EVENTS 2024
Held at Bronhafod - a wild haven close