main image description: a colour photograph depicting a wild golden meadow with green hills behind, a pair of booted human feet appear from the long summer grass, stretching up towards the soft blue sky above.

Dear workshop participants, nature-lovers, wanderers and wild ones,

Another year is almost spent. In fact it seems to have sizzled away with ferocity – it’s been a year of many things which in the wider world included tragedy and loss. And where we are all headed is unclear to me. However, when I go out into wilder places, the solace that comes is deeply comforting to me and I find myself hopeful in amongst the life all around me.

I hope you have managed to connect with wilder places throughout the year too.

We have had a full year, even though we organised fewer workshops to be able to concentrate on another project we called the Nature-centred Wellbeing Programme. We also formed a council of support, we spoke as part of the open public dialogue EcoSomatics, Katye built a new relationship with an arboreal neighbour and we began to prepare for a month of wild food.
Read on…

image description: a collection of 6 colour photos laid out in a mosaic format, showing 2024’s workshop posters (Bute & Hebden Bridge), the Nature-centred Wellbeing Programme poster and 3 EcoSomatics posters.

Where we’ve been & who we’ve met

One of our first engagements of the year was joining a series of curated online dialogues: EcoSomatics Conversation with Geo-therapist Ruth Allen and organised by Polly Hudson at Birmingham Royal Conservatoire/ Birmingham City University. We spoke with Ruth in a conversation entitled Troubling the expert(ise) and Homing our practice. We are hoping it will be made into a podcast soon. We’ll make sure to share it more widely when it comes out.

2024 saw the first Kinship Workshop on Bute, where I now call home since January of this year. A super group came together to explore some of the beautiful places I’ve been discovering in the past 10 months or so since I arrived. It was fantastic to meet many local artists and practitioners working all over Scotland as well as some welcome returning participants from further afield.

We organised another workshop in Hebden Bridge which we unfortunately had to postpone until next year. However, we have an announcement for Hebden Bridge 2025 coming very soon!

NDN Collective (*updated)

This year, we are sending the donation from the net facilitation fees to NDN Collectove to support their essential work with LANDBACK initiatives and indigenous empowerment. This is a new cause we would like to continue to support in the future. “NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.”

Nature and work…

Much of the rest of our time this year we spent planning, organising, delivering and reflecting on what we called the Nature-centred Wellbeing Programme – a 10-week series of in-person and online sessions with staff members of Richmond and Wandsworth Councils in London. This project grew out of our residency last year at Orleans House Gallery where the Richmond Arts Service are curating the Cultural Reforesting programme. 18 staff members from across the two councils spent time together and individually reflecting on and developing their own relationship to nature. The hybrid programme took us to green spaces in both boroughs including Orleans House Gallery’s beautiful grounds and the incredible Putney Heath. In developing this programme we wanted to consider the link between nature and wellbeing and whether they are in fact separate. We learned a huge amount from the whole experience including the real tension between the pressures of work culture and what we discover when we spend intentional time outside.

As part of the programme, we invited artist/ practitioners Becky Horne and Sophie Holland to assist us in facilitating the programme. We also invited researcher/ gardener Naomi Terry to run a session on relationship to land, and dance artist Holly Thomas to share her perspectives on practices that develop her connection to nature as a visually impaired nature-lover.

Researcher, filmmaker and choreographer Simon Ellis accompanied us as an observer on the project, collecting people’s impressions and documenting their experiences across the 10 weeks. He did this in a number of ways including making a wonderful film documenting the project. This will form part of our contribution to the Cultural Reforesting exhibition which opens in March 2025 at Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham, London. We’ve seen some of Simon’s drafts of the film already. It’s very special. We’ll let you know when and how you can see it. Watch this space!

We are hoping to run another programme of this nature soon. I believe bringing relationship to nature into the work setting has huge potential to contribute to far reaching change. I hope we can generate more engagements like these in the coming years.

A council of our own…

Now in its 7th year, Kinship Workshop is growing. As we begin to work in new contexts, deepen our nature connection practices and experience the world in flux and change, it has felt more and more important not to just rely on our own limited perspectives. We decided to gather a group of respected colleagues and peers to work with several times per year to focus on 3 main areas we want to understand more deeply: 

• Social Justice, decolonisation, liberation, anti-genocide: how we can work towards making Kinship Workshop a force for change in the world
• Organisational growth: how to evolve and grow Kinship Workshop to meet new and important contexts
• Right relationship: maintaining and growing personal practice to expand relationships, and to support and nourish us

We’d like to introduce them all to you at some point soon. They are an impressive bunch!

An arboreal neighbour…

As Katye gets to know her new home in Hebden Bridge, she has been developing a relationship with the Rowan tree at the corner of the park. She says…

2025

Next year will be a year of returns in terms of workshops… Bute and Hebden Bridge will be in the mix, plus a London workshop and a return to Wales. We’ll make a full 2025 programme announcement in January.

We’ll kick things off with a special (and free!) Launch Day on the 23 February 2025 full of online offerings including our online workshop Kinship@Home plus a number of other nature connection sessions. In order to join this event, we’re asking you to subscribe to our website newsletter. This is all in the attempt to improve and broaden the way we communicate. This will also insure you get all the updates you’d like to receive… plus we’ll offer a 5% discount on the 2025 programme if you join before Launch Day. Head over to the SUBSCRIBE! page to find out more or join directly here…

Katye and I will be following a very interesting project run by master forager, herbalist and author Mo Wilde in June 2025, called the Wild Biome Project where we will be living for one entire month from wild food only. This project is studying the effects of a wild diet on health and the human gut. If you’d like to support us with this, we’ll be raising funds for the scientific testing involved. More on this soon.
As such, we have both been out and about foraging and collecting in preparation for this wild culinary quest. I spent many days this Autumn collecting hazel nuts on Bute – sometimes after dark and sometimes in stormy weather! On my return home after one of these blustery capers, I wrote down some impressions…

Tussling in the night

The wind throws itself towards us

Hazel and human buffeted by gusts in the dark 

Hook on stick 

Hook on branch 

Pull

Reach 

Grab 

Pluck or twist 

Into the pouch 

You sway and dance 

I trip and slip 

In the dark I love you

I scrabble around on the ground, searching for nutty jewels 

I don’t know you very well 

So I don’t know if I’m doing this right?

Tell me how to be a better animal

Home to dry and eventually crack

And eventually eat

… and I’ll remember the ridiculousness of my head torch-clad escapade…

I will return

Will you meet me again?

Thanks

As ever, I want to thank Katye for all she does to support both Kinship Workshop and me on the journey to wilder ways.

I want to send deep gratitude to the generosity of land – of islands, caves, wild waters, forests, woodland and mountains. There is nothing without you.

Thank you to the people: the participants who have joined workshops and programmes as well as the fantastic humans that have supported our work this year, notably: Becky Horne, Sophie Holland, Simon Ellis, Andy & Dawn from Richmond Arts Service and Kinship Council members

A glimpse…

A few photos from this year. Just a glimpse of the many places and people Kinship Workshop has met.

image description: a collection of 14 workshop colour photos laid out in a mosaic format

Sending best wishes for a restful Winter Solstice and a season of nourishing Winter festivities from myself and Katye.

I hope to see you somewhere out there when the warmth returns.

Tom