What is LiLore?
This is the first entry in LiLore — the open notebook of the LiLo Institute.
Why Lore?
Lore comes from Old English lār: teaching, learning, what is passed on — it’s cognate with learn. Lore is not static stored knowledge; it is the living transmission of knowings between people. It is what a community comes to know together, often carried in stories, metaphors, practices, and new words that emerge because they capture something new and fit the context.
Lore accumulates over time. It is the experience someone references months later that still resonates. The metaphor that keeps returning1. The moment that becomes a touchstone2. It is the felt and living texture that makes a community recognisable to itself.
Historically, lore named particular domains of knowledge: folklore, birdlore, starlore. So LiLore is the lore of LiLo — the shared language, the stories we tell ourselves about what we’re doing and why, the knowings that emerge through relations and that take shape over time.
Building the path as we walk, together…
What is LiLo?
LiLo is a small community — scientists, artists, designers, architects, practitioners — exploring different knowings and ways of knowing, and the environments that foster and sustain them. We’re based in Portugal, with members around the world. If you want to know more about LiLo, visit lilo.institute.
Here, in LiLore, we share what’s emerging in LiLo as it emerges: reflections from gatherings, ideas still forming, metaphors we’re testing, invitations to events. These are notes shared from a community that is in becoming.
No schedule; we’ll post when there’s something worth sharing.
Why “lore” and not “newsletter” or “blog”?
Lore is both backward-looking and forward-making. It holds what has happened — what we’ve learned, what emerged, what surprised us. But it also shapes what comes next: how we think and act, what we pay attention to, what becomes possible. It is both an archive and an active ingredient at once.
Lore is relational: it lives in the space between people who share it.
By reading, you become part of it.
This is the first entry in the notebook. Let’s see how it develops…
Welcome to LiLore — witness LiLo’s unfolding, or become part of its becoming.
e.g. the “otter effect” metaphor: "you don't expect to see an otter every time, but when it's there, it's such a gift" — became shorthand for valuing depth of engagement over frequency of attendance
e.g. “This wasn’t a meeting about LiLo—it was LiLo happening” — the recognition that the dialogue itself (in Founder’s meetings about shaping LiLo) embodied what LiLo aims to create