HEdge Space
Creative Collaborations for Change
A Do-it-Together Toolkit.
Workshops
Weaving our Intentions and Knowledges Together
Date: March 2022
The same session was run on two different dates:
Co-Researchers:
1 person was at the first session. SP
3 people came to the second session. CI, EC, FMW
Location: The Flaggy Shore, The Burren Co. Clare
Duration: 2.5 hour Workshop
Purpose:
Group Building
Refining our common intentions and getting to know the skills and knowledges we each bring which may help us in our collective action.
Co-researchers are asked to bring an activist tool or knowledge that they use in their practice.
Method:
Creative eco-embodied praxis activities
Facilitator: Giselle
Praxis Workshop Structure:
This core workshop was organized into ... activities:
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Co-Researchers meet and greet, Individual reflection and share-back
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People explore their visions and intentions and discuss the activist tool they brought with them. together through an embodied eco-art activity.
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Tea and food
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Sharing outcomes from activity and
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The group reflects on this activity and what thoughts or feelings it generated for them.
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Individual workshop evaluation and share back. Benefits (usefulness), challenge's of the process. Next steps.
This was a 2.5 hour workshop but could be expanded into a longer workshop, or series of workshops, depending on the context.
The aim of this eco-art praxis workshop was to gain more clarity around co-researcher’s motivations for particpating in the research. During the workshop attendees explored their motivations and intentions for research action, the activist knowledge and skills they currently have and the skills and knowledge they would like to develop to further their activism practice. This workshop was run twice on different dates to accommodate peoples varying availability.
The workshop consistend of two activities, weaving our knowledge together, and weaving our intentions together. Prior to the workshop, co-researchers were invited to bring some tools from their current activist practice to this workshop as a way get to know each other better and to identify what is in our collective toolkit. Co-researchers presented and discussed their tools and arranged them into small eco-art pieces, photographically documented. Tools includeded gardening books, Red Rebel costumes, a process tool called FIST and buddhist prayer flags.
Several creative action ideas were seeded during this workshop such as a Red Rebel performaces, marshal arts practices that promote body care in public activism work, kora pilgrimage, feminist walks, and banner and zine making. Some of these early explorations later informed a Red Rebel action, the workshop Samhain: Ritual Action For Change, the 'Love and Power' postcard, and the Climate Camp art space and zine.
These workshop activites and outcomes were used to inform the next workshop similarly to the way in which the predecending workshop ‘goin back to go forward’ was used to design this workshop.
The key reasons people came back to this workshop were an interest in
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Relationship Building, Group Work, Collective Action
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Refining Intentions and common purpose.
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Connect with people with similar concerns.
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Reconnect with art and integrate art into activist practice
Weaving our Intentions and Knowledges together: First date: SP in attendance
Exploring activist tools
SP brought her costume that is used in Red Rebel performance protests and gardening books which represent their biodiversity and food producing garden practice.
The Red Rebel Brigade are an international performance artivist troupe dedicated to ‘illuminating the global environmental crisis and supporting groups and organisations fighting to save humanity and all species from mass extinction’ (Red-Rebel-Brigade, 2022). The non-violent practice was devised for the Extinction Rebellion Spring uprising April 2019 in London by Doug Francisco and Justine Squire from Bristol’s Invisible Circus.
Red Rebel Brigade - Red Rebel Brigade
The Farmer’s Almanac
SP creates a temporary eco art piece to express what feels is needed to bring about social change.
Relection poetry from SPs notebook page photographed above.
Weaving,
bringing hope amongst despair.
feeling the soul, being kind
reflecting on what has been and what will be,
each small action reflects with everyone’s small actions and become something tangible.
Like the ebb and flow of the tide breathing feeling being we must have hope,
keep trying what will be will be it’s not flippant, it is acceptance.
the longevity of all these conscious actions and words and songs we sing is powerful.
it is all for a reason however hard that is - acceptance that some things are to be.
Back to the beginning hope amongst despair-I contradict myself open to all possibilities -keep at it.
We later reflected on the value of today's workshop as a stand alone session. While SP was the only attendee at this workshop she believes that even working with one person its empowering, that
...each small action reflects with everyone’s small actions and become something tangible.
Weaving our Intentions and Knowledges together, second date: CI, FMW, EC in attendance
Exploring activist tools
CI brought a tool called FIST from their youth work citizen participation practice. FIST is an acronym for; Feelings (what feelings are coming to you), Images (what images are coming to your mind), Senses (what is happening in your body – taste, smell, touch, sound), Thoughts (what thoughts are coming to mind). They use this in their active citizenship and youth work practice to bring grounded and embodied awareness to people in the group. In this way people come to understand what they are feeling and how this shapes our thinking.
FMW brought Buddhist prayer flag and expressed the sadness and frustration they feel steming from their experience of a lack of value in spirituality in activism. Fiona Mae later co-developed the Samhain: Ritual Action For Change workshop to incorborate a spititual practice with activism in a praxis workshop.
EC talked about their experience of using collective walking and zinemaking and distribution with the Feminist Walking Tour of Dublin.
We also explored some questions they generated in previous workshops e.g. How do we claim power? How can we link up? Is this Strategic? Where can we intervene?
This led the group to discuss pilgrimage and other embodied activities as activism.
After tea we went down onto the beach to explore these ideas experientially to see how this could further inform ideas for action. See images below.
Walking together to process feelings, to connection, play, creating awareness and inform actions
Other Walks mentioned during these activites:
The annual Tree Walk
The Famine Walk – Afri, Action from Ireland, Afri 30th Anniversary of the Famine Walk - YouTube
Love is a recurring theme in these workshops
Co-researcher reflections and action ideas
Temporary, naturally formed art ready for dissolution. A wishing wall made from gathering (sticks twigs leaves etc) gathering together silent in group connecting to nature doing no harm or interference, making a shrine alter and a pathway to walk around Kora-temporary nature - will dissolve.
A Red Rebel walk was suggested and the use of particular movements.
Co-researcher reflection:
The value of embodied and iterative practice, moving together on the earth trusting the group process and the path we take together. Ideas come together from each person and from the collective action or collectively designed art piece and can be woven together successfully.
'we make the road by walking'
During the workshop the idea of 'we make the road by walking' was mentioned. The saying comes from the poem "se hace camino al andar" and is a central idea in radical adult education circle. Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (1990) used this phrase to describe their activist adult education stance (Tisdel, 2013) and co wrote a book titled 'we make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change'.
The phase represents the idea of learning though doing activism work together, and learning though our ongoing experiences of learning together, with each step taken informing the next step. In the book Horton and Freire discuss the nature of social change and empowerment and their individual literacy campaigns. The themes they discuss illuminate problems faced by educators and activists around the world who are concerned with linking participatory education to the practice of liberation and social change (goodread.com, 2022). The emergence of the concept into our eco-art action created a powerful link between the radical, cultural and spiritual practices we were exploring.
Elizabeth J. Tisdell also used walking in pilgrimage as a method of research on transformative learning. As spirituality was a strong theme from this workshop, I've included an extract on pilgrimage and transformation from her paper
We Make the Way by Walking: Spiritual Pilgrimage and Transformative Learning While Walking the Camino De Santiago (newprairiepress.org). Numerous writers have described spirituality as a journey toward wholeness, or a journey toward wisdom (as summarized by Tisdell, 2003) using the idea of journey in its more metaphorical sense. But Kottler (1998) suggests that many adults also attempt to facilitate their own transformation and spiritual development through travel, while others do so by going on a spiritual pilgrimage. A spiritual pilgrimage can be either a metaphorical spiritual journey or actual travel to sacred sites (Cousineau, 1998), and in anthropology, Morinis (1992) discusses different types of pilgrimage, all of which involve a journey and a goal, where a part of the goal is movement along the journey itself from the familiar to something other, until this new other becomes integrated into a new sense of self. This sense of movement is reminiscent of the phrase “we make the way by walking”Tsdell, 2013. p3) . “Blessed are the peace-makers,” particularly Neil Douglas-Klotz’s (1990) midrash of “Blessed are they who plant peace in every step” brought to mind the peaceful ethos of the Red Rebels in our workshop.Intersectional-Eco Feminism and Spirituality..more to come.
Co-researchers’ key takeaways from the session were
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A sense of community
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That Ideas come together from each person and from the collective action or collectively designed art piece and can be woven together successfully.
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The value of embodiment, moving and breathing on the earth trusting the group process and trusting going on a path.
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Walking as processing feeling and connection, play, as mindful practice but also creating awareness.
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Small actions are powerful and add to the whole and become tangible
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Who's here is here
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Learning, Sharing Knowledge and Experiences
Key Generative Themes From the Sessions
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Agency
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We grapple with a range of emotions and contradictions:
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Acceptance, Contradictions, Hope, Despair, Possibility
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Desire for sensory experiences, embodiment
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Common visions, conscious Action
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Need more Love in the world, community, connection, play, creating awareness (recurring themes0.
Challenges, Suggestions by co-researchers for the next workshop
Exploring the really useful questions in more detail,
Sharing more of our knowledge and experience.
Refining of our common purpose and creating a project timeline.
Key Really Useful Questions From the Sessions
What is our agenda?
Action ideas forming:
A Red Rebel walk was suggested and the use of particular movements. The importance of protecting ourselves when working in public was highlighted. This creative action could present opportunities for costume, banner, zine making, digital media, performance, poetry and linking up with other groups. and martial arts movements which embody the notion of love and power Paul Lindon* love and Power Postcardhttps://www.being-in-movement.com/
*EC went onto propose a creative action at Climate Camp Ireland 2022
and co-developed the climate camp workshops and zine workshops.
This led to the climate camp community co-producing a climate camp zine for 2022.
*FMW went on to propose Samhain: Ritual Action For Change workshop and a red rebel action
Workshop Handout Art Card: Workshop overview and activity Instructions with art and themes from previous session
Resources
Red Rebel Brigade - Red Rebel Brigade
Other Walks: Afri Famine Walk, The Tree Walk
Afri 30th Anniversary of the Famine Walk - YouTube
Famine Walk – Afri, Action from Ireland
Link
Link