Kinship 2023: a round-up and review

(main image description: with the background of a bright blue daytime sky with faint wisps of white cloud, we see vertically up a rocky cliff face. A waterproof clad human with a backpack scales a path midway along the rock face from right to left, and in the distance, several other people walk in a line from left to right along the cliff top.)

Dear Kinship Workshop participants, wanderers, wayfarers, foragers and wildlings,

First of all, an acknowledgement that this year has been heart-wrenching and severe for so many in both human and non-human communities across the globe. We send our best wishes for a hopeful new beginning in 2024.

This year marks the end of a 6th season of Kinship Workshops. We have spent this year in weather-full workshops, on coastal roamings, meeting new communities, developing new programmes and searching out new homes… read on!

Where we’ve been & who we’ve met

In 2023 we: held workshops in Twickenham in Richmond (as part of the Richmond Arts and Ideas Festival: Together & Change), the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall and the Chiltern Hills; we joined the Cultural Reforesting residency, run by the Arts Service of Richmond and Wandsworth Council, as creatives exploring practice in the context of the ecological crises of our time; we piloted an immersive roaming and wild camping practice on coastlines of the Isle of Skye, the Isle of Bute and the South Devon Coast; and we developed and piloted a 5-week Nature-centred Wellbeing Programme for work settings and teams.

We met in forests, on parkland, on beaches, on cliff tops, in grasslands, on farmland…

(image description: a gallery of mosaic tiles showing all the Kinship Workshop posters and events from the 2023 season)

Animal Aid Unlimited

We decided to send this season’s donation from the net facilitation fees to Animal Aid Unlimited. We know it will go to good use in supporting the fantastic work they do in providing emergency care and sanctuary to so many street and farm animals in Udaipur in Rajasthan, India.

Cultural Reforesting

In May, Katye and I began a week of reflection on the past 5 years of Kinship Workshops whilst on a Cultural Reforesting residency at Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham. The gallery is where the Richmond and Wandsworth Council Arts Service is based. The gallery buildings are next to a beautiful and mature woodland that we witnessed and marvelled at throughout the year. This May week provided time to remember the places and people we have met since 2017 as well as the activities, exercises, themes and principles that we have worked with over that period.

In June we returned for another week, but this time with collaborators Chand Starin Basi, Holly Thomas, Poh-Eng San and interns Becky Horne and Sophie Holland. We spent a week sharing practices and perspectives which fed into honing and refining what we want to develop in the future with Kinship Workshops. Check our Instagram page reels to see some videos about what Holly, Becky, Poh-Eng, Chand and Sophie were thinking about during that time.

During each of these weeks we initiated a remote nature connection activity we called Sit-Along Spot, for people to find a place in nature near to where they live or work, and visit it regularly to get to know it over time.

During the Autumn we developed and piloted something new – we called it a Nature-centred Wellbeing Programme (NWCP), where we invited Richmond and Wandsworth Council staff members to join a 5-week programme exploring how personal well-being and our wider relationship to nature are interlinked. We received some very encouraging feedback and are planning to offer another extended programme next year.

(image description: a gallery of mosaic tiles showing a selection of colour photos from around Orleans House Gallery featuring collaborators Holly, Becky, Sophie, Chand and Poh-Eng, as well as Tom and Katye)

Coastal Roaming

Throughout the Spring and Summer, I took myself off onto various coastlines in Scotland and England to spend time digesting and practicing some of what I learnt from the hunter gatherer course The Old Way immersion from 2021/2 and Lynx Vilden’s Living Wild classes last year, seeing where these knowledges meet what we practice in Kinship Workshop. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from The Old Way team and Lynx & friends. I think of you all often.

I spent time wild camping, cold-water dipping, foraging, fishing and walking on the Isle of Skye and the Isle of Bute in May, and the South-West Coast Path in Devon in July and August when a few other folk including Katye joined me for a few days.

