Reflections on a Climate Lab

 

I set the alarm for 4.45am, to be up and out by 5.15, and at Swansea University for 5.45 ready for our 7am start to the Autumn Global Online Climate Lab this past Thursday 28^th September. The university was quiet but fluorescent lit, the cleaners the only ones in the Wallace Building which houses the Geography Department, our home base for running our 6-hour online zoom workshop. The subject? ‘Taking the expert viewpoint of climate researchers out of the box of the scientific method’ whilst creating a space for those on the front-line of climate research to connect to the emotions they have about the climate data they are collecting or working alongside.

 

Our little team from Swansea University trickled in over the next hour, appearing in person and online: social geographer Anna Pigott; interdisciplinarian Merryn Thomas; Prof. of English Kirsti Bohata, IPCC contributor and glaciologist Prof. Tavi Murray, Marega Palser artist and co-facilitator, and Yanis, our technical zoom maestro. Dawn was at 7.11am that day so the sky was still dark outside the window. I’d never facilitated a workshop starting this early in the UK before as we’d set the time to enable those from different time zones to join us. Our Climate Lab earlier in the year ran from 3-9pm – after a life touring theatre, my body clock was a little more accustomed to this, as ‘show-time’ usually coincided with around 7.30 in the evening.

 

We had a participant list of those who’d signed up but knew precious little about them except their names and the countries they were calling in from. In the end, this extended to Japan, Lebanon, Europe, and the UK. 

 

 

CLIMATE LAB INVITE

 

I see Climate Lab as an experiment in the power of connection, creativity, and spontaneity. Specifically, responding to and sharing experiences and feelings about the dire straits we are in with a burning planet, extreme floods, and everything else that accompanies the fragmentation and climate disruption we are currently experiencing.

 

Our intention is to honour those who are doing the work of protecting, protesting, attempting to lessen the impact of and bearing witness to a planet in peril. We are small in number – around 16 of us today - but there is solace to be had in knowing we are not the only ones feeling what we are feeling. Yes, there is sadness, numbness, grief, despair and yes, there are also feelings of comfort and joy, though the ‘tidings’ aren’t responsible for that. The comfort and joy come from knowing that each of us is not alone in our caring and that these feelings are actually a very sane response to living through insane times. Climate Lab is free to participate in and so far is supported by academic research funding. We’ve been running our ‘Labs’ specifically within the academic environment for those engaged in climate work. The academic setting has its own ‘environmental concerns’. For those of us outside (and for many inside the system), it can sometimes feel overly bureaucratic, self-absorbed, involved in research for research’s sake and not ‘human - or (humanities) - centred. The emphasis is on hitting ever more impossible targets, bottom lines, and outcomes. Increased year-on-year cuts since I was a student of Psychology at Swansea University back in the early 1980s make it a tough environment to stay sane and open-hearted within. The traditional western education model has always privileged facts over feelings. Coming ‘out of the box of the scientific method’, means that Climate Lab participants turns this on its head. The invitation to connect to our ‘soft animal bodies,’ our authentic selves and to welcome the heavy emotions that arise in response to climate research seems like a radical practice. It also feels anathema to the hard light of the fluorescent strips, the polished corridors, the conformity of décor that meet us as our little team greet and hug one another in-person in the Wallace Building corridors in our Zoom breaks and trot bare-foot along shiny walkways to the loo. These things are not typically done in a university setting, and the hordes of new students arriving at Swansea University for ‘Freshers Week’ will learn to accommodate their behaviour accordingly.

 

So, Climate Lab is - yes - about climate change, species loss, acidification and heating of the oceans, biodiversity reduction and soil depletion. And it is equally about changing the climate of the culture in which we do our work – scientists as well as artists, even if it is only for today’s 6-hour online workshop.

 

We start by establishing a ‘Community Agreement’ and a ‘brave space’ in which to do our work - thank you author and activist Adrienne Maree Brown for acknowledging that there are actually no entirely ‘safe spaces’ for all, and expecting to create one is probably disingenuous and impossible. Instead, we invite looking after ourselves and each other whilst stepping into a brave space with courage, whilst acknowledging that vulnerability and openness will look and feel different for all of us. There is no right or wrong. We invite respect for what each of us says. There is no need for agreement or consensus on how little or much time we have left, the extent of the damage, or ‘how bad things are.’ Neither is today about solutions, actions, or outcomes.  The invitation is to ‘say it like it is,’ to speak and listen from the heart without pressure to critique, quantify or to corroborate.

