The Core Community: Designing from Presence, Together
I've been wanting to write about this for a while now, letting it brew quietly under the surface. I think I just needed to live it a little longer before the words could come.
This is about a place that has been gently – and sometimes not so gently – inviting me into a new way of showing up. But this time with peers in the design industry. A space where openness isn’t just lip service but a doorway into reimagining how, why, and with whom we create.
For the past six months, I’ve been part of a group - The Core Circle Accelerator. And I feel it’s time to share a little about what’s been happening there.
These last few years have been a wild crossing for me – navigating through many spaces, both outer and inner, always coming back, sitting with what emerges in a different way than before. Allowing myself to observe and feel it. With time. With alignment. With curiosity. Most importantly, with a lot of play and exploration at the heart of it all. Suspending disbelief and enjoying the journey because of the journey, not because of where it leads. That exploration eventually shaped what I now call ZeroCrossing. An invitation to see through the current traditional design approaches. An open space to explore the relation between different latent spaces and creativity. There’s quite a lot of good reflections to expand on, but I’m not in a rush to package or explain that story. Tending to the practices that keep me grounded, connected, and in tune with the kind of life that feels aligned takes front seat.
But coming back to the community... it feels vital to pause and honour it.
There’s something special happening here.
We’re a group of people, many of us with long careers in the creative industry, who are all going through significant changes (who not btw?!). And this space is giving us the room to transform together. There’s no chasing formulas here. No echoing the tired tropes of how to scale, hustle, or position yourself for success. Nothing wrong with those but things are different here. This is a slower, deeper work. A space for personal reinvention where life and work start dissolving into each other in ways that feel more coherent, more human, more natural and alive.
It’s rare to find a place where this kind of collective vulnerability is not only allowed but invited.
What makes this space so precious is that we’re shedding the masks. The politics. The subtle posturing that so often comes with traditional creative industry dynamics. There's a different kind of fidelity, It’s a place where we can be real. Here, we open the spectrum, let the conversation stretch across fields rarely touched in the majority of business rooms. The discussion is wider, more ample, with less compression and normalization where the different dynamics come alive. . More like life itself. That’s where real alignment shows up.
It’s no longer just about creativity in the narrow sense; it’s about connectedness. To oneself, one another and the wider web. And that subtle shift changes everything.
We are seasoned practitioners. We’ve ridden the waves of the industry’s highs and lows. And perhaps because of that, we feel a hunger for a different kind of business. One that feels right. Coherent. Less distorted. Less extractive. Aligned and collaborative.
And so, we gather. Not as competitors, but as mirrors and companions.
The way José Caballer designed the Core structure supports this unfolding beautifully. We began with a nine-week process called 'My Core', diving into the depths of our journeys. What brought us here, where we are, and where something inside us longs to go. It’s kind of an evolution from the Core Discovery Jose created before to design for clients. Knowing that one pretty well, it felt right to join the first MyCore cohort. Extending on Core’s magic, but this time, applied on a personal level. The experience invites us to crack open the surface stories and tend to the hidden rivers underneath. That’s where transformation quietly happens.
In this space, transparency becomes almost inevitable. There’s no need to posture, no dependencies on old relationships, no obligations. Just humans, meeting as they are.
Once that foundational journey was complete, we shifted into a more fluid rhythm. Setting goals. Holding each other accountable. And flowing through what was calling each one of us. And little by little, a different kind of alchemy started emerging in the spaces between us. And José did what felt like an 'invisible move' – allowed the space to become what it needed to become.
It now feels more like a circle than a sprint.
I’ve sat in many men’s circles over the years, and I know that it takes time to arrive at that kind of depth. It requires openness. And openness requires safety. And safety requires familiarity. And familiarity? That can only happen through time. Usually months, if not longer, to get to the marrow. And this group, while more professionally focused, mirrors that depth. We bring all of ourselves. The work talk, the personal shifts, the doubts, the fears, the dreams. That’s where the light shines in the spaces where vulnerability cracks us open, and we touch a different source.
And from that place, creativity begins to stir.
When the masks fall off, when we allow ourselves to sit in the discomfort of not knowing, something else emerges. A deeper current. Ideas begin to surface from a place of coherence rather than urgency.
Because let’s be honest: when we’re disconnected from ourselves, from what’s present, the moment as well as the broader spectrum, we act reactively from a much smaller pool of information. We trigger old habits and patterns. We spiral into fight-or-flight. I’ve seen it. I’ve done it. But when we create containers where all the cards are on the table – the doubts, the desires, the shadows, the dreams and everything between – we can act from a place of attunment. Of clarity. Of felt sense. Of resonance.
In a nutshell, that’s the game I’ve been trying to stay with these last years. Re-membering myself. To feel. To think. To let the body talk. To allow the mind to feel. The gut to sense, and the heart to navigate.
And now, collectively, we’re sensing into something that feels like the beginning of a new model of collaboration. We don’t yet know what it looks like. But we’re gathering the threads, reflecting, prototyping ideas, slowly weaving something that feels... like a new kind of collaborative effort.
That’s the word that’s been orbiting in my field lately: a sort of collaborative resilience.
A resilience that isn’t isolated in the individual but emerges from the diversity of the ecosystem itself. Resilience that can hold us when life dips, when abundance isn’t flowing in linear ways, when old systems fail us. Resilience that values contribution not only by skills delivered but by presence, participation, and the invisible labour of showing up in the space.
Could we build a model where the community itself can support its members, not just when things are flowing, but also when they’re not? A model where people’s value isn’t just tied to their skills, but also to how they show up for the group?
Where client work helps sustain the whole?
And maybe backs up the creations resulting from the natural relational entanglement of the group?
Through decentralised ways of being?
These are some of the questions we’re holding.
And honestly, I feel something beautiful is gestating here.
A few days ago, we opened the circle to the broader community. People who haven’t yet experienced the nine-week journey. And again, the space held was profound. Seeds were planted.
If you’re someone who is yearning to explore what creativity might look like when it’s rooted in honesty, depth, coherence and playful experimentation... consider this an invitation.
If you work in the creative industry and you feel the ache for a new kind of conversation – one that doesn’t bypass the messiness of being human nor the urgency of doing business differently – I honestly don’t know of another space quite like this one right now.
We’re not in a rush. We’re not looking for mass. We’re looking for alignment and impact.
Alignment with self. With each other. With the communities we touch. And with the planet that holds us all together.
If that speaks to you... maybe it’s your journey too.
PS:
If this resonates with where you’re at, I’d be happy to connect.
No agenda—just a conversation. Sometimes it starts there.