Episode 116: Spaceship Earth Podcast: We Are Avon | The Power of Pilgrimage
This episode was a live panel recording from the We Are Avon community gathering in May.
This conversation is an exploration around the power of pilgrimage, the ancient practice of walking land and rivers as a way to connect us back to self, each other, and the landscapes we’re part of.
I hosted special guest, Zofia Page, Executive director and Co-founder of Friends of the River Medway, an innovative non-profit restoring the river while reconnecting people to it as a living presence.
Her work weaves together ecological action; the Rights of Nature movement; and a renewed, enchanted relationship with the more-than-human world.
Alongside Zofia was Hamish Evans, Regenerative Farmer of Middle Ground Growers, River Pilgrim, prefigurative activist, and co-director of We Are Avon.
This was a beautiful conversation with two extraordinary young change-makers who carry incredible vision, wisdom, humility and dedication to our home planet.
In a time where mainstream reality is unravelling , perhaps these ancient practices of walking the land, moving through landscapes together in community might offer us different perspectives, deeper connections, and other ways of seeing this moment and the future that we’re being invited into co-creating.
Episode 111: Spaceship Earth Podcast: We Are Avon | Listening to the river
Live panel of guests to help us explore a wider theme of ‘listening to the river’:
Intentionally making space to consider how we might collectively practice de-centering the human, tempering the urge to rush in and ‘fix’
To make time for listening, observing and sensing the more than human as an integral part of regenerative and bio-regional practice.
Three amazing guests:
Scientist, author and Explorer Dr Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, Ph.D.
Writer, campaigner and river wife Meg Avon
Sound Artist and Anthropologist Louise Romain
All three with very different stories and approaches to listening, noticing and sensing the more than human.
This is a recording of that panel, where we gathered upstairs at our friends Finisterre Bath store.
Episode 102: Spaceship Earth Podcast: a place-based movement for regenerative change
This episode from the Spaceship Earth Podcast is an audio adventure featuring a live panel conversation from the launch of new bio-regional project We Are Avon and musings from a Pilgrimage along the River Avon herself in the last week.
Across the UK more and more communities are engaging with the deteriorating health of their local rivers and wild waters.
From cold water swimmers, fishermen to local food growers, conservationists, nature lovers, artists, storytellers, writers and community activists there is a growing understanding that the health of the rivers reflects the health of our societies.
Episode 98: Spaceship Earth Podcast: On Sacred Rivers, Community Activism and Bio-regional action
This episode was from a live panel
A conversation with a brilliant crew embedded with the lands and rivers who are working to steward, guardian, protect, connect and regenerate life between human communities and more than human ecologies.
The panel was focussed specifically on exploring rivers, our relationships to them, the state they are in and why they are such a key connection in a bio-regional project.
guests were a quite brilliant crew:
Amelia Crews – ocean and river activist, community energy organiser and climate and nature action dynamo.
Eva Perrin – Aquatic Ecologist, PhD graduate in freshwater biogeochemistry, community activator for citizen science and river protection, co-founder of Conham Bathing Group and Rave on for the Avon.
Hamish Evans – permaculturist, regenerative farmer and prefigurative activist – co-founder MiddleGround Growers
Paul Powlesland – river guardian, rights for nature campaigner and activist lawyer.
Four amazing humans serving life, becoming the change, doing difficult yet joyful work.
This is a dynamic conversation, full of insight, provocation and invitation to get stuck into whatever hood/river/forest you find yourself close to.
It’s very much a conversation about entanglements, relationships and interdependence, the future we’re being called to shape is one of new relationships, of learning to relate in new ways to ourselves, to each other and to this more than human world we call home.
And the ways we relate to the wild waters of this Earth is such a fundamental indicator of the health of the human and more than human crew on Spaceship Earth.
What does it look like to see ourselves, not at the centre of a landscape of place, but decentered, in kinship, in relationship with all life that is there ?
What does it look like to step into a way of being that sees us in a place of kinship, as part of a sacred web of life, not above it trying to create power and control over it, but within – in relationship with.