 

 

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN
 

 

I am a student of Beauty with a capital B. For me, the notion, presence, and power of ‘Beauty’ is at the very heart of Climate Lab, just as much as is emotion and creativity. Can we orient to beauty? By this I don’t mean glamour, niceness, or a superficial kind of prettiness. The late, great poet John O’Donohue has written and spoken exquisitely on the subject. He describes beauty as “an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth and a homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding, emerging life.” I am a staunch advocate of beauty and am increasingly ‘coming out’ in favour of it. I want there to be more an acknowledgement of the power of aligning to beauty in these times – the best of times/the worst of times, the end of times/the beginning of times…? I make it a practise to at least try to notice and to ‘speak beauty’ as much as I can. When I’m not facilitating workshops and ‘spaces for change,’ I practise as a Craniosacral Therapist. At the heart of my work with clients who come to see me for a variety of health and emotional issues is ‘connecting to and amplifying the health that is always present.’ Again, Adrienne Maree Brown puts this – yes, beautifully, when she says: “what we pay attention to grows.” This doesn’t mean we don’t see the pain, the sorrow, the terror, but can there be balance? Can we see it all? The sorrow and the beauty? The beauty and the sorrow? After all, we have two eyes and two hands with which to work – each with its own way of meeting the world.

 

In this online space we invite participants to connect to their own bodies through somatic exercises, offered by co-facilitator, Climate Lab artist-in-residence and yoga teacher, Marega Palser. We invite connection to other bodies in a series of break-out rooms, diving further into the material each time with a series of prompts and questions to respond to. We share a ‘beautiful question.’ We share a ‘beautiful story’. Each person speaks uninterrupted and listens to others. All are witnessed. On hearing these questions and stories, our hearts open, invisible armour softens, and the tendrils of our connection reach out a little more to find one another, strengthening this delicate web of life of which we are all a vital part.

 

There is an exercise we offer with Climate Lab:

 

“‘Pin’ yourself on your computer screen.”

“Take 30 seconds to draw yourself with your ‘dominant’ hand.”

“Now 45 seconds to draw yourself with your ‘non-dominant’ hand.”

“Finally take 60 seconds to draw yourself with both hands.” 

 

 

RIGHT HAND SELF PORTRAIT NOT LOOKING

 

Magically, whatever they look like, the resulting three portraits appear to profile different aspects of us. We draw like a 12-year-old and see our essence as if captured by a modernist painter. We smile and laugh. We soften around our habitual patterns and habits. We see ourselves through the eyes of others.

 

Climate Lab intentionally blurs boundaries. This comes as part of the invitation as well as the trigger warning. The activities and exercises we offer are intended to pulse back and forth between body and mind, professional and personal, individual and group, thoughts and feelings, science and art. The real work and the real change happen in the space where both polarities or opposites meet. We invite scientists into the space of Climate Lab, and we have specific guest artists whose job it is to make a ‘creative response’ according to what emerges from our time together. We find, that in many respects, that we are all scientists and that we are all artists. We begin to see the benefits, possibilities, and experience of claiming both ways of moving through the world and a new coherence in how we might approach the ‘wicked problem’ of Climate Chaos. And, whatever we call it: ‘Global Warming’, ‘Global Climate Change’, ‘Climate Chaos’, or ‘Climate Boiling’ - doesn’t really come close to describing the full extent of what we are actually living through. Of course, this is even harder when its impact is felt so disproportionately, affecting those most who are least responsible for the harm done. This also makes it easier for some of us to look away. T.S Eliot is right when he says, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

 

There is inspiring work going on in climate change analysis, adaptation and communication by scientists and also by artists. The book ‘Art and Climate Change’ by Maja and Reuben Fowkes published by Thames and Hudson came out in 2022. It’s chapter headings include ‘Crude Oil’, ‘Non-Human Persons’, ‘Reparative Histories’ and describe the work of hundreds of international artists whose focus is climate, social and ecological justice. Our very own Carolina Caycedo, another Climate Lab guest artist, is included for her project Be Damned “on the effects of hydroelectric dams on the natural and social environments of Latin America.” 

