**We do not want cost to be a barrier for participation in this event, and we do have some bursary places available. If you would like to apply for a bursary place, please email harriet@stethelburgas.org.**
If you’re new to spiritual ecology this will be a great introduction. And if you’ve been exploring the practical applications of spiritual ecology for some time, this will be a chance to learn more. This is an event in our Faith and Moral Courage series.
What is a workshop carousel?
Jump on the workshop carousel and explore a different facet of the theme at each stop! This will be a fun, participatory day where you’ll get the chance to work in small groups with each workshop leader in turn. Four workshops will run simultaneously in locations throughout our venue (the tent, nave, garden and offices!). You’ll be placed in a smaller group with roughly 10 – 20 others, travelling through the workshop circuit together. By the end of the day you’ll have done all four workshops. A delicious vegetarian lunch will be served.
Attendees will be split into groups and will take it in turns to travel around the venue and participate in each of the four workshops. The event will close with a full-room conversation debriefing on the learnings that arose for leaders and participants. The event will run from 9 am to 4:30 pm. There will be breaks on either side of each session and we will have an hour-long pause for lunch where a delicious vegetarian meal will be provided.
The spiritual ecology worldview emerges from the recognition that what lies underneath our civilisational crisis is a spiritual crisis. It invites us to reclaim a felt sense of the sacred within all creation. Many change makers, environmentalists, academics, faith leaders and others are working with the principles of spiritual ecology to underpin their practical responses to the climate and ecological crisis.
Spiritual ecology is a multi-disciplinary movement emerging across academia, activism and religion. This field brings together ecology and environmentalism with a deeper awareness of nature as sacred. Spiritual Ecology is not based upon any single religion or spiritual path, but rather points to the primary and universal recognition of the sacred nature within creation. It is informed by the teachings of religious and spiritual traditions, indigenous wisdom and scientific research. The central values of this worldview are interconnectedness, reverence, service, and kinship. At St Ethelburga’s, through the practices and teachings of Spiritual Ecology, we’re exploring what it means to build a global culture of peace, which includes learning to live in peace with the Earth.
This is an event in our Faith and Moral courage series. By bringing together diverse voices across religious and secular traditions, we’re exploring how faith can uplift courage in a time of unravelling. View other events in the series on our Youtube channel here. Where does extraordinary courage come from? What can we learn from people who’ve risked everything to live up to their values? What forms of courage are especially needed in our age of unravelling, uncertainty and risk? How can we inspire ourselves and each other to grow our capacity to brave our limits? Are there insights from the world’s spiritual and faith traditions that can help us grow our courage?
Angharad Wynne has spent much of her life exploring the landscapes and lore of this land. Since childhood, she has followed her feet along pathways back through the portals of ancient myth, folklore, history, song and poetry of Britain, and particularly of her native Wales. Today, she draws together the fragments of our tradition, that can help guide and sustain a living spiritual practice, connected to this land and her creatures. She shares her learning and explores understanding and contemporary practice through retreats, storytelling gatherings, ceremony, dreaming circles, writings and pilgrimages. These are conceived as radical acts of re-membering our soulful, deep humanity and re-weaving ourselves back into fully engaged participation within the web of life. Angharad is a published poet and writer, a storyteller, speaker, teacher and expedition leader. She is the founder of Dreaming the Land and Animate Earth Collective and leads Dadeni, a three year programme exploring the native spiritual traditions and practices of the British Isles.
Dr Justine Huxley is the Co-Founder of Kincentric Leadership, whose vision is for a future in which everyone knows we are part of a living intelligent Earth. Kincentric Leadership convenes a global community of leaders stretching from Hawaii to Japan, who are co-researchers into the question: what will leadership look like, if we act from within the wider web of life? Justine was part of the team at St Ethelburga’s Centre for over 18 years. She has a PhD in the psychology of gambling addiction and in a previous life, worked in derivative sales for a global investment bank (two life chapters that are not unrelated!) Her first job (usefully) involved working with camels and horses on a Danish island. Author of ‘Generation Y, Spirituality & Social Change’, she is publishing a second book later this year on facilitating interspecies community. Justine belongs to a Sufi tradition which over the last two decades, has embedded its teachings within a framework of spiritual and ecological renewal. She has led meditation and dreamwork groups within that tradition for many years. Justine has a particular interest in how human beings can learn to wayfind through the polycrisis, uncovering a deeper relationship with instinct and making decisions in relationship with the wider web of life.
Clare Martin is Co-Director of St Ethelburga’s. Previously Development Director, Clare created and led on the Radical Resilience programme and went on to be the strategic lead on our viewpoint diversity work, before stepping up to co-lead the centre alongside Tarot Couzyn. She brings more than 20 years’ experience facilitating groups for the sake of inner enquiry and outer change, and is interested in how contemplative practices can play a role in cultural repair.
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Mishal Baig is the Communications and Research Co-ordinator at St Ethelburga’s. She helps with visioning and designing conferences and events coalescing from the themes of spiritual ecology, faith and moral courage, viewpoint diversity and bridging divides. She also helps with designing language and imagery for communications put out by the Centre. Her interest is especially attuned to Spiritual Ecology research and uses it as a guide and reference for her creative approach in work. Mishal has been at the Centre since 2018, first as an intern for a year and a bit, and then as a staff member since 2020.
Tarot Couzyn is Co-Director of St Ethelburga’s. Previously COO, she played a key role in developing our deep adaptation, sacred activist, and refugee camp volunteering programmes. She is currently developing an exciting new strand bringing communities together to create nature corridors across large tracts of farmland. At this time of ecological unravelling, she is interested in the meeting point of large-scale collective action with individual values and transformation. She loves working with diverse groups, bringing people together in shared passion and service.
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Nadine Nassar first came across St. Ethelburga’s when she was searching for new spaces of serenity and community in London in her mission to find new ways of being in the city. Soon after she became involved with the Lifelines project which reinvigorated her connection with nature within context of city life. She was hooked and joined the team as Lifelines Project Coordinator in 2024, blending her interests in ecology, social & spiritual exchange across communities and her belief in the importance of re-rooting ourselves in nature. She loves all things movement and is a lover of stories, of all kinds and in all their forms.