Where haven't we been?!

It’s been nearly three months since we last blogged and you may well have been wondering where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to. (You may not, of course. We’re not so conceited that we think your days and nights are taken up with wondering what Emergence has been up to lately...)

In short, we’ve been busy. Very busy. Silly mad bonkers-tastic busy. And we have lots and lots to tell you about. But... we’re not going to do it here. This is August after all and most - if not all - of you will, we hope, be taking well earned breaks from your busy lives and not really be that keen to read a long blog from us about our adventures. So, we’ll keep this brief and simply highlight what we’re doing next and what we’re going to be talking about over the coming weeks and months.

Firstly, our next event is entitled The Gower Harvest Walk and Talk – sharing the gifts of Gower – and takes place on Sunday 27th September between 11am and 7pm at Stouthall country mansion near Reynoldston on Gower.

Stouthall

Inspired by the ancient tradition of thanksgiving for the fruits of the Earth, we’re celebrating harvest this year with this day long event. There will be a walk to Arthur’s Stone, the beautiful ancient burial site on top of Cefyn Bryn; a fascinating talk by Ian Rees of the Annwn Foundation about the deep mythology of Gower, followed by a harvest supper and veg swap.

Arthur's Stone

For more details and to book your tickets – which are selling fast – follow the links to our Eventbrite page. Tickets are limited and are £10 waged and £5 no/low wage.

Satish Kumar

Secondly, those of you who are followers of Emergence will doubtless remember that we ran our first crowdfunding campaign earlier this year and raised £25,000 to enable us to make our landmark documentary series about activist and Earth Pilgrim Satish Kumar.

We shot the documentary in late July over six days, first at Satish’s home in Devon and then, for one night only, at Schumacher College near Totnes. We now have in our hot little hard drives twelve hours of the most wonderful, rich and thrilling footage of Satish and Jane Davidson in deep and wide-ranging conversations. We’ll tell you more about the process of shooting (and the steepness of the learning curve!) and how we’re going to proceed with the project when we blog again in September. For now, suffice it to say that we were bowled over by Satish’s energy, insight and inspiration and we can’t wait for you to see the documentaries when we launch them in 2016.

Jane and Satish at Schumacher College

You can still pre-order your copy on limited edition DVD by emailing fern(at)emergence(dash)uk(dot)org

Thirdly, we were absolutely thrilled to host both Satish and the wonderful Meg Wheatley – core inspirations behind Emergence from the start – at our first Station to the Sea Peace Walk in Swansea on the 27^th of July. 

Peace walkers in silence on Swansea beach

Timed to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the first German bombs to fall on Swansea, this was a truly beautiful day of deep connection, listening, walking and talking when we were joined by some thirty walkers to journey together from the heart of Swansea - destroyed in the second World War - to Mumbles Hill, site of gun emplacements during the same conflict. Again, we will blog about this day in more detail in due course but we’re taking this opportunity to share some of the images taken by our friend Erin Rickard.

Peace walkers encounter Armed Services Day in Swansea's Castle Square

In particular, check out the fantastic installation of prayer flags created by Sean Puleston and Erin who also created together our now near legendary labyrinth on Rhossilli beach on the final day of the Walk That Reconnects in September 2014. Our walkers carried these handkerchiefs along the length of the walk, writing their own personal questions around peace on them before tying them in to Sean and Erin's installation.

The sight of the flags flying in the breeze as we all stood together in silence will live with me – and I’m sure many others – for years to come.

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to book your tickets for our next event here. If you haven't already, then do sign up to our mailing list by visiting our website - www.emergence-uk.org - and clicking on the button at the top of the page. We don't send out masses of emails, promise!

Enjoy these rich, peaceful final days of summer.

Phil & Fern 

A Tale of Two Conferences by Anna Pigott

In 2012 I went to two very different conferences.  (I know this doesn't sound like the beginning of an interesting blog post but please bear with me..)

The first conference, a huge international gathering in London called 'Planet Under Pressure – New Knowledge Towards Solutions', focussed on the idea of the Anthropocene, a concept which describes the enormous influence that humanity now has on Earth. The conference left me feeling both overwhelmed by the enormity of what the Anthropocene sets out (what can I possibly DO?!) and underwhelmed by the proposed 'new knowledge'.  Over 3000 delegates attending an array of workshops during the conference were churning out this knowledge but … where was it going, and how could it all be joined up to produce the changes that were needed?  Something was missing, but I couldn't put my finger on what.

Later in the year, that something hit me between the eyes (quite literally, as I danced around a mini exploding volcano made of sand. As I said, this one was different): At the Emergence Summit in September 2012 it became joyfully apparent that there is something that connects all the problems of the Anthropocene – it is us, it is culture and, as Paul Allen has said, it is the stories that we tell ourselves about where we've come from and where we are going.  From our culture and values everything else flows, with no 'behaviour change programs' in sight. 

So, my question became 'how does culture change?', and this led to my current PhD research at Swansea University.  By my desk I have pinned a quote by the Welsh academic and novelist Raymond Williams which I think sums it up beautifully: “Culture is ordinary. That is where we must start.”  It is easy to take for granted the everydayness of our culture, so much so that it is often difficult to step back and see what shapes it.  I think the role of art is both taken for granted and seen as a 'luxury add-on' in this sense.   What Emergence has shown me is that art is much more than something that is just 'done to us' (or for us).  Being an 'artist' shouldn't be a title reserved for those who do it in exchange for money.  If we cook, if we garden, if we fix things, if we think and imagine, if we talk, if we play – we are being creative, we are artful.  This is how art and creativity make – and change – culture.  As Bertolt Brecht said “art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it”.

