Lovefare
EXPLORING THE CONCEPT OF LOVEFARE
A QUEST FOR MORE EFFECTIVE ORGANISING IN OUR SOCIAL CHANGE WORK
Wendy Ball (March 2026)
Lovefare is the word I use for the collective work we do to make the world better.
In all sorts of ways, so many of us are engaged in this work. It’s what we do to advance social and economic justice, environmental sustainability, peace, reconciliation, healthy communities, planetary health, advocacy, movement building and more. While the terminology and contexts vary, there is a particular intent that we all share: we work towards a fairer, more flourishing world. We pursue life that is more aligned with our deep interdependence – being in healthy relationship with ourselves, each other and the living planet we share.
Where warfare is organised around conflict, lovefare is organised around connection. It is not waged against an enemy. Rather, lovefare is practiced, and it is practice for something – for the common good, for enhanced wellbeing, for future generations, for the web of life we live within. As a concept, it gives a shared name to the broad, varied and vital work that so many people are doing.
In this work, good intentions are not enough. As Martin Luther King declared: “Those who love peace must learn to organise as effectively as those who love war.”
Whatever our context or scale of endeavour, effective organising is required – especially as so much of this work asks us to deliberately reshape the very systems we live within. The risk of perpetuating or replicating what we’re trying to change – or even becoming what we oppose – is more common in this work than many of us would like to admit.
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Transforming systems – enabling ‘better’ both locally and globally – cannot be achieved alone. It is collective work. And collective work is demanding.
Collaboration is the skill of the moment. It is crucial for getting us to a better world and it is a skill we need in the futures we envision. It’s pivotal to reciprocity, equity, health and co-creation. It’s a defining ingredient for peace.
In short, we need to be working that muscle now. How we organise together isn’t just preparation – it’s the thing itself. Right now, in everything we do, we can be prototyping the more collaborative world we want to inhabit – and becoming the kind of people, communities and societies capable of living differently.
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The outward work we do in organisations, groups and networks – the services, the programmes, the campaigns, the initiatives, the advocacy, the movement building – is only as strong as the interior ecosystem that supports it. Our relational and practical infrastructures strengthen or undermine our efforts. Day-to-day it is our culture, our habits, our systems, our communication and our processes that shape how we actually work together and how it feels to be within this work. The ecosystem of our organisation or group determines how well we are able to connect with each other, and with our partners, supporters and collaborators. These internal factors significantly enhance (or erode) both wellbeing and effectiveness.
Too often, these interior dimensions are treated as secondary – ‘nice to have, not need to have’. I think the opposite is true. They are the conditions that make everything else possible. They are also where we get to practise the more collaborative, more humane, more interconnected ways-of-being that we are ultimately working towards.
Vision tells us where we’re going. Organising effectively is what makes the journey possible – not just enabling the powerful ‘visible’ moments, but also fostering cohesion, wellbeing and focus over the long haul. Where our vision sets the direction, an organising mindset tends to the conditions. It takes action in the details. It is concerned with both people and processes. Like the soil, you can plant the most vital seeds, but without attention to what lies beneath, little will take root and flourish.
Lovefare is the word I’ve arrived at for this work of tending the conditions – organising effectively so more love, more connection, more justice, more peace can take root and grow.
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This territory – the interior life of organisations working for change, and the associated skills and capacities we each need – is where I’ve spent the past 25 years. Working alongside leaders and organisations in the social change and ‘for-purpose’ spheres, I help groups explore: what, right now, most needs our attention? What shift in our shared purpose, culture, communication, systems or strategy would most unlock what we’re trying to do? What values-aligned practices nurture connection the most and help us model the kind of world we want?
For me, these efforts are not an administrative afterthought or only for discussion at annual strategy days. They are a genuine precondition for impact. An organising mindset demands that we attend to governance and practical systems, and also to team culture, how we tell our story and communicate who we are. Organising effectively asks that we care about how people feel in their work and actively invest in the quality of our relationships and a clarity of shared purpose. These are all things that either quietly undermine or can genuinely propel what a group is working towards.
How we organise together shapes what becomes possible. That conviction is at the root of everything I do and lovefare is my attempt to give this imperative the name – and the attention – it deserves. If any of this resonates, I’d love you to be part of the conversation.
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