Narrative & Community Workers Needed to Story a Life-Sustaining Future
Team of Curators: Jenny Freeman, Merle Conyer & Akansha Vaswani
I used to think that the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy…to deal with those, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation –and we scientists don’t know how to do that. Gus Speth
What if WE do? Narrative therapists are ideally placed to engage community and clients in transformational responses to the crises and stunning opportunities of these wild times, which deserve creative courage. We, you and me, and our community can contribute to that transformation, through our circles…those whose lives we touch and are touched by. What counter-stories, what liberative narratives, what visions of possibility can we offer?
Times are urgent, let us slow down….“A postactivist investigation might help us recover a sense of wonder and re-enchantment by pointing to ‘other places of power’. Perhaps this is its greatest gift: hacking through habitual patterns of perception and engagement to reorient attention to other sites of potentialities bubbling from the chemical landscapes of the Anthropocene. Bayo Akomolafe
Can we breathe deep, resist the disconnected extractive culture’s trance of ‘business as usual’ and respond to this call with curiosity and with fierce love and gratitude for our Earth?
Narrative and Community Work Resources: In response to Earth’s Environmental Crisis
“Considering ourselves as ‘citizen therapists,’ as part of a ‘global citizen’s movement’, how do we step outside of the box, beyond ‘business as usual’ practices, to invite awareness and potentials for engagement? What might narrative therapy including collective narrative practice offer? How can we come together in positive community, tuned into our natural surroundings, as we respond to questions about our relationship– personally and professionally–to these wild times. Each of us have stirrings and unique gifts to offer. What are we called to?” Jenny Freeman
- Greed does not have to define our relationship to the land – Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Ally vs. Co-Conspirator: What it means to be an Abolitionist Teacher
- Racism is killing the planet – Sierra Club
- Is Racism the REAL Reason for Our Climate Inaction? -Zhiwa Woodbury
- We Do: Chief Caleen Sisk & the Network of Indigenous Women
- Mary Annaïse Heglar to Join Earth Institute as Writer-in-Residence
- The Seventh Story: Counter-stories to The Big Six (a Francophone gathering of coaches and therapists working with narrative ideas)
- Climate Change, Mental Health and Collective Action: An Interview (Akansha Vaswani with Jennifer Freeman)
- Psychotherapy Networker Blog with Jenny Freeman
- Narrative therapist, writer and activist Merle Conyer interviewed by Nicole Gruel</