The Mythos and the Mycelium

PLEASE NOTE: the applications for this workshop are now closed. Our final fire gathering ‘Honouring the Ancestors’ will be set around Samhain in late October and early November. Details here 

Continuing  our How We Walk Through the Fire series of creative workshops centred around the eight fires of the ancestral solar year.

 In difficult times, organisms find new symbiotic relationships in order to expand their reach. Crisis is the crucible of new relationships – Merlin Sheldrake Entangled Life

As the autumn equinox approaches, our seventh workshop will focus on what it means to make art – to write, paint, dance; to create sculpture, music, theatre – from a perspective that engages with myth and the underground networks of Earth.

Myths have threaded themselves like a mycelium through this series, not only in the structure of the eight fires that follow the solar and growing cycles of the year, but also within the narrative of the sessions. We began with the story of Alcyon and her nest at Winter Solstice, and proceeded to Bran (Spring Equinox), the shapeshifting Suibhne (Imbolc), and Olwen of the White Track (summer solstice), and then on to the river and sea spirits (Waterland). 

Now, as the light descends towards the dark months of winter, we will discover the myths and stories held our own local territories and ancestral memory, and create work that helps underpin a connective deep time culture.

Join Dark Mountain’s Charlotte Du Cann and Dougie Strang in an ensemble investigation into the art and practice of mythos.

 

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.

How We Walk Through the Fire workshops are hosted 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
• Deepening your practice
• Exploring relationship with the living world

When: Saturday 17th and Saturday 24th September, 4-6pm BST

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: Monday 5th September 2022

 

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.

 

IMAGE:  Mycelial Threads by Graeme Walker (from Issue 21)