A different story
of learning.
We are Reimagined Learning Community: a Johannesburg-based educational non-profit exploring learning through relationship, place, curiosity, and collective responsibility.
“When learning is held with care, creativity, and relationship, curiosity is not forced. It is remembered.”— Chévanni Davids, Founder of Reimagined Learning
Where we began.
Reimagined Learning Community (RLC) is a Johannesburg-based educational non-profit reimagining what learning can be, and what it might ask of us in these times. Founded in 2016, RLC emerged from a desire to move beyond narrow, industrial models of education and to cultivate forms of learning that are more alive, relational, just, and regenerative.
Rooted in South Africa and connected to wider global communities of practice, our work lives at the intersection of unlearning, self-directed education, regenerative culture, and restoration. We see learning not as the transfer of information, but as a living process shaped by relationship, place, story, embodiment, curiosity, and collective responsibility.
At the heart:
unlearning.
At the heart of our work is a commitment to unlearning. We recognise that dominant educational systems often condition people into compliance, disconnection, competition, and performance, while sidelining imagination, cultural wisdom, and the intelligence of the body, community, and land.
Reimagined Learning Community creates spaces where these inherited patterns can be questioned, softened, and transformed. For us, unlearning is not only about letting go. It is also about remembering other ways of knowing, relating, and participating in life.
As a regenerative learning community, we care not only about what is learned, but about the conditions that make learning, healing, and belonging possible. We integrate ecological awareness, indigenous knowledge, social restoration, and community care into our work, while remaining attentive to the fractures left by colonialism, exclusion, and disconnection.
What we do.
Our work takes many forms, including learning journeys, curated gatherings, festivals, community dialogues, online courses, forest experiences, and other living experiments in education.
Across these spaces, we support children, youth, adults, families, educators, and communities to encounter learning differently, not as a race toward performance, but as a practice of connection, freedom, responsibility, and becoming.
Explore ways to participate ↗Who we walk with.
Since its founding, RLC has grown into a diverse ecosystem of learners, educators, facilitators, artists, families, and collaborators. Through partnerships with local organisations, indigenous communities, and wider networks of practice, we continue to build spaces where learning can become a force for restoration, dignity, and transformation.
Reimagine with us ↗Meet Chévanni.
Chévanni Davids
Founder, facilitator and writer. Chévanni helped establish the Reimagined Learning Centre in 2016 with a group of young people, creating a space to experiment with learning beyond conventional schooling.
His work brings together unlearning, Ubuntu, land-based practice and community dialogue. He accompanies families, educators and communities exploring their relationship with learning.
Connect with Chévanni ↗Three moments
from our story.
A learning home in Johannesburg
The Reimagined Learning Centre, previously based in Troyville, offered a place for meeting, research, play, learning experiments and residencies. Founded in 2016, it made room for young people to help shape their own learning.
Read about the learning centre ↗Young people shaping the gathering
At the Knowledge in People festival in Soweto, held from 28–31 March 2024 at Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers, Keagan and Selassi led sessions through contemplation, games and rap. Young people helped shape what the gathering could become.
Knowledge shared across generations
The same festival brought children together with elders in their eighties. Mkulu Ndabazethongo shared teachings on Ubuntu, while collective drumming around the fire offered another way to learn and remember together.
Read the story of the three festivals ↗An invitation.
At its heart, Reimagined Learning Community is an invitation into a different story of education, one where community becomes curriculum, learning becomes ceremony, and the world is met not as something to master, but as something to listen to, learn with, and care for.