ACTIVE HOPE: An Imaginarium for the Great Turning

Where the weight of the world

meets the wisdom of the earth.

A workshop by Planet Song and the Deep Ecology Collective of lutruwita/Tasmania

Are you carrying the quiet exhaustion of looking at the climate headlines? Do you feel the tension of wanting to act, but are also feeling isolated by the sheer scale of the crisis?

The times are urgent—so let us slow down.

You are invited to step out of "business as usual" and enter a conversational greenhouse. Grounded in the work and philosophies of Joanna Macy, John Seed, Bayo Akomolafe and others, this workshop is an experiential sanctuary designed to transform your grief and care into focus, connectivity, and active hope.

The system is breaking down around us. This is an opportunity for us to explore, discover and deepen new ways of living, loving and thriving through the cracks into a more beautiful world that we are yearning for. 

Together, we will borrow new eyes to look at how we can collectively create what Joanna Macy calls the “Great Turning” - both globally and in our home here in lutruwita/Tasmania. We will stand on the edge of the systemic cracks opening up around us - social, political, and ecological —and discover the wild, fertile possibilities waiting to break through.

In this workshop we will explore different elements along the Work that Reconnects spiral: gratitude, grief and honouring our pain, seeing with new eyes, and going forth. We will tend to the fracture points, and immerse in a range of opening perspectives, such as deep time and the more-than-human world. The closing of the workshop spends time anchoring our new perspectives in tangible ways of bringing them into our work over the next week/month/year. 

The Details:

  Date: Sunday 11th October

  Time: 10am to 3 pm  (Please bring your lunch to share)

  Location: Fern Tree Community Centre

  Contribution: Sliding scale: $30 - $200 

Come as you are. Bring your deep feelings, your wild "What Ifs," and your curiosity. Let’s sit in the cracks together and see what is trying to sprout.

Your Facilitators:

Dr Sue Stack is a passionate researcher, educator, deep thinker and multi-media artist interested in transformative learning and cultures. Her career has encompassed science, engineering, government policy, and education. Her PhD topic - Integrating science and soul in education draws on methodologies such as action research, lived experience, auto-ethnography, future studies, presencing, and meta-theory. She loves creating experiential environments that mimic ecological systems and tune into ‘the knowing field’, unearthing the deep wisdom and connection that everyone has. She is currently exploring what it means to be in right relationship with the more-than-human world. 

Liz Downes is a campaigner and researcher who works with local and international grassroots organisations in social justice issues around mining and extractivism - supporting communities to resist mega-industries which threaten their lands and livelihoods. This work brings her into contact with complex, destructive forces which seem to be destroying the fabric of life as we know it. To balance this, she has spent years facilitating Deep Ecology and the Work that Reconnects - profound, restorative and regenerative work which reminds us that we can build active hope from within, by connecting to our wider selves in nature and community.

Moran Wiesel is an eco-somatic counsellor, Ho’oponopono practitioner, poet/storyteller, musician, and pattern-weaver. Their soul’s passion is to weave threads of connection between, nurturing the sacred spaces of re-remembering our intrinsic interbeing. As a healing practitioner Moran offers individual therapy, earth sensing workshops, community rituals, and playful gatherings. As a creative Moran shares works that birth from tree roots and dragon mountains, beckoning us into listening with our whole earth body. They’re particularly passionate about curating performance experiences that invite meditative, somatic participation. As a co-founder of Planet Song, Moran is whole-heartedly exploring what earth-spirit governance means in our everyday community lives. www.moranwiesel.com  

We are part of:

Planet Song - a collective exploring how governance can emerge from right-relationship with earth-spirit kin. Offering training, consultancy, creative activations, and research, Planet Song asks how we can embed the relational future we long for into our everyday lives here and now. www.planetsong.org 

The Deep Ecology Collective of lutruwita/Tasmania is a network of facilitators who create workshops, community events, educational programs and immersions based around the work of Joanna Macy and John Seed.