Animism Respoken
Sustainable Living Festival
Three environmental storytellers’ journey to reclaim their senses, relationships & worlds.
Permaculturist and dancer, Maya Ward (author of The Comfort of Water), neopeasant hacker, Patrick Jones (from Artist as Family) and rewilding facilitator, Claire Dunn (author of My Year Without Matches) share experiences of contact with more-than-human consciousness, and will speak to the societal trouble of foregrounding the city at the expense of the animate and creaturely.
Please join them directly after their talk for a participatory circle & extended Q&A.
Speakers
Patrick Jones
Patrick Jones is the co-author (with Meg Ulman) of The Art of Free Travel, which was shortlisted for an ABIA in 2016. As part of the collective Artist as Family he gardens, bicycles and publicly speaks the neopeasant home and community economies. He was awarded his doctorate in 2014.
Maya Ward
Maya Ward works to deepen belonging through writing, dancing, designing and teaching. She has a PhD in Creative Writing exploring links between ecology, psychology and shamanistic metaphysics and a memoir The Comfort of Water: A River Pilgrimage on her walk from the sea to the source of the Yarra River.
Claire Dunn
Claire Dunn is a writer, educator, journalist and barefoot explorer. Claire worked for many years as an environmental campaigner with organisations such as The Wilderness Society, before turning her attention to the human-nature connection, studying Deep Ecology with Joanna Macy, eco-psychology, and wilderness survival skills.
In 2010, Claire embarked on a year of bush living, completing the ‘Guunuwa Independent Wilderness Studies Program’. Her recent book “My Year Without Matches: Escaping the the City in Search of the Wild” is a memoir of that journey.
Claire writes frequently for the Sydney Morning Herald and a weekly column for the Newcastle Herald. Claire is a passionate advocate for ‘rewilding’ our inner and outer landscapes, and facilitates nature-based reconnection retreats and contemporary wilderness rites of passage.
