The Renaissance in Education Summit
FLORENCE ITALY FEBRUARY 2028
A Recentered Education Convening
Florence gave the world its first renaissance.
In February 2028, it will host the next renaissance…in education
The Renaissance in Education Summit is a four-day gathering of the world's most serious educators, thought leaders, and practitioners — convened to do the work of reimagining education
This Summit is organized around ideas, fellowship, long conversation in salon-style dialogue, shared meals, walking discussions through cobblestone streets, and the deliberate work of building a community capable of sustaining a genuine renaissance in how we think about schooling
By creating the conditions to spark inquiry, awaken imagination, and foster collaboration across different perspectives and experiences, The Renaissance in Education Summit helps usher in a new vision of education and the telling of better stories for schools and the world
Why Florence, Italy?
Florence earned its place in history as the birthplace of a new way of thinking, seeing, and being in the world.
It was the city where bankers, clerics, sculptors, and scholars decided the inherited forms of medieval life no longer matched what they understood about the human person; so, instead of convening a task force, they gathered, argued, walked the same streets, and read the same texts aloud to one another until they produced a renaissance whose intellectual scaffolding still holds up most of what we mean by a liberal education.
We believe education needs the same kind of reckoning, and we believe it belongs in the same city.
Florence isn't a mere backdrop for this Summit — it's a participant in it.
The Duomo, the Uffizi, the Ponte Vecchio, the narrow streets of the Oltrarno were all built by people convinced that human formation, not the transmission of isolated skills, was the proper end of education.
Florence becomes not just a gathering place, but a true birthplace for something genuinely transformative yet again!
Who should attend?
This gathering is for a unique kind of person:
The Practitioner — working in traditional education but desiring to give it true meaning and purpose.
The Scholar — whose work on human formation, vocation, and flourishing belongs in education conversations that have real and lasting impact
The Leader — who is ready to champion a more robust, fully flourishing version of what education can be
The Founder — who has reimagined what schooling should be and needs a community of support to see it through
The Professor — ready to dream bigger dreams than their institution has asked of them
The Funder — who senses that the models they have been investing in are not producing the flourishing they were promised and is ready to put skin in the game to see it happen
What binds this group together is the seriousness with which you hold the question: What is education actually for?
The Rhythm
The rhythm of the Renaissance in Education Summit is to gather for both specific conversations related to reimagining education and for long walks through the magical city of Florence as we pause to consider our collective goals, hopes, and dreams for a new renaissance in education.
Morning sessions bring the full gathering together for the day's central question — structured enough to focus the room, open enough that the conversation goes where it needs to go. These are not lectures. They are the kind of dialogue that happens with an espresso and pastry in hand.
Afternoons belong to Florence. Small groups take to the streets — the Oltrarno, the Piazza della Signoria, the Duomo, cloisters and courtyards where the original humanists walked while working out the same questions we are carrying. There is no agenda for these hours. There is only the city, the company, and the conversation it tends to produce.
Early evenings are for reflection and transition — time to write, to sit, to process the day before the group reconvenes. Some of the most important thinking of the week will happen in these quiet hours.
Communal dinners close each day. Long tables, local food, unhurried hours. No panels, no presentations, no name-tag networking. Just the room, together, continuing the conversation that began in the morning and deepened in the streets. These dinners are not a social amenity. They are an intrinsic part of the program.
What to Expect
The Renaissance in Education Summit is four days built around the conviction that the most important thing a gathering like this can protect is time — time to think, time to disagree, time to walk, time to sit with a difficult question long enough that something genuine emerges from it
The Renaissance in Education Summit is four days built around the conviction that the most important thing a gathering like this can protect is time — time to think, time to disagree, time to walk, time to sit with a difficult question long enough that something genuine emerges from it.
The magic of this gathering is what happens in the margins: the conversation that starts at dinner and doesn't end until midnight, the walk through a Florentine neighborhood that turns into a two-hour argument about what vocation means, the moment when two people from opposite ends of the education world realize they have been working on the same problem in different languages.
This is how the first renaissance began…and it is how we plan to foster the next renaissance in education
Topics to Include:
Creating a Renaissance in Education
Reimagining the Purpose of Schooling
The Human Person in an Age of AI
Restoring the Vocation of Teaching
What this Summit Produces
A Practical Response to the Driving Question
Every session, every dinner, every walk through the streets of Florence is oriented toward a single question: What would we need to believe, build, and commit to in order to spark a genuine renaissance in education? By the final day, the gathering will have done enough work together to answer that question in writing.
A Founding Fellowship
Participants in the Renaissance in Education Summit become founding members of the Renaissance in Education Fellowship — a standing community of educators, founders, scholars, and funders committed to the long work of reimagining schooling. The Fellowship convenes annually, grows deliberately, and gives every person in that first Florence room a community that outlasts the week.
A Body of Shared Work
The conversations, arguments, and ideas that emerge from four days in Florence will be gathered, curated, and published — as podcast episodes, as essays, and eventually as a volume that gives the broader education world access to what the room produced. The Renaissance in Education Summit doesn't end when everyone goes home. It begins there.
Cost and Details
Fellow — $4,500 (year one founding Fellow price)
Founding Fellows join the first Summit at a reduced rate in recognition of the trust it takes to be first. This investment includes lodging for the duration of the Summit, breakfast and dinner each day, and guided walks through Florence's historic districts and curated cultural experiences.
A limited number of Participant fellowships are available for educators whose work belongs in this room and who require financial support to attend. To inquire, include a note in your invitation request.
Founding Patron — $ 15,000
The Founding Patron experience includes everything in the Fellow experience, plus:
A Private Day in Venice
Founding Patrons arrive one day early for an exclusive guided experience in Venice — a day in one of the world's most extraordinary cities, in the company of the people who will anchor the Summit's conversation, before the full gathering begins. This is not a tour. It is the beginning of the relationship that makes the four days in Florence what they are.
A Seat at the Founding Patron Dinner
On the final evening of the Summit, Founding Patrons gather for a private dinner with the Summit's anchor guests — an unhurried closing conversation for the people who helped make the room possible.
A Nomination to the Fellowship
Each Founding Patron may nominate one candidate for a Participant Fellowship seat — a fully funded place at the Summit for an educator whose work belongs in the room and who could not otherwise attend. Nominations are reviewed by the Summit's curatorial team, and final selection remains with the Summit. A nomination that earns a seat is one of the more meaningful things a funder can do for someone whose work they believe in.
Recognition as a Founding Patron of the Renaissance in Education Fellowship
Founding Patrons are recognized permanently as founding members of the Renaissance in Education Fellowship — the standing community that this Summit seeds and that will convene annually in the years ahead.
Not included:
Transportation, including airfare, to and from Florence (though we are glad to assist with planning), hotel accommodations before or after the Summit dates, and personal expenses.
About Recentered Education LLC
Recentered Education is the professional learning organization founded by Dr. Scott Martin to help schools cultivate flourishing leaders, thriving cultures, and transformational learning environments.
Through curated retreats and thought leadership experiences, Recentered Education partners with schools across the country to advance the Flourishing Schools Framework and create lasting change.
Recentered Education is a registered LLC
