Kinship with Beasts

THIS WORKSHOP IS NOW CLOSED FOR APPLICATIONS Thanks to all who applied. We will be in touch soon.

Continuing our series of creative workshops centred around the eight fires of the ancestral solar year.

For this second workshop we will be focusing on our core human relationship with the animal kingdoms in an age of ecological breakdown and species extinction. One of the consequences of Modernity is ‘species loneliness’: an ongoing sense of our alienation and isolation from the natural world and from our fellow creatures; for many of us experienced at a level that our ancestors would have found intolerable. For this gathering, focused around ‘Imbolc’ on 1st February, we’ll seek to address that separation, exploring our own ‘creaturehood’, as well as the ‘personhood’ of animals. and some the myths and practices that can reconnect us in our imaginations and physical lives.

Imbolc traditionally marks the first stirrings of spring in the northern hemisphere As the days lengthen, amphibians begin to move, and  plant world to unfurl, we’ll track what it means to re-enter kinship with our fellow creatures and find ways to articulate and to strengthen that relationship in this time of emergence.

About this Eight Fires series

How We Walk Through the Fire aims to forge a collective practice amongst writers, artists, and creative practitioners; and to host a culture that can both weather the storm and lay the tracks for a more ‘biospheric’ relationship with ourselves and the more-than-human world.

Each of the fires will explore different themes and approaches to this practice, from storytelling to plant medicine to performance – but all aim to foster resilience and radical kinship, and to strengthen our creative voices within an ensemble. Together we’ll ‘walk through the fire’, letting go of what no longer serves, and discovering what might bring repair and regeneration to a world, and a culture, in crisis.

The sessions will be led by Charlotte Du Cann and Dougie Strang who have created many immersive, dramaturgical events and teachings for Dark Mountain, based on reconnection with deep time and the mythology of place. 

Practical information

The course comprises two x 2 hour group Zoom sessions, with time for a solo walk/encounter and a creative task during the week in between. It will include exercises and discussion and provide opportunities for:

• Working within a Dark Mountain frame
• In-depth conversation with fellow writers and artists
• Creative feedback on work
• Deepening your practice
• Exploring relationship with the living world

When:  Saturday 29th January and February 5th, 4-6pm GMT. Note all time zones are welcome to participate.

Group size: 16 people maximum

Price: £55

How to apply: As the course has limited space and we are looking for a diverse group of participants, please could you let us know a bit about yourself: where you are writing from, your current practice and why you would like to take part in the course. A few sentences are fine! Send your email to info@dark-mountain.net and we will be in touch.

 Deadline for applications: Friday 14th January 2021

NEXT UPCOMING WORKSHOP: our Spring Equinox Fire gathering ‘Walking into the Wind’ will take place on 19th and 26th March with writer and Dark Mountain co-director Nick Hunt. Details to follow.

Tutors

Charlotte Du Cann is a writer, editor and co-director of the Dark Mountain Project. She has taught creative non-fiction and reconnection with the wild in many places, including Schumacher College, Arvon, School of the Wild, Sweden’s Riksteatern, and Natural Beekeeping Trust. She has been the co- producer of recent Dark Mountain art and writing workshops, Finding the Words When the Story is Over and When the Mountain Speaks with Us.

 Dougie Strang is a writer, performer, and member of Dark Mountain’s organising collective. His work is often inspired by Scotland’s wild places, and he collaborates with various organisations to facilitate wholehearted encounters with those places, most recently as dramaturg and performer on Ùrlar, a site-specific theatre and dance production, commissioned by the National Trust and staged on the slopes of Ben Lomond.

Charlotte and Dougie have worked together on numerous Dark Mountain events, creating workshops and performances including A Dance Down the Dark Mountain, at Unfix in Glasgow and at Winterwerft Festival in Frankfurt, Conversations in the Dark at the big room in Macclesfield, The Night Breathes Us In in Reading, Base Camp in Devon, and Carrying the Fire on Rannoch Moor.