  

 

ART AND CLIMATE CHANGE

 

In Climate Lab, we are mindful that artists are not just in service to and documenters of ‘the science’, and nor are the scientists separate from the data they are gathering. There is a liminal space between the two disciplines, and it has been elegantly occupied by many visionaries who can see both.

 

Climate Lab was born out of a conversation. As someone who identifies as an artist, initiated over many years of jointly being at the helm of Volcano Theatre Company, my focus now is space-making, facilitation, and supporting the conditions for dialogue and transformation. I believe that real change usually begins with some sort of conversation. And authentic conversation requires time and is founded on trust. My life is enriched and changed by every real conversation I have. The conversation that brought Climate Lab into being was between Professor Tavi Murray, renowned IPCC English Glaciologist and AntarcticResearcher, and a 12 year old Japanese schoolboy who asked to interview Tavi about her work measuring ice flow for his school homework. On a whim and an impulse, she said, ‘yes’. Towards the end of their conversation, the final question he asked was the ‘Beautiful Question:’ “How does it makes you feel seeing the changes you’ve seen?” Tavi confessed she had never before in all her years as a professional scientist been asked this question. It floored her, and she has spent the next several years of her life making space to answer this herself and inviting other climate scientists to answer it too: “How do you feel about the work you do, the changes you are seeing and the information you are gathering?” When we make space and time to truly address this question, it makes a world of difference. The most frequently asked question of any climate professional probably opens with the phrase: “What do we do about….?” This is an important question but if it is the only one we ask, then feelings are by-passed and glossed over. They become at best a ‘nice to have’ if you can indulge yourself with the time to sit around and discuss them and, at worst, an irrelevance,  distraction or even dangerous.

  

 

EYES CLOSED DRAWING TO MUSIC

 

On Climate Lab, these questions have been asked many times to many people since we started organising them in person and on zoom last year: “How do you feel about the work you are doing? What do you grieve? What are your mourning? When you think of the future and ‘the now’ what do you feel?” If we take the time to ask and answer, we feel witnessed, we feel appreciated, and we appreciate the other – we don’t just see but feel our common ground, connectedness and worth. This is “the difference that makes the difference”, as anthropologist Gregory Bateson coined it. It has the capacity to enable us to act from a different place, more in alignment with our values and deepest selves.

 

However, we pay a lot of attention to preparing the ground before we dive into those ‘Beautiful Questions’ which have the potential to see us unravel. Adrienne Maree Brown articulates this as “moving at the speed of trust.” We do this by going slow, step by step, establishing a sense of shared humanity ,and coming into a more tender space together. We first share a story of a ‘Beautiful Moment’ – perhaps a small everyday moment or a peak life experience. Speaking and listening to these stories reminds us of the blessings and entirety of the human experience. We come into our hearts. We have found that if we first ‘speak of beauty’ we can more readily speak about what we mourn, what we grieve, and what breaks our hearts open. Eco-psychologist and systems thinker JoannaMacy discovered this over countless decades running what she initially called ‘Grief and Empowerment’ workshops all over the world. She eventually renamed her practice, ‘The Work That Re-connects’, and described a four stage process of change: ‘Coming from Gratitude’, ‘Honouring our Pain for the World’, ‘Seeing with New Eyes’, culminating with ‘Going Forth.’ 

 

 

JOANNA MACY
 

 

 

‘Coming from Gratitude’ is powerful if we really go to depth and don’t just ‘go through the motions’ skating on the superficial. Macy says that gratitude “quietens the frantic mind and brings us back to source. It reconnects us with basic goodness and our personal power. It helps us to become more fully present to our world.”

 

Climate Lab is indebted to the work of elders such as Macy and is dedicated to those indigenous as well as more contemporary figures who stand for and have made their work the protection of life on this beautiful and precious earth. We stand on the shoulders and are inspired by the work of many in creating Climate Lab.

 

We invite our participants to weave back and forth between introspection and shared reflection, we come home to our bodies and senses, exercise the ‘brains in our fingertips’ with spontaneous drawing and writing, and surprise ourselves by opening to reverie and the ‘poetic imagination’. We each bring an object and take turns to ‘let it speak.’ These objects are either randomly or carefully chosen, apparently meaningless or personally meaningful. They include: a wooden cross; a piece of yellow ribbon; a seed head from a plant; a wooden egg; a teddy bear. Mine is a weighty shard of crystal quartz.

