Encounters Lab, Friday 16th March

Encounters Lab No. 7 - Meeting the messy moments and fertile edges of socially and ecological engaged practice.

March 16th, 2012, Studio 20, Dartington, Devon

Last month's lab focused on creative responses to Climate Change and this months Lab will focus on Hope responding to a quote from the book 'The Re-enchantment of Art' by Suzi Gablik (we’ve rediscovered it recently and highly recommended it):

'It is possible to create a positive vision of the world through focusing the aspirations of hope’.

We will explore the potential and the pitfalls of working with Hope. During the lab we will combine facilitated creative process with whatever's alive in the room that day. We'll make and share and explore the fertile edges of our practices.

This lab will be led by Encounters Creative Director, Ruth Ben-Tovim. Toni Spencer who usually co–facilitates the lab is running a three week Eco–facilitation course at Schumacher College so can’t join us this month.

Encounters labs are for creative practitioners, facilitators, educators, and activists. For those of you new to the labs: Welcome! Please read carefully to see if this is for you.

Below is an introduction and practical details for the Lab.

The Encounters Lab

Come and explore your creative practice with others practitioners: get gritty, follow your curiosity, hone ideas... We are interested in 'those moments': where the deepest dreaming meets the profoundly ordinary, where conflict glimmers with potential for insight, where something faint is noticed and deserves some good attention. All this towards radical (deeply rooted) culture change towards a more sustainable world. This is a space to go a little deeper, progress a little further in our practice. Please join us.

What work are you making right now that you want to experiment with? What are the sticky questions you want to share with others: about your own work, the world or the nature of change?

The Encounters Lab series is being offered as a practical, safe creative space to explore creative and facilitation work that often goes straight to participants / audience/clients. It’s a chance to experiment, meet other practitioners, and share the edgier or delicate aspects of our practice.

Ideas half formed, or that need a safe airing... New forms of work that you can't quite grasp yet but want to share... Activities just about ready to go public...

Sessions will weave the practical building of work alongside experimental emergent time.

Details

Please RSVP to info@encounters-arts.org.uk

Or feel free to contact us with questions: Toni on 07980 575 525 tonispencer77@hotmail.com or Ruth on 07870 698 333 ruth@encounters-arts.org.uk

When: 10am – 5pm

Location: Studio 20, Dartington Space, Dartington Hall, Totnes,

Devon TQ9 6EN http://www.dartington.org/visit/directions-and-maps

What to bring: Clothing for indoor and outdoor activities; food to share for lunch

Cost: from 50p to £500, pay what you can!

Accomodation: If you are not local, let us know in advance and we’ll try to arrange somewhere to stay

Who we are: the lab will be held by Ruth Ben-Tovim and Toni Spencer.

Ruth is the founder and Creative Director of Encounters, who offer imaginative spaces and processes for people to explore their relationship with themselves, each other, where they live and the wider natural world. Encounters specialise in designing and delivering participatory arts projects and interventions that inspire creativity, dialogue and exchange between people of all ages and cultures.

Toni is a Creative Associate of Encounters and works as a facilitator, educator, forager and artist. She works with process (personal + collective), food (wild, tame, feral + neglected) and landscape. All this serves to explore how we might meet the world more fully, in order to live within the world more sustainably. She is a freelance practitioner with Schumacher College, Embercombe, Transition and others.

Feel free to pass on this information to people you think might be interested in these labs.

Future Encounters Lab dates to add to your diary: April 27th, May 25th, June 29th

Please do let us know if you would like to be taken off this mailing list

Encounters

www.encounters-arts.org.uk

Encounters on Facebook

Twitter: @Encounters_Arts

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"There is no way to separate feeling from knowledge. There is no way to separate object from subject. There is no good way and no good reason to separate mind or body from its ecological and emotional context." - David Orr, Earth in Mind

For more information visit http://www.encounters-arts.org.uk/