Start Something Beautiful
Finding clarity, focus, and inner resources to meet a world in crisis.
5 Day Learning Retreat + 6 Month Online Certificate Program with Inez Aponte & Michelle Titus
April 5th to April 11th, 2027 in Riposto, Sicilia (Italy)
Co-Hosted by Inez Aponte, founder of Growing Good Lives and Beautiful Economies , educator and artist & Michelle Titus, founder of Cummari, feminine anthropologist and community builder.
Moving from Reacting to Responding
Our modern world is full of noise. Every day, a deluge of reels, stories, threads, tweets, posts, and 24-hour news fills up our senses and pulls us towards the urgent, the outraged, the dramatic, the heroic. Confronted with a world in crisis our nervous systems naturally go into overdrive. We react by scattering our energy, trying to hold every piece of the puzzle at once, only to find ourselves exhausted and burnt out.
But nobody can do it all. And nobody can do it alone.
This retreat is a space to step out of the current, calm your nervous system, and discover which specific piece of the puzzle is uniquely yours to hold. By stopping, we open up a space to tap into an endless source of imagination—within you, between us, and in your relationship with the living world. Using ancient stories, play, and improvisation, we will explore what it means to live as a balanced system within larger living systems and turn uncertainty into a source of creativity.
Tending to the Self is Tending to the System
True, lasting change requires us to question the toxic demands of constant productivity and relentless heroism. We have been conditioned to believe that looking after our own well-being is a selfish distraction from doing "the work" in the world. In reality, tending to ourselves is the first, essential step in tending to our communities and the Earth.
To help build a bridge between our inner and outer realities, we will introduce powerful systemic frameworks, such as Barefoot Economics and Riane Eisler’s work on Partnership systems. By looking through these lenses, we bring our attention to what our current economy makes invisible: the acts of care that hold everything together. This understanding can free us from the pressure to constantly produce or give ourselves away to everything.
By the end of our time together, nourished by the beauty of the Sicilian landscape and the deep safety of the group, you will have stepped out from under the weight of an outdated story of success. You will have connected with the dream you carry for the world, have a clear, grounded sense of what is genuinely yours to do, and a community to help you do it.
From Retreat to Reality: The 6-Month Support Container
The breakthrough you experience in Sicily shouldn't fade when you catch your flight or train home. To ensure your insights translate into real, sustainable action, we include an extended support structure:
5 Shared Integration Check-ins: Over the six months following the retreat, our cohort will meet online five times.
Shared Project Support: These structured sessions are specifically designed to help you build, launch, or sustain the "beautiful thing" you realized was yours to do during our week together.
Who is this for?
This is designed for women who give a great deal and need a space to resource, restore, and re-story themselves:
Teachers, therapists, social workers, community organisers, activists, academics, and leaders who need to sustain their work without hardening their hearts.
Creative changemakers who suspect that more analysis and more output are no longer solving the problems we face.
Women on the edge of a transition, who feel the pull toward something deeper but need the clarity, framework, and community to actually step into it.
For women who feel the pull toward something deeper but need the clarity…
Our Time Together
Each morning we gather for a deep-dive workshop session of two to three hours. Afternoons are entirely free for rest, swimming, walking, or exploring Sicily on your own terms. Some evenings we gather for light, playful storytelling or to connect with the local Sicilian community.
Day 1: Arriving | Who am I, outside of the noise?
Days 2 & 3: Going Deeper | What stories and frameworks am I living inside?
Days 4 & 5: Emerging | What is beautiful, sustainable, and uniquely mine to do?
A Day Might Look Like This:
8:00 – 9:30 am Breakfast
9:30 am: Morning circle & Check-in
10:00 am – 12:00pm: Workshop with Inez
Afternoons & Evenings are free to partake in local activities or to explore Sicily in your own terms
What You Will Come Away With
A clear understanding of Barefoot Economics and Partnership systems to balance your own needs with your work and the world.
Embodied practices to keep your nervous system regulated amidst modern cultural noise.
A deeply supportive, closed community of dedicated women holding you accountable to your vision.
6 Months of ongoing group mentorship to bring your purpose to life without burning out.
A certificate of attendance and full curriculum documentation are available for professional development records.
The Location
Cummari is a boutique retreat space in Riposto, a seaside town on Sicily's east coast — nestled between the Ionian Sea, Mount Etna, and the beautiful stretch of coast between Catania and Taormina. It is a place with real soul: volcanic beaches, local markets, food grown in the shadow of a volcano, and a true Sicilian village culture undisturbed by time.
