Spring news including upcoming London workshop and a word about compost!
The ‘compost heap’
On a recent visit to Berlin’s TierPark in Friedrichsfelde, I was struck by some unexpected and at first perhaps incongruous combinations of animals clearly thriving in the same spaces. In this footage, at about 1’16 secs in, a third group of animals appears, changing the dynamic! Diversity as opposed to homogeneity brought to mind the image of a compost heap as an analogy for the benefits of this. I heard the compost analogy being discussed a couple of years ago on the Nomad podcast in an interview with Prof Anthony Reddie and Al Barrett about whiteness and the continuing search for a more just world. Al Barrett talked about the compost heap and how everything gets thrown onto it; how different materials - often rigid and inflexible - slowly break down and turn into something new. How we need people to be side by side, ‘rubbing the edges off each other’ and though ‘its not easy or straight forward it changes everything and out of it something new and good and dark and rich emerges that nurtures new life.’
Upcoming events
For anyone interested in working with me, for the first time or as an artist returning to this approach, I have a workshop announced for London, the weekend of 12-14th June and bookings are now open. If you want to find out more about it, go here
“The imagination is always more loyal to the deeper unity of everything. It has patience with contradiction because there it glimpses new possibilities. And the imagination is the great friend of possibility” John O’Donohue - Divine Beauty
Pelican Watching in Perth, W Australia