Educational Programming
Educational Programming
Educational Programming
Our Origin School delivers immersive experiences that reconnect people to place. From public gatherings to professional intensives to youth leadership development, Origin School programming cultivates ecological intelligence across audiences.
Strategic Partnerships
Educational Programming
Educational Programming
BFL collaborates with mission-aligned organizations—field stations, aquaculture operations, schools, retreat centers—to embed ecological intelligence into existing institutions. We're not building from scratch; we're activating what's already there.
Public Communication
Educational Programming
Public Communication
Ideas that don't spread don't matter. Through writing, video, and public speaking, BFL translates ecological intelligence into cultural conversation. The Substack chronicles the work. The YouTube channel shows it in action.
The Premise
The systems that organized human life for generations are transforming. AI is reshaping work. Climate disruption is accelerating. The social contracts that promised security in exchange for productivity are fraying.
Technical solutions alone won't be enough. We need people who can work differently because they understand themselves differently—as participants within living systems rather than separate from them.
BFL develops this capacity. Not through information, but through transformation.
The Vision
BFL is building a network of people and organizations grounded in ecological intelligence. As participants move through Origin School programming, some will become certified practitioners—trained to recognize and cultivate this intelligence in businesses, schools, and communities.
This isn't a single program. It's infrastructure for a different way of working and living—one that aligns human enterprise with the creative intelligence of nature itself.
The philosophy underlying all of this is Oika.
About Rich Blundell
Rich Blundell is a neurodivergent ecologist who spent thirty years immersed in Earth's wildest habitats—coral reefs, rainforests, deserts, tundra—studying how nature shapes human consciousness. From this research he developed Oika, a living philosophy grounded in science that produces an abiding sense of belonging.
He holds a PhD in Big History from Macquarie University, a USCG 100-Ton Master license, and has received recognition from NSF, PBS, National Geographic, and the Rockefeller Philanthropies. He currently serves as Scientist-in-Residence at Maria Mitchell Association.
But the work starts where he started: Duxbury Bay, where he learned to swim in 1972 and fished commercially before leaving on what became a three-decade apprenticeship. Now he returns with what he learned. Read his full story →