retreat, participants will examine how both formal and informal power show up in our lives and unpack the 4 core steps to consent based decision making including internal consent, decision making tools, communication skills, and feedback practices.
Friday, Dec. 11th 2026
What does it take to be free together? And what is the role of the facilitator / educator in supporting that freedom?
The daylong retreat is great for anyone who facilitates learning experiences, whether they are teachers, trainers, researchers, community accountability facilitators, social workers, therapists, or leaders in the workplace. Through dismantling notions of what ‘should’ happen in facilitated spaces and how people ‘should’ learn, participants learn skills to lead people and spaces towards differentiation and self-directed learning.
Private Webinars & Retreats
Interested in booking a retreat or webinar for your group?