 

 

OBJECT AS SUBJECT AS OBJECT

 

Participants are invited to: “Hold your object. Close your eyes, feel its weight, texture and qualities.” We enter into a ‘Thought Experiment, A Perceptual Shift together’ or as Macy says, we “See with New Eyes.”  This brings us into a different relationship with our objects and the universe. We look at our object, we let our object look at us, we take another step… and we both look at one other. We introduce ourselves ‘as object’. Our object becomes subject. The world becomes animate, and we speak as if from a different sensibility, a different place. We pay attention in a way which we are not perhaps accustomed to.

 

Mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer, says that “paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and an open heart.”

 

After sharing, we write and then take some moments to pull the threads of our words together in the form of a ‘found poem’ which on hearing back, have the haunting feel of a collection of haikus, ‘englyns’, or ancient mystical texts.

 

A ribbon and a crystal

They dance

The bark tree ribbon

Kryptonite she said. Superman he said.

They carry it into the future

The future of the yellow and the clear

The furling and the unfurling.

 

 

AUTOMATIC WRITING EXERCISE

 

Each time, after hearing the group witness back these moments, stories and poems throughout the day, there is what we describe in Craniosacral Therapy as a ‘Holistic Shift’ and there becomes a Dynamic Stillness, full of potentiality… there is a sense of wholeness and ‘Something Happens’ - an integration, a re-ordering, a re-patterning. The prerequisite for health to come through. It is as if something else is invited through… information, insight and support comes from another place entirely. We are invited, encouraged, supported to act in service of life on earth from a place of connectedness with all sentient beings.

 

We invite participants not to just focus on outcome. In the spirit of ‘Emergence,’ we don’t know what will happen and do not prescribe how Climate Lab will play out in their lives in future… As we close the process for the day at 1pm UK time we invite reflections.

 

People name high-points, memories and ‘take-aways.’ Connecting to their bodies, creative exercises, hearing the questions, stories and reflections of others, a chance to share and be heard. Sitting in circle as if shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee on Zoom but feeling as if we were together sitting at the heart of our community around the light of a fire. We feel the warmth and the reflected glow. We feel the connectedness and the kin. We feel we are part of a family of not just humans but of all ‘things.’ This is ancient and modern.

 

We will re-gather round the circle of Zoom again in October – those of us who are able. A mirror will be held up to us by our two guest artists – Marega Palser from Newport, Wales and Christine Kettaneh from Beirut,Lebanon. Their role is to harvest, to gather the data which has arisen from this workshop. The data is in the form of poems, marks on paper, memories, feelings, animate objects and ‘Beautiful Questions and Moments’. They will offer us back a ‘Creative Response’ arising from all they have seen and heard. This may come in the form of film, photography, live art, installation, spoken word… We shall see.

 

This is the art of emergence in action. Those that ‘bear witness’ to the changing climate will be born witness to by the artists. All the sorrow and all the beauty will be welcomed, acknowledged and honoured. These Creative Responses will in turn be witnessed, and the cycle will continue into the uncertain future…

 

You may think that you are simply one small positive droplet in an ocean of troubles. A droplet that can’t do anything. But if you search our ever expanding ocean you will find millions of other small droplets with the same mindset as yourself. Together you form a sea in an ocean. That sea can stir a storm. That sea can make a change.

 

S.S. Dhingra, Age 15. From Letters to the Earth (Writing to A Planet in Crisis).

 

 

LETTERS TO THE EARTH
 

 

October 1^st 2023

Fern Smith

 

 

 

Click here to find out more about Climate Lab follow the link

 

Click here to find out more about Emergence and to Join our mailing list.

 

Taking Climate Experts out of the Box: Part 4 - Climate Lab Day 2: 

The Responding

 

Image: Tanya Syed

Read Part 1 of Taking Climate Experts out of the Box Here. 

Read Part 2 of Taking Climate Experts out of the Box Here.

Read Part 3 of Taking Climate Experts out of the Box Here.  

