It seems that we live today in a global poly life-crisis (biodiversity crisis, well-being crisis etc.), caused by dominance of modern institutions – like the modern school ­– being pervaded by life-forgetfulness (Paulsen, 2022). This calls for a complete transformation of dominant ways of life (Varpanen et al., 2024; Paulsen et. al, 2022). According to trends within and beyond posthuman ESE research such transformation asks for a showdown with modern-western universalism (Blenkinsop and Kuchta, 2024). In alignment with Haraway’s provocation “nobody lives everywhere; everybody lives somewhere” (2016:21), one could argue that what is needed is a multitude of local place-sensitive compostings. Yet, are turns towards local more-than-human life in ESE research sufficient to address the obstacles of macro-global life-crisis? How can such strategies help to inform and create new forms of education that invite locally to becoming-with-more-than humans but also addresses needed structural macro-societal change? This presentation deals with these questions though the lenses of practical attempts from 2022-2025 to create life-friendly walks that envision new forms of ESE research place spaces (Roussell and, Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2022) that try to open up not-life-forgetful but life-friendly relationships with life that can inspire beyond the local (Paulsen, Illeris and Reato, 2025). From this perspective the presentation elaborates: how can we become life-friendly in an era of life-forgetfulness, acknowledging that we live in a life-wound where some of us have forgotten, yet not completely, how to care for life?

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