AN INVITATION
24 places/intergenerational/online and in-person
for people immersed in service and contribution with families, groups, communities and environments…
end of March – mid-September online and in-person
Join us for ‘RETURNINGS’: a villageminded 6-month-long project funded by Erasmus, hosted through Giraffe Social Enterprises
12 people aged 18 ~35
12 people 35+
to gather, wonder, work and learn alongside one another as we wrestle with what’s needed in these troubled times
- regular zoom sessions
- 2 w/e woodland working residentials: Hampshire 5-7th May, September w/e dates and place TBC
- week-long in-person gathering at ‘PROVISION’ Transylvania – June 15th – 22nd – travel overland or by air – available accommodation see end of page
A human-scaled shared living week – a counterculture to living “on the take”. Our days will be steeped in;
ReMembering, Restoration, Resilience, NVC, dialogical systems, growing the skills of neededness, cultivating the lived relationships between humans, between humans and the more-than-human world and humans and the unseen world.
Our work together stands on the shoulders of many
If you are interested in what you have read above please give a look/ listen/read/explore some of the links below and if you are still interested please:
contact gayano on gayano@ymail.com or 07933 743105
Some of the Foundations of our work…
Stephen Jenkinson & Kimberly Ann Johnson ~ Honest Reckoning in Troubled Times
Reckoning is an unguarded, sober meeting with Spirit Work, Conspiracies, Elderhood, Grief and Plague and Building Culture in a Me First Era. Try this at home. With Companions.
“You come by your prejudices more or less involuntarily. That means you inherit them. And generally speaking the world gives you plenty of reason to go with your prejudices and not wonder about them too much. That’s a very dark thing to consider: the world in its conditions is so encouraging of your prejudices that you could almost be forgiven for being unconscious about them. Almost. Heartbreak is how you humanize your prejudices.”
~ Stephen Jenkinson
“One of my particular heartbreaks is that the unconscious foundation of so much of my world view, even it criticisms, is rooted in individualism. Especially heartbreaking is the remarkable individualism of those around me who bang the drum of community. ”
~ Kimberly Ann Johnson
Robin Wall Kimmerer ~ The Teachings of Plants: Finding Common Ground Between Traditional and Scientific Knowledge
Dr. Robin W. Kimmerer, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, SUNY-ESF In traditional ecological knowledge, plants are regarded not only as persons, but as among our oldest teachers. If plants are our teachers, what are they teaching us, and how can we be better students? In a rich braid of ecological science, indigenous philosophy, and literary reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, Dr. Kimmerer will explore the material and cultural gifts of plants and our responsibilities for reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Resma Menakem: Trauma & White Body Supremacy
“Abolitonist, Resmaa Menakem, shares a true story about racial discrimination between the police and his family. He also challenges the hell out of me. Man, this was a good one, very intense. I learned a ton. I continue to learn about how me, as a white heterosexual male, can improve in the area of race, equity and diversity. This is a pretty charged episode. Trigger warning. Check it out”
~ Jayson Gaddis
Becoming Kin with Indigenous author Patty Krawec
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2107428931725
Author Patty Krawec shares how going back and acknowledging harmful histories helps pave the way for a more hopeful future
Weaving the Web: Healing Beyond Hope and the Human – a talk by Sophie Strand, March 9th
Our wounds don’t just show up in our bodies. They show up in our ecosystems. When we feel pain, we must ask where that pain is asking us to direct our gaze. What plant, landscape, ocean, mountain, or fungus resonates with our particular plight? How can we let personal illness galvanize us into greater connection with our ecosystem? What if the bodies of the disabled, survivors abuse, the neurodivergent, the chronically ill were not broken and in need of constant fixing and problematization? What if they were compasses that directed us out of anthropocentric narratives? In an age of mass extinction and ecological crisis, coming back to our bodies will not necessarily be pleasurable. But those people that live with conditions that give them non-normative physical experiences may have much to teach us about how our pain is a portal into greater participation with the ‘flesh of the world.’Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/tZMldOmsqzksGtaK5zVmj2DPNm2HS…
Charles Eisenstein – They’re just not jaded
https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/theyre-just-not-jaded
“That’s how someone described the people he encountered during his recent visit to a hospital in Costa Rica. The doctors and nurses were so warm, friendly, and genuine; they even gave him their personal cell phone numbers. “Call us if you need anything.”
Stephen Jenkinson – What do we owe our ancestors?
http://10kh.show/00042-what-do-we-owe-our-ancestors-with-stephen-jenkinson
This was a powerful interview to record. Stephen Jenkinson has quite a presence and it took me from my default jovial nature to a real sense of centering and depth and reality. He invites (demands?) me to question my priorities: death over growth, my ancestors over myself. If the goal of this show is to participate in your evolution, then this episode is one of our best.