 

Today builds inevitably towards the sharing of the creative responses from Emily Hinshelwood, Marega Palser, and Tanya Syed. They have been busy since we were last together, collating information, digesting impressions, and responding to what emerged from Part One of the Climate Lab. I’ve been busy reflecting and designing Part Two.

 

Although today is a new beginning, we are in the latter half of Joanna Macy’s spiral: ‘Seeing with New Eyes’ and preparing for ‘Going Forth.’ Our immediate focus is to ‘re-build the container’. This involves re-grouping, re-connecting with one another and sharing what’s come up and where we have been since last time. The reverberations from our last day together are still apparent. We re-connect to the group intention of exploring how we see and feel about the climate work each person is involved in.

 

Re-call what made you want to do the work you are now doing. What emotions do you commonly feel when you are deeply connected to the heart of your work?

 

We offer 123 different possible emotions as listed in an online ‘PeriodicTable of Emotions’ which we use as the basis for one of our activities.

 

Tick All that Apply.

Circle your Top 10.

Write out your Top 3.

What is the Number 1 Emotion (you most commonly feel in response to the climate work you are involved in)?

 

We hear them - someone later remarks at how amazed they are that so many positive emotions are named…

 

Awe…

Care…

Joy…

 

One person spots that the words they want are not present in our very comprehensive list. Though perhaps not classified as simple ‘Emotions’, where are the words, they ask, which speak to ‘Rebellion’ and ‘Activism’?

 

We invite the group for a walk and talk in the park. We ask, “what surprised you most about this process?” Each has five minutes of uninterrupted speaking and listening. They are then asked to open and share with their partner the contents of a small brown envelope each is given upon exiting the room, containing a ‘message from the universe’. The words are all from Vaclav Havel, someone who knew a thing or two about rebellion and activism.

 

“Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

 

“There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.”

 

“None of us knows all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit of the population, or all the ways in which that population can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.”

 

Whilst the group are outside, we prepare the space and the ground for the unveiling of the first iteration of each artist’s individual response. After today, there will be another opportunity for Tanya, Emily, and Marega to re-turn to their work, incorporating ideas and impressions from Part Two of the Climate Lab. Next month the process will be complete, though with the possibility of taking the work elsewhere or to a different level in future.

 

One by one each artist takes the space. In taking the space, they offer it back to us. Together, we move out of the literal and into the imaginal.

 

 

Tanya Syed

 

Tanya has been returning to the sea again and again since we were last together, conducting a series of experiments. She is an attuned watcher and listener. She has a gift for connecting to the rhythms of the body and of the turning tides. Hers is a meditation on time. Eight and a half minutes to be precise. We immerse ourselves in her film. She brings the sea, sand, and wind into our carpeted, glass-walled, fish-tank of a room. She foregrounds an over-sized hourglass containing the sands of time. We see it as a drop of water, a teardrop, as well as being an archetypal symbol of time. The tide is rapidly coming in towards us and the camera, splashes of surf spatter the lens. We watch the inevitability of it, unable or unwilling to remove our gaze. Many thoughts come and go watching the tick of time as the grains of sand disappear into the lower portion of the hourglass. The waves come in, the waves go out. Nothing happens. The sand keeps pouring away. We are transfixed, hypnotised, lost in the cycle. There is still some time left though we don’t know how much. There is a residue of sand at the top of the hourglass as the whole thing is engulfed by the incoming tide. It topples over unceremoniously, and rolls around helplessly in the surf, devoid of dignity. Tanya mentioned she wanted to create something to talk about sea-level rise with children. She presents a simple but powerful image with countless outcomes. There is an uncertainty principle at its heart. We may have our hunches, but we do not yet know precisely how the story will end.

 

Image: Tanya Syed

 

Emily Hinshelwood

 

Emily speaks about her process as both art and science. She speaks about her methodology, about pressure, about time, about uncertainty, about fear. Hers is a process of adaptability, assiduousness, busyness, experimentation and iteration. Everything she sees is potential material. She talks about her ‘tools’. She decided to buy nothing but to re-use, recycle and literally ‘forage’ for her materials. She makes pencils and paintbrushes with found bits and pieces, discarded implements, dog hair, sheep wool. Emily is a wordsmith, grower, animator, maker. She develops an obsession with the colour blue. She makes a ‘blueprint’ – a cyanotype. The images of the new maps of Wales, the changing shorelines and rising sea levels mixed with words ‘foraged’ from the group.