Founded by Michelle, a former international correspondent, Cummari was built from a simple conviction — that women deserve spaces designed with intention, warmth, and no performance required. It has been called one of the most interesting projects in Sicily by Lonely Planet, and featured in Harper's Bazaar and Citizen Femme. Women arrive as strangers and leave as cummari — the Sicilian word for a bond of female friendship that feels like family.
Travelling To The Retreat
Reaching Riposto is easier — and greener — than you might think.
By train: Direct trains run to Giarre-Riposto station, including an overnight service from Rome — wake up in Sicily, no flight required.
By ferry: Sail overnight from the Italian mainland to Palermo, then travel across the island by train. One of the most scenic and unhurried ways to arrive.
By plane: Catania Fontanarossa airport is the closest, just 30 minutes away — well connected from across Europe, making it easy to combine with onward travel.
Participation Details
Shared Room: 1550/per person (4 spaces available)
Private Room: 1950/per person (4 spaces available)
Pay it Forward Rate (Private Room): 2,900/per person
Included:
6 Month Online Certificate Program
5 Night Accommodation
All Breakfasts
Farwell Dinner
Two Movement Workshops
Optional Extras:
Sailing Trip on the Ionian Sea
Hike on Volcano Etna with Guide
Day Trip to Taormina
Testimonials
“Already I feel more free, more inspired to trust my natural instincts, and more courageous. I’m so glad I said yes to the inner call.”
Claire Mackinnon, Womens Leadership Guide
“The world is in such turmoil that we are in dire need of spaces like this. Once discovered, we are going to feel very orphaned without it.”
Irene Gil, Brand Consultant and Professor
“It was wonderful, from start to finish. You helped me to feel comfortable and at ease with myself and the other participants, enough to share parts of myself in a different and creative way. I feel a shift — more aligned with those parts of me that were dormant or forgotten.”
Trisha White, Retired
“Inez is a master storyteller and has a host of games up her sleeve. I never thought I’d leave a day unpacking economics and social change feeling so nourished.”
Madelanne Rust-D’Eye, RISE Consulting
“A thought-provoking, caring, intentional and beautifully-held space, that allowed us to range between embodied exercises, emotional and reflective discussions, creative practice and cognitive learning. I loved the use of storytelling and creative visioning... this course felt like a gift of fertile compost!”
Rachel Tuckett — Zero Carbon Britain Innovation Lab Manager
“Incredibly impactful and meaningful. Inez's calm, soothing approach to facilitating a complex and at times confronting topic in an intimate and very personal way was one of my favourite aspects.
The barefoot economics model speaks to the reality we all find ourselves in: how can we value what often is not in the metrics? What is it we need for a good life? It was like a breath of fresh air to feel connected and invigorated.”
Megan Christie — Financial Educator & Money Coach
Meet Inez Aponte
Inez Aponte is a performance storyteller, community builder, and barefoot economist. For thirty years she has worked with a wide range of people, from community halls to corporate boardrooms, from intergenerational projects to intimate retreats, bringing them together to explore the deeper layers of culture that drive our choices.
She is the founder of Growing Good Lives and Beautiful Economies, and has worked with organisations including WWF, the Centre for Alternative Technology, and Schumacher College.
Her work draws on storytelling, improvisation, somatic practice, and systems thinking to examine the stories that shape how we see ourselves, others, and the world around us. She invites people to question the dominant measure of success and to start valuing what is actually holding life together: care, creativity, and belonging, the things that never make it onto any balance sheet.
Warm, rigorous, and genuinely transformative. Being in her presence for a week, in a group this size, is rare. Learn more about Inez’s work
Want to get a feel for Inez before you commit? Listen to her conversation with Manda Scott on the Accidental Gods podcast https://accidentalgods.life/barefoot-economics-in-a-world-of-hobnailed-boots-with-storyteller-inze-aponte/
Meet Michelle Titus
Michelle Titus is a feminine anthropologist, community builder and keeper of place. She has made her life in Sicily since 2019, not as an observer, but as a participant. Her work is rooted in matriarchal studies, with a particular focus on Sicilian culture, its indigenous peoples, and the living practice of matriarchy and community in the modern world. She is the founder of Cummari, a women's space in Sicily where she hosts retreats, international gatherings, and the kind of everyday life that reminds women what it feels like to be held by place and by each other. She also co-founded Zingarelle di Sicilia, a women's community spanning the island, and co-hosts a biannual international festival bringing together local entrepreneurs and creatives. Her background is in international reporting and publishing — she has lived and worked in over 15 countries since 2006.