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Exploring roots, responsibility and reciprocity in our work.OVERVIEW
If we go back far enough, we all have lineages that root us in healthy relationships within nature, this is our birthright as humans. We are one of the billions of species that make up this extraordinary planet. Over the centuries and across continents, different beliefs, power dynamics, societal structures and modern economics have created great imbalances and harm between humans, and to the ecologies we are part of. As we find and facilitate ways to reconnect with nature, how might we keep an awareness of the bigger picture?
While we support others to find a more intimate connection with place, with nature and all the benefits this brings, we are still also connected across cultures, oceans and socio-ecological concerns. As practitioners guiding people to connect with the wild, how might we weave in more awareness of our intra-relatedness in a globalised world? How can we stay curious about how we might be repeating patterns of harm that have got us to this place? Where does appreciation of other cultures and their practices become appropriation of wisdom that doesn’t acknowledge power imbalances in the wider world? Where can we increase our awareness of difference and diversity in this work?
Through nature connection exercises, pair and personal work, theory, story and discussion we’ll explore how to engage with these themes and ways we might do things differently, depending on our context. The space will be held in a way that supports compassion and courage in the conversations and an awareness that we all have different histories, lived experience, understandings and learning edges.
As well as looking back and looking around at the troubles of the world, we inevitably look ahead and are faced with an ever more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world (known as ‘VUCA’) world. How do practices of Nature Connection support us to face forward with more resilience, flexibility and connection? How might we be more rooted in ecological understanding as we move forward? How might we support our sense of care to go beyond our inner circles?
This is for you if:
You are an outdoor educator and want to integrate socio-environmental issues in to how you work
You have become uncomfortable with some of the ways Nature Connection work ignores issues in the world or even inadvertently echoes them
You work with groups with mixed backgrounds and want more confidence in supporting conversation and want to know how nature connection can support that
You want to integrate being outside within your activism or activism within your work outside
Themes will include: cultures of care, solidarity, radical forgiveness, decolonisation, activism and compassion as we explore roots, responsibility and reciprocity in our work.
Alongside content and exercises, this day will be based on a shared inquiry rather than fixed ideas or right and wrong. Part of this work is about being brave enough and committed enough to our values to make mistakes, unlearn things, sit with paradox and support each other.
WHAT’S INCLUDED
- instruction & activities
- group, pair and personal work
- nature connection exercises
- theory, story and discussion
- refreshments, teas & coffees
COURSE TUTOR: TONI SPENCER
Toni is an educator, mentor and artist working with questions of deep ecology and ‘a politics of wonder’. As a lecturer, and course leader Toni has taught on the faculty of Schumacher College (Educational Practice, Ecological Facilitation as Leadership, Embodied Eco-literacy); at Embercombe and at Goldsmiths, (Eco Design). As a participatory artist she has worked with Encounters Arts and The Feral Kitchen, also taking ‘The Work That Reconnects’ to activist communities at Occupy London and elsewhere. She is a Trustee at ProcessworkUK and was on the Embercombe Council for 8 years.
Toni brings a varied basket of skills and practices from many years of studying, dancing, foraging and ‘living life as inquiry’. She is a mentor and teacher for Call of The Wild with Wildwise / Schumacher College.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
North Woods Dartington, Totnes, United Kingdom
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