 

Hers is an outpouring, outflowing, overflowing, a tumbling from a sluice-gate shut too long – she reveals a series of maps, sketches, prints and even a handmade book. So much done in so little time. She conjures up linear and cyclical time in her making. Her combination of words and images stop our breath.

 

 

Image: Emily Hinshelwood
 

Marega Palser

 

Marega invokes time and space in her work. She deposits a whole world at our feet. She treads lightly for she treads on our future coastline - maps upon maps. She has annotated, added to, blotted and scribed the length and breadth of this uncharted territory. There is a perfect order, everything has a place. She has gathered much. She creates connections. She is a curator. Dead, washed-up objects become living in her hands. Rubbish becomes relic. The sole of an old shoe found on the beach with a feather for a sail becomes a vessel for two tiny figures waving mid-ocean on her maritime maps. There are lists and labels, meticulous crafting. A series of luggage labels proclaim “I have these 3 attributes, I feel these 3 things, I communicate with these 3 words”. The words spoken by us all have been returned to us by the deep current of her meticulous care. We witness something like the laying out of a body – the arranging, washing and tending. The greater body, this island earth which is all of us. We see ourselves, a population entire listed, named, included. Her body confident, precise with deft movements and gestures. There is repetition, there is ritual, there is an honouring of these people and the work that they do. A spoken-word soundtrack kicks in, an incantation, a litany of re-claimed words from a pilgrimage to the shoreline. I see, I notice, I feel… An echo of what went before but now presented again in story time - a time that always is and never was.

 

Image: Marega Palser

Tanya, Emily, and Marega have participated in, attended to, ingested, incubated reflected upon and responded to the content of the Climate Lab. They have each given us back a part of ourselves. The part which represents beauty, mystery, tenderness and humanity. This makes all the difference.

 

Everything in these artworks has a story, everything has an origin, everything speaks to and of us. We can relate and connect to it all. It is art which has been made from and for us, we are the material, we are the inspiration, we find ourselves witnessed and are mirrored back to ourselves in the process.

 

The group wanders around silently, marvelling, examining up-close, touching and becoming more deeply touched by all of the exhibits. There is power in this beyond words.

 

But there are words that are ready to be spoken. We invite, not the traditional ‘Q&A’ of the artworld or symposium, but return to ‘Council’ and a more profound speaking and listening from the heart. We hear from the three distinct groups within the Lab in turn – the artists, the commissioning team, and finally the scientists and engineers. Though time is pressing and lunch is calling, we again step out of linear time and into the timeless. This Council represents a sacred pause. There is a time for ‘going forth’ but it is not quite yet. First, we must take a moment to gather ourselves. Without apology, without embellishment. We speak - the system has a chance to ‘see itself.’ And what does this ‘system’ want to say at this point in the proceedings?

 

How do we dare to do this?                                                                         How do we dare not to do this? I feel grateful. Privileged.        The situation is hopeless but I’m not hopeless.                  It’s so important to have a space to slow down and voice these feelings.   I’m humbled by the energy, commitment and passion people have brought to this process.      I didn’t think I had that many emotions in me.                                             I’m interested in framing activism.                  I feel a deep bond and understanding with those who went through the process.    I was looking for a solution. There is no solution, but there is a message.                                        It’s been like childbirth. You are the midwives holding a wise, caring space.                                         We have been guided safely through something hard and transformative.                                  It’s lovely to feel moved and not be ashamed of being moved.                                 It’s been therapeutic.    I’ve seen the similarities between the process of science and art.                  It’s been so valuable being immersed in the process and the problem.                          There has been time for emotions and feelings. This is an important space for emotions on these difficult issues.        The art and time creates that space. It made such a difference to see other scientists feeling too. 

Appreciation of connecting to myself and to others.           We all feel this way and we are doing something, that gives me hope.                                                 Our Grief needs witnessing. You provided it.

 

 

Image: Tanya Syed

After lunch, the energy shifts again. Our thoughts turn toward the future. We speak of what makes us resilient and helps keep us going.

 

‘What music or song supports you in going forward?’

 

Each has brought with them their ‘Desert Island Disc’, the piece of music they would save from the waves as the sea rushes in. The group scatters to various ‘listening posts’ within and outside the room to share their own music and hear one another’s.