I have become especially interested in how 'meta-narratives' can influence cultural change. For example, sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has described how the Industrial Revolution in western societies was underpinned by a narrative of aspiration and progress in which people self-identified as pilgrims on a long journey of collective endeavour for a better world.  These days this narrative has collapsed under conditions of environmental crisis, uncertainty and perpetual change, such that people behave more as tourists than as pilgrims, snatching at fleeting experiences rather than committing to shaky long-term aspirations.  Our problem now, Bauman argues, is that we can't imagine a better world, let alone aspire to one. 

Being on somewhat of a journey of discovery myself, Satish Kumar's activism is quite new to me, and I have been struck to find that he, too, advocates a 'pilgrim' approach, and also advises on how to do it.  He passionately and enthusiastically urges us to slow down and to take care of ourselves, a prerequisite of taking care of the Earth.  He also calls for a more holistic view ('soil, soul, society') which recognises our membership of an Earth community, not just a human one.   This brings me back to the concept of the Anthropocene and reminds me of philosopher Donna Haraway's suggestion of replacing 'Anthropocene'  – a term which puts humans centre stage – with the (albeit unpronounceable) 'Cthulhucene', a term which describes the tying together of human and non-human ecologies in a kind of 'responsible symbiosis', an approach which might better sustain us in, as she says, “staying with the trouble on Terra”.

Staying with the troubles on Earth and finding ways to transform them is likely to be a long pilgrimage, and whether we choose to embark on it will depend on whether we have the appropriate stories, visions and creativity to sustain and inspire us along the way.  In Wales, some examples of such visions include the One Wales One Planet manifesto initiated by Jane Davidson, which led recently to the Welsh Government's pioneering Well-Being of FutureGenerations Act, and CAT's Zero Carbon Britain Project which Paul Allen outlined in his previous blog post. Satish's meetings with Jane Davidson promise to be an exciting opportunity to explore and ignite conversations that are just beginning in Wales, and elsewhere, about where we've come from and where we want to go.  And although I can't wait to listen to them, wait I will have to, as all pilgrims must… 

Emergence is crowd funding to make a Landmark Series of documentary films of Satish Kumar in conversation with Jane Davidson. Click this link to find out more and help make this legacy project happen.

Anna Pigott is a PhD student at Swansea University, researching how visions of the future are created and represented in Wales and how they relate to social and political change.

The Pilgrim & The Politican - guest blog by Jane Davidson

When I was first approached to work with Satish on this exciting project, I was doubtful; what had I to offer to illuminate one of the greatest spiritual thinkers of the 20th and 21st century - a man who creates lasting mental images from his inspired turn of phrase and who is truly authentic in what he says and does? There are certainly others who could provide a better critique and be more immersed in his thinking. But, after reflecting for some time, I became excited - maybe the narrative of our time is a profound loss of dialogue between different actors about what matters. In the era of the ever shortening sound bite, we no longer debate ideas. This documentary is the chance to do that, to energetically debate Satish's ideas between ourselves and with others and to momentarily call a halt to the daily onslaught of the senses and reflect on the human condition. After all, as Satish says, "human energy is the most important form of renewable energy."

Satish and Jane - Schumacher College November 2014

I think we find ourselves at a turning point in this early part of the 21st century. Somehow, we’ve lost our moral compass. As a society, we value the wrong things in the wrong way; we value and define success in financial terms rather than in people terms, we are focused on growth rather than the art of living well within environmental limits. Intellectually, we know that our lifestyles are damaging this planet of ours, yet we don't act.

Deepwater Horizon oil fire

I have spent much of my adult life looking to policy and politics to create a better and fairer future; Satish has lived his life outside politics, teaching and inspiring others to live their lives better. Yet despite my secular and his spiritual convictions, there are many areas in which we have joint interests that cross the secular/spiritual divide.

We believe there is an important conversation to be had about where beliefs come from, the role of spirituality in a secular age and, as comrades and travellers together, to use our discourse as an art form to challenge and probe and ultimately to recognise, revive and reinterpret for today’s generations, the legacy of an extraordinarily wise man. This won't be a hagiography, but an interrogation of over half a century of ideas to redefine what it means to be an 'everyday pilgrim' in the 21st century.

You can be part of making the series happen and learn more about it here. 

But you can also participate in other ways. Send us your questions, your comments, your favourite Satish-ism and contribute to the quality of the content as we make this documentary series. As Satish says, "Don't ask someone else to transform if you have not transformed yourself." We want this series to be transformative, to interrogate ideas and challenge beliefs and in doing so provide an eon of a whisker of a sliver of a notion that together, we just might find some common ground that will help inspire a better future for us all. All those of you who are funding us to make this happen, thank you. It's a story that needs to be told in the form that fits the age. Thank you for helping to make it happen.


Many thanks, Jane. Leave a comment below or contact us via Twitter: @emergenceuk ; Facebook: Emergence UK ; or sign up for our mailing list and check out our previous work at: www.emergence-uk.org