Hakuba Forum 2025

By Christopher Balme, Founding Principal

At the beginning of October we hosted our third annual Hakuba Forum conference, a gathering of education innovators from all over the world. The 50 participants, mostly school leaders, came from as far as India, the US, Australia, Dubai and all around Japan. All were united by the idea that schools can and should be designed around well-being, of both people and the planet. We spent four days together in the beautiful context of Hakuba, teaching each other, discussing, inventing, and developing new ideas and programs to support schools with this spirit.

For the last day of the event, we shifted from a smaller-scale retreat to a larger learning Festival, open to anyone who would like to join. We were thrilled to see an excellent turnout, with fantastic talks led by Governor Abe of Nagano Prefecture and the acclaimed architect Takaharu Tezuka (designer of the famous circular Fuji Kindergarten).

As with so much at HIS, this conference began as a brainstormed idea, grew into a "version 1.0" experiment, and now is taking root as an enduring institution. We hope it will continue to bring fresh ideas to HIS, help to share insights from how our school works, and also connect our students and faculty to extraordinary educators and schools around the world. Plans are already underway for the fourth iteration of the conference next fall!