Sara Jolena Wolcott
https://www.sequoiasamanvaya.com/lifting-up-culture-doctors-a-conversation-with-nina-simons
Nina Simons, Co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer of Bioneers and the author of, Nature, Culture, and the Sacred: A Woman Listens for Leadership, joins hostess Sara Jolena Wolcott to discuss the healing work of bringing people together and leaning into feminine leadership. Of the many titles that she has been given, “culture doctor,” is one of her own favorites, and it seems to fit many of the women leaders whom she has learned from and with over her decades of working to weave together ideas, people, and actions for a more compassionate and ecologically sound world.
Lyla June Johnston
This short episode is with Lyla June Johnston. Lyla June is poet, musician, educator, anthropologist, activist and community servant of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. She holds a degree in Environmental Anthropology with honors from Stanford University and a degree in American Indian Education with distinction from the University of New Mexico. Her internationally acclaimed performances and speeches are conveyed through the medium of prayer, hip-hop, poetry, acoustic music and speech. Lyla’s personal goal is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.
Bayo Akomolafe
“The earth is not a stable thing, a principled location locked into the subservience of playing backstage to human mobility. Instead, the earth is moving. And “it” is moving so irreverently that one might say the planet is becoming fugitive. That’s why the cracks are showing up everywhere: cracks in settlement; cracks in neurotypicality; cracks in human exclusivity; cracks in democracy and the legitimacy of the nation-state; cracks in time; cracks in being.
~ Bayo Akomolafe
I am convinced – in the creaturely ways that conviction marks a gesturing towards and a yearning in risky directions – that this loss of stability, this ontofugitivity of things, traces out a geophilosophy that invites a reconsideration of the premises that have conditioned experience, articulated civilizational problems, and instigated resolutions. Cracks become matters of ontogenesis, intercessory sites of what is to come and what is not quite done-with. Today’s geophilosophy of note is probably a politics that cultivates ways of following cracks to where they might lead”
Foundations of Support – Stefanie Kent
When a tree begins to grow – the root emerges first from the seed.
As a tree grows taller, or weathers a new season, a storm or change in its environment – it doubles down on root growth before expanding up and out again.
When we want to grow – to make a change in our life, our family, our community – we need to build the roots – the foundations of support that will hold us. That which makes it both possible to show up in the ways we long to show up, to make the difference around us that we know in our hearts that we can, and for it to be sustainable.
Those supports can look like many things:
- Growing your self awareness
- Deepening connection with yourself, your purpose, your spirit and the other than human world around us
- Habits/Rhythms/Routines
- Cultivating relationships, friendships, community
- Making the invisible visible – consciously choosing ways to make decisions and choices, to communicate, to offer and receive feedback, to tend to conflicts
You don’t need to do it alone.
Contact gayano: gayano@ymail.com or 07933 743105
FYI – Accommodation at Provision includes
- tiny house: (sleeps 3-4) two single and one double mattress in the loft upstairs. comfort with climbing up a ladder into the loft is required… This would be perfect for 4 people who are already comfortable with one another, otherwise 3.
- community blue house: (sleeps 3 or many more, depending…) Bedroom has one large bed for 2 people and one single bed. There is room for another mattress on the floor if needed. Also a sleeping couch on the glassed-in porch. Also a couch-bed in the common kitchen.
- “walnut” guest house (sleeps 3-5) Bedroom has one large double bed. The living room has a single bed/couch with extra mattresses to put on the floor. There is a small private kitchenette. This is the most luxurious place to sleep.
- schoolhouse guest room (sleeps 2) small room in the lower annex of the schoolhouse has two single beds. Very simple indoor space.
- camping in tent borrowed from Provision (2 tents available)
- camping with your own tent (spaces for 5-10 tents on Provision grounds and many more in the horse pasture at 5 minute walk if needed)
- room to sleep in the hay loft above the horse/goat stalls – room for 3-5
- And the schoolhouse itself will be able to be used for sleeping inside: Two rooms for at least 4 people, possibly more
- all of Provision’s guests share:
- use of the common kitchen in the community blue house as well as the kitchenette in the annexes of the schoolhouse. both have gas stoves and the blue house kitchen has cold running water and a large shared refrigerator.
- two “luxury” bathrooms (walnut and schoolhouse) including WCs and warm water showers
- two cold shower possibilities, one inside the tiny house one in the schoolhouse garden
- two compost style dry toilets: one in schoolhouse garden the other next to the blue house barn
- access to the schoolhouse classrooms when there are no classes in session
- many places to sit quietly alone or with others in gardens, orchards or the fields and mountains just outside the village.
PS: IT is GREAT if people can bring their own sleeping bags. If this is not possible, we need to know in advance so that we can buy more blankets / sleeping bags!