(image description: a gallery of mosaic tiles showing a selection of coastal roaming photos Isle of Skye and the Isle of Bute in May, and the South-West Coast Path, showing foraged food, fish and seafood, coastal landscapes, coastal wildlife, tents, camping equipment, Tom, Katye and others)

2024 (a rest)

After 5 years of workshops we decided to take some time in the residency this year to reflect on the journey so far… Now, after 6 years, we have decided to take a rest from workshops in 2024 (with two exceptions). During this year we will be exploring and nurturing some new relationships that will hopefully make future programmes possible and more sustainable.

Becoming hosts

Having said that we will take a rest in 2024, both Katye and I have both found new homes… In early 2024, Katye will be moving to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire and I will be moving to the Isle of Bute on the West Coast of Scotland. We are thinking about hosting a workshop each – inviting you to come to our patches at some point in the warmer months. Watch this space!

The murmuration

I wanted to end with something incredible I’ve been witnessing these past weeks. As I spend some time at my family’s home in South West France, I have been watching the daily gatherings and instant choreographies of a murmuration of 3,000 or more starlings (I have no idea how to estimate the number!). Each evening at about 4.45pm, small groups of starlings begin to gather in flight above the house and surrounding land. Every half-minute or so, another small group will arrive back from a day of foraging to join the amassing flock. As the groups arrive in, they all continue to wave, circle, loop back and forth. This continues for 20 or 30 minutes whilst the sky-movements become more and more complex and dynamic. The sound of wings and air moving gets stronger and stronger – no starling voices, just concentrated forming through direction and wing. I would say there is a period of 5 minutes or so of climax where the flipping and darting formations take my breath away. This murmuration may not have the size of some European cities, but I am in utter awe of them. I have this feeling that they are learning with each gathering. They are getting more skillful at this artful practice. I get the sense that they love this time of togethering. It’s exciting for them. I feel it. Both they and I are captivated and entranced in the dance… and then… all of a sudden, starling chirping bubbles in the air and the waves of dive bombing begin… wave after wave of a hundred or more dive into the deep green laurel bushes next to the house, right next to the window of the bedroom I am sleeping in.

With each wave of landing, the hedge fizzes and the murmuration in the sky becomes smaller until eventually after many waves, they’re all in. The hedge hums and shakes with bodies. The chirping and chirupping volume goes right up as they jostle for space. The sound eventually dies down a little but continues into the soon arriving darkness. I can hear the soft chatting throughout the night in fact, as I slip into and out of dreams. In the morning I hear them leaving at around 8:30am depending on the light and weather: waves and waves of departure after departure in small foraging groups that head out in all directions for another day of fly and seek.

It feels auspicious that they chose this place to spend their wintering together. The-inch-thick pile of guano will also be a pungent fertiliser for the garden when they leave the roost in February-time!

Change and beauty are made and shared with such clear and present relationships in this murmuration. The starlings teach me this.

I am inspired to continue to be part of gatherings in the natural world. I get the sense that gatherings and groups that meet outside, out there, in whatever form they take, where relationships are made, nurtured and practiced are important. Crucial in fact!

(video description: a YouTube embedded colour video of the starling murmuration circling a stone house and descending into a laurel hedge next to the house)

Thanks

I want to send thanks:

to Katye for your endless positivity and celebration, and for knowing what to do when I don’t, as well as all the planning, organising, leading and supporting;

to the participants for coming to be open-sky dwelling humans in relationship with land and nature;

to Andy, Dawn and the whole team at Orleans House Gallery for their fantastic support, input and trust over the past year of residency and development;

to Becky Horne and Sophie Holland for joining the programme as our unofficial/ official interns, giving precious support, energy and feedback, as well as leading 3 family nature connection workshops in South West London;

to collaborators Chand Starin Basi, Holly Thomas and Poh-Eng San for sharing their practices and perspectives in our June residency;

to Kyra Norman in Cornwall for her generosity and local wisdom;

to the lands in which we met for providing ground and holding us;

and the countless beings we encountered briefly, deeply, consciously and unconsciously.

Thank you.