For ten years, the Dark Mountain Project has held a unique space in which art, story and myth weave together to help us face the realities of a time of ecological unravelling. Join Dougald Hine and Charlotte Du Cann this May at Schumacher College for a five day journey, working with the ancient story of Inanna’s descent into the underworld and with alchemical understandings of the path through the ashes. We go in search of the deep cultural roots of today’s crises and the beauty that gives courage in the darkness, knowing that there are parts of ourselves we are called to leave behind.
We live in a time of great unravelling. The climate is changing, a mass extinction is underway, and our economies, cultures and technologies are fraying the fabric of a once-known world. The future no longer serves as a vessel for our hopes, but a shadow that many try to avoid thinking about.
Since the publication of the Uncivilisation manifesto in 2009, the Dark Mountain Project has provided a gathering point for those who are willing to face the shadow. We have been searching for ‘the hope beyond hope’, the paths that lead to the far side of despair and finding companions for the journey.
In this course, we invite you to a creative and collaborative exploration of the journey through the underworld, the dark night of the soul and the alchemical path of ashes.
As we follow in the footsteps of Inanna, what are we being called upon to relinquish? How do we build deep resilience – and how do we restore life to places of cultural and ecological brokenness?
Our aim is to find clues with which to make sense of our lives and the times in which we are living – and tools for creating ‘living-spaces’ for this work within our communities:
My sense is that only seldom is the problem that we “don’t know” – or, at any rate, that we don’t know enough. The real problem is that we don’t have a living-space in which to fully know what we know, in which to confront that knowledge and respond to it emotionally without immediately becoming entrenched in a position of fear, denial and hopelessness. (Chris Goode, The Forest and the Field: Changing Theatre for a Changing World)
We’ll use methods drawn from theatre and ritual, collaborative writing exercises and conversations in the dark – as well as drawing on tools such as the Deep Adaptation framework developed by Jem Bendell.
All participants will have the opportunity of a one-to-one session with one of the course leaders during the week.
Full details and how to book here: https://www.schumachercollege.org.uk/courses/short-courses/the-mountain