In Short
We’re a community of people working in the spaces between systems, across disciplines, and alongside others. We’re not here to provide answers. We’re here to ask better questions, walk together, and grow what wants to emerge.

The Process

The NED Foundation has been growing through significant change as it comes to terms with a richer level of engagement with people and initiatives.

Over the past 12 months, the staff and Board members have been working on new and refreshed content of our website. It’s a slow process, but better for that.

There has been much discussion about finding words that resonate with visitors to our website. Part of the process has been creating this new About Us section. See what you think about these new narratives.

Our Current Narratives

Welcome to NED

Nurturing Evolutionary Development

We’re a community of people working in the spaces between systems, across disciplines, and alongside others. We’re not here to provide answers. We’re here to ask better questions, walk together, and grow what wants to emerge.
Our work is grounded in deep listening, mutual respect, and the belief that real change begins in relationship with each other, with place, and with the more-than-human world.

What you will find in NED is:

  • An invitation to co-create responses to the challenges we face
  • A place where process matters as much as outcomes
  • A community learning to walk with humility, not ahead

We call it nurturing evolutionary development.

What matters is that you feel something genuine here, and if you do, we’d love to know what that is for you.

As a first point of contact, we would welcome a conversation with you. You can complete the form here to find out more about NED and how we work.

NED is like music - you have to be in the room to feel it.
And once you feel it, you might just want to join the jam.

-- David (Sal) Salomon

THE NED STORY 

The NED Foundation (Nurturing Evolutionary Development) is a private, philanthropic organisation established by the late Dr Ned Iceton in Armidale NSW in 2015.

The NED acronym stands for Nurturing Evolutionary Development:

  • Nurturing - to care for and protect someone or something while they are growing.
  • Evolutionary - relating to the way in which living things develop, involving a gradual process of change in relationship to the surrounding beings.
  • Development - the process in which someone or something grows or changes.

Ned gave responsibility to a small group of his friends to form the inaugural NED Foundation Board. The Foundation works at grassroots level and supports people in their communities using their local knowledge to make meaningful contributions to social justice and sustainable ecologies.

Purpose of the NED Foundation

The purpose of the NED Foundation is to invest in people and communities by supporting grassroots social development, nurturing personal growth, and fostering sustainable social, cultural and ecological change and transition to a better world.

Vision of the NED Foundation

Our Vision is that of an evolutionary journey, where personal and social transformation go hand in hand. The Foundation seeks to foster a world where individuals and communities evolve through mutual relationships, inner growth and collective action, building a sustainable, inclusive, and life-enhancing society. It sees a future where:

  • Communities are built on mutual respect, conversation and cooperation.
  • Cultural and ecological renewal is driven from the grassroots.
  • People are empowered to grow personally and spiritually.
  • Social change is guided by reflective practice, shared responsibility, and human connection.

All people, regardless of background, can contribute meaningfully to shaping a just and sustainable world

Why the NED Foundation?

Ned Iceton recognised that we are living through a time of profound crisis: ecological, social, and spiritual, threatening our collective future wellbeing. He saw that the challenges we face are not only systemic, but also deeply personal and relational. For lasting change to take root, he believed we must nurture both inner growth and collective resilience, grounded in care for each other and for the places we belong to.

The NED Foundation continues in this spirit. We support approaches that honour diverse cultural and spiritual traditions, while also responding to a growing need, felt by many across different walks of life, for deeper connection, purpose, and meaning. We’re not offering a new belief system, nor wanting to unify experience into a single worldview, but we are seeking a new vision through holding space for reflection, dialogue, and learning across differences. What draws people to NED is often not just what we do, but how we show up: in relationship, with respect, and with a quiet trust in what can unfold when people come together with openness and care.

How the NED Foundation works

Individuals and groups are supported to build mutual, respectful relationships, embracing openness to difference and engaging in constructive conversations, including at small group workshops sponsored by the Foundation. Shared leadership, co-creation, and a process-oriented mindset are nurtured, allowing space for slow, reflective growth rather than top-down control. People are encouraged to balance inner development with outer action for social transformation. Above all, the Foundation values people who embody humility, participation, and a commitment to fostering ecological and cultural renewal through collaboration, being present, and personal and collective learning.

Relational Practice

We use this term in contrast to “transactional” to mean that in our interactions with others we aim to build relationships, not simply make a transaction without the relationship that goes with it. Hence our primary focus is the relationship, with its many pushes and pulls, that we develop with the people and organisations we work with, and with each other. The Foundation works relationally; this is our strength and our point of difference. We put the person or community before the project.

Focus Areas

Our current four focus areas are below. Coordinators work with you, to support your ideas for your community to respond to issues impacting you. The NED Foundation believes that change is sustained by self-aware, empowered people who model the values they wish to see, within themselves and in their relationships with others. The Co-ordinators work in four focus areas:

Values and Behaviours

The NED Foundation encourages a compassionate approach that supports people in making genuine efforts without fear of failure or causing harm. It recognises that mistakes may happen, but with care and reflection, wellbeing can be restored, for example using restorative practice, and valuable learning can emerge, fostering personal and collective evolutionary growth. 

NED ICETON – THE PERSON

Ned Iceton was a visionary medical doctor, university lecturer and passionate social developer who believed deeply in humanity’s capacity for a more connected life and sustainable future. He created the NED Foundation in 2015 in Armidale NSW where he lived most of his adult life, to foster his vision.

Ned travelled to India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, England and California, seeking wisdom from diverse cultures and deepening his understanding of holistic human development. He championed relational, community-based approaches to cultural evolution, emphasising inner growth, mutual support, and collective responsibility as essential for human and ecological wellbeing.

In Ned’s view, modern society has become too transactional, sidelining the depth and power of authentic human relationships. He saw that true transformation - personal, cultural, and ecological - emerged through mutual engagement, reflective conversations, and co-operative effort. For him, building community was not about imposing structure or hierarchy, but about cultivating spaces where people could grow together, spiritually and socially, through shared purpose and presence.

Ned was an extraordinary networker who spent decades making connections with people across a range of demographics and situations. One of his first jobs as a community development worker was working with Indigenous people, which led to a deep and abiding respect for their culture and way of life. He integrated much of the Indigenous ‘way of being’ into the creation of the Social Developers Network.

He believed that working in relationship with each other, people could collectively create stronger, more life-sustaining communities ready to deal with the future. He saw inner development, holistic health, and community as keys to humanity’s survival and was convinced we need to act decisively in our cultural and evolutionary development if we are to survive as a species. And the way to do this, he believed, was to engage in the powerful, productive and healing force of people spending time and space with each other in shared endeavours.

He established the NED Foundation as a will project, leaving its operation to a governance Board of like-minded friends after he died in 2015. It is a lasting legacy to support individuals committed to the regeneration of society from the ground up. Ned’s life work was anchored in the conviction that the survival and flourishing of humanity depends on our ability to balance inner growth with outer action, foster mutual respect, and steer our collective journey with both humility and hope. His life’s work was a call to awaken, connect, and evolve.