 

Faure’s ‘Requiem’; Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’; Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’; Monty Python’s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’…

 

What message does this song have for me as I pursue my work? What is it I need to hear and what essential ‘medicine’ does each song provide?

 

Collective Power / Epic / All together / Deep / Friends / Intimate…Happiness / Nature / Connection /Soul / Hope…Connection / Independence / Tearing down Barriers / Emotion / Tenderness / Strength - Strength of Connection…Poetic / Thought provoking / Beautiful… The Power of Family… Joy and Peace… of Connection…Unstoppable…De-stress / Affirmation…Joyful / Resilience…Activism.

 

We identify personal goals, projects, and resources, and share individual and collective ideas concerning our next steps. We reflect on what we already have and what we might need in order to do this.

 

There is a palpable charge in the atmosphere as we move towards action, an identifiable crackle in the air which accompanies ‘Going Forth’. There is a lot we want to do in the time remaining.

 

Each person is given two postcards as a memento of the Climate Lab. The first shows a Periodic Table of Emotions superimposed onto the Swansea Bay area of the Flood Map of Wales. The second: a juxtaposition of beach and houses at Borth, a mid-Wales sea-side village whose inhabitants have often found the waves lapping at the back door and exiting via the front. Each postcard represents another artwork by Marega.

 

Answer on the back of the postcard to be sent to yourself:

 

What do I need to hear when things get difficult?

 

And, to my designated ‘Buddy’ in the group, (the one with whom I would share air on a deep dive when my oxygen tank is empty), I write on the back of the other postcard:

 

What words can I offer to you when things get difficult?

 

And finally, we remember Mathilda – her poem, her words. ‘Some might not listen… but then, some do’. Each has responded by writing her a ‘seaside postcard’ (handmade and water-marked by Marega).

 

All three cards are deposited in a post-box at the centre of our circle to be delivered in the days to come.

 

We finish with each in turn sharing an ‘appreciation’ and ‘one thing I shall do’. We all know that this is not an ending. This is another beginning.

 

We give the last words again to Vaclav Havel, former poet, dissident and politician.

 

“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.”

 

This is not an ending. This is another beginning.

 

 

Coda

 

Looking back on the process of co-designing and facilitating the Climate Lab, and in writing this article, I am even more convinced that we are not sole agents of any process we are involved in. If I am able to surrender to the inevitable and unfolding process wanting to work through me, there are always hidden hands available to help at any opportunity. This is not to say that the process is easy or straight-forward. The dead-end, the challenge, the brick wall, the uncertainty, the fear are all in the mix too. I cannot know beforehand if it will all work out as planned. In Alchemy, we begin with the ‘Prima Materia’ and go through seven distinct stages in order to end up with the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’. Perhaps the most disturbing and necessary is ‘Calcination’ where it looks like everything is intentionally destroyed. But this, alchemists believe, is where ‘The Great Work’ must begin.

 

There follows a distinct and ordered process with an intended but uncertain outcome. If facilitation is alchemy, I must continually make space for the unknown and unpredictable. The space for the emergent. What is enough input and direction at any one moment and what is too much? Too much structure or too much fluidity is detrimental to the process and compromises the end result. When to fill and when to make space? There needs to be a flow and a breathing space in between things. We weave back and forth, like the tide between the conscious and the unconscious, the literal and the metaphorical. We hold the opposites at every moment, not in opposition, but in balance.

 

I have been awed, deeply touched, and transformed by my involvement in the Climate Lab and the individuals I encountered on it. I have witnessed a depth of humanity, care and vulnerability in all the participants which has humbled and inspired me. I feel blessed to have been offered the opportunity to facilitate this process and enormous respect for the people who gave themselves over to it.  Together, we have felt gratitude, honoured grief and pain, witnessed beauty, oriented to health, and opened to creativity. It is the Great Work of our time to develop the scientist, the artist, the activist, the poet, the human being not just in some but within each of us in the service of a life-sustaining future for all.

 

Fern Smith, Easter 2022.

 

 

Fern is a Ritual Artist and Craniosacral Therapist.

https://fernsmith.uk/

https://emergence-uk.org/

https://craniosacraltherapy.wales/

 

 

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