Are you pondering the finiteness of things, living beings, people, and ourselves? Are you thinking about nature a lot or maybe experiencing ecological grief? Do you want to explore these topics with peers in a meaningful, engaging way?
This three-part workshop led by Nora Kroeger and co-moderated by Gwyn Jones invites you to delve into a kaleidoscope of ideas, thoughts and practices which open up a thoughtful, in-depth peer-to-peer dialogue on finiteness, fragility, and mortality in the context of sustainability.
After a successful and transformative pilot in 2023, the Association of Sustainability Practitioners (ASP) is offering this workshop free of charge to a second cohort this May 2024.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
- Curious people who want to engage more about mortality, culture, and nature
- Thoughtful people who find it hard to read the news about ecological breakdown
- Friends and future friends who want to find community around these topics
What are the workshop aims?
- Creating a safe space to discuss topics often ignored or not talked about in our societies
- Exploring different approaches to cope and constructively deal with finiteness
- Empowering us to act in the face of – or because of – finiteness
How can I register?
- Fill out this easy registration form
- If we have free spaces, you will receive a calendar invite for the workshop series
This workshop series is free of charge to benefit our communities and to increase accessibility.
WHAT PREVIOUS PARTICIPANTS SAY ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
- “The thoughts and contributions from participants were really powerful and comforting and enlightening equally.”
- “I’ll have more confidence engaging on this topic and providing leadership and support to others.”
- “I feel less anxious and can cope better with the flood of bad news.”
- “Being able to connect to these deeper, more difficult emotions that we feel, and have them welcomed is so important both for our wellbeing and also our work as sustainability practitioners”
WORKSHOP DESIGN
Fully recognizing that the key themes of this conversation are heavy topics, the design ensures that we start and end on a gentle and constructive note. Discussion prompts from a variety of sourceswill be used in the sessions, spanning literature, research, comics, pop culture, poetry, and art.
The workshop is a guided peer-to-peer dialogue, it is neither led by clinical professionals nor pursues any therapeutic objectives.
THEMES AND CONTENT
Session 1: Finiteness in nature and in pop culture – a creative and cultural exploration
If there are two things that we are always surrounded by, it is nature and pop culture. Thinking about how we experience finiteness (fragility, mortality, grief, the circle of life and death) through examples we find in nature and pop culture opens up a fresh, and accessible way to talk about these topics and allows us to compare and contrast the natural world with the world of human discourse to explore how we make sense of it all.
Session 2: The silence around finiteness – death anxiety and ecological grief
If the pandemic and the climate crisis have taught us one thing, it is that our societies prefer to stay in the spiral of silence instead of facing grief and death anxiety in a mindful, conscious way. Whether it is grieving a loved one or grieving Mother Earth, how can we start talking about finiteness and mortality?
Session 3: Finiteness as a call to action – the role of us
Living through and contending with the polycrisis, where do we see our role in this? Can we imagine old and new ways to make positive, generative contributions while we are still around – in the face of or even because of finiteness? This session will provide ample space to discuss our place in it all and to wrap up the series with a sense of agency.