Four sessions on Wednesdays 27th November, 4th, 11th, and 18th December 2024, 6–8pm GMT.
How can we become kin with land and sea in an age of climate crisis and disruption?
Over the last decade, the Dark Mountain Project has held a unique space in which art, story and myth entwine to help us face the realities of a time of ecological unravelling. As a mass extinction accelerates, it feels urgent that we actively transform the ways we engage with life and reconnect with the wild world around us.
Join the Dark Mountain team this winter for an elemental journey into the heart and imagination of the lands and waters that sustain life on Earth. Based on this year’s spring and autumn Dark Mountain issues inspired by land and ocean, this course aims to reconnect people with place through embodied encounters and creative work, fostering a culture of collaboration with the more-than-human world.
We will work with the land and water bodies of our local territories (rivers, lakes, ponds and oceans) to develop creative responses to the planet that bring together nature and culture, myth and experience, just as the land joins the water at the foreshore.
The course will include exercises and discussion and provide opportunities for:
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Working within a Dark Mountain frame
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In-depth conversation with fellow practitioners, writers and artists
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Deepening your practice inspired by the books
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Exploring a core relationship with a wild or feral place near where you live
During these weeks you will be in the company of three guides: with Nick Hunt, step out of the confines of geopolitics into the aliveness of the land; with Ava Osbiston, explore creative improvisation in wild habitats; and with Charlotte Du Cann, voyage out from the colonial mindsets of civilisation and into the fluidity and intelligence of the ‘dark ocean’.
Practical information:
The course comprises four 2-hour group Zoom sessions, with time for solo walks/encounters and a creative task during the month. A Zoom link for the sessions will be sent two days before they take place.
Group size: 16 people maximum
Price: £120
Deadline for registration: Friday 15th November
You can find out more about the sessions and book your place here.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Dark Mountain: Issue 25 can be bought from our online shop here.
Dark Mountain: Issue 26 – Dark Ocean can be bought from our online shop here.
TUTORS
Earth
Nick Hunt is a writer and walker. His non-fiction books include Outlandish, about walking four of Europe’s ‘unlikely landscapes’, and Where the Wild Winds Are, which tells the story of four walks following Europe’s named winds. His fiction includes Loss Soup and Other Stories and the recently published Red Smoking Mirror. He has contributed short stories and essays to Dark Mountain since Issue 1, and is now an editor and co-director of the project.
Ava Osbiston is a multimedia artist and Integral Coach based in Devon. She has been a core member of the Dark Mountain team since 2015 often contributing to our issues with her visual artworks and she has been the visual art editor for Dark Mountain: Issue 21 and Dark Mountain: Issue 25 alongside supporting the editorial team by managing our submissions process. She is passionate about improvisation in all forms and is currently in the process of co-creating a semi-improvised theatre group in response to the river Dart.
Sea
Charlotte Du Cann is a writer, editor, and co-director of the Dark Mountain Project. She has co-created several Dark Mountain teaching courses including the year-long How We Walk Through the Fire, Finding the Words When the Story is Over and When the Mountain Speaks with Us (with Schumacher College). Charlotte is the art editor and producer of Issue 26 – Dark Ocean and lives on the salty edge of East Anglia.
The sessions will be hosted by Hannah Close.