Closing Event: The Invisible Backpack: Early Environments, Inequality, and Possibility

Info

Centered on the concept of the Invisible Backpack, the event explores how early life environments—family dynamics, education systems, cultural narratives, social expectations, trauma—quietly accumulate over time, shaping confidence, ambition, risk tolerance, and perceived entitlement. These invisible layers often determine who feels allowed to aspire, to lead, to take risks, or to redefine success long before formal inequalities become visible.

Held in connection with International Women’s Day, the event reflects on gender not as a standalone category, but as one dimension within a broader web of early conditioning. The session also includes a reflective sharing of RIFS Fellow Adina-Iuliana Deacu’s own Invisible Backpack as a female entrepreneur—how her early environments shaped her sense of possibility, relationship to money and risk, and the path through which she came to redefine business as a vehicle for social value creation. This personal reflection is offered not as a model to emulate, but as an entry point for collective sense-making.

As the final event of the exhibition, this gathering offers a space to integrate visual, conceptual, and personal insights accumulated over the week. It marks an ending, but also gestures toward regeneration as an ongoing process that involves not only systems and structures, but also healing inherited assumptions about who we are and what we are allowed to become.

Agenda

15:00–15:20 | Arrival & Grounding

A gentle opening moment inviting participants to slow down, arrive fully, and reconnect with the exhibition space one last time.

15:20–16:00 | Reflective Input: The Invisible Backpack & a Lived Journey

A short reflective talk introducing the Invisible Backpack framework alongside a sharing of the facilitator’s own Invisible Backpack as a female entrepreneur, exploring:

• How early environments shaped confidence, agency, and perceived possibility
• How these early imprints influenced relationship to money, risk, and leadership
• Why redefining business as social value creation emerged from lived experience

This input situates personal narrative as an entry point into collective reflection.

 16:00–17:10 | Guided Group Dialogue

Participants engage in facilitated small-group and collective reflection to:

• Identify elements of their own Invisible Backpacks
• Examine assumptions they carry about success, limitation, and entitlement
• Share insights in a supportive, non-judgmental space

The emphasis is on listening, resonance, and meaning-making rather than problem-solving.

17:10–17:40 | Integration & Collective Reflection

• Bringing personal reflections back into dialogue with the exhibition’s themes of regeneration and healing
• Exploring what it means to “reclaim” agency, both individually and collectively

17:40–18:00 | Closing Ritual & Farewell

Participants are invited to take a postcard featuring an image from the exhibition as a symbolic reminder of regeneration, possibility, and continuity beyond the exhibition space and share what stays with them from the event moving forward.

Target Audience

This closing event is open to all genders:

• Entrepreneurs, leaders, freelancers, and independent professionals
• Creatives, researchers, and practitioners
• People interested in inequality, wellbeing, and personal agency
• Anyone curious about how early life experiences shape who we become

No prior familiarity with the exhibition, business, or academic frameworks is required. The event welcomes participants seeking reflection, connection, and a deeper understanding of how regeneration begins within.

What will participants gain?

Participants will gain deeper awareness of their own Invisible Backpacks, greater clarity about internalized assumptions shaping their choices, and a sense of reclaimed agency around what they are allowed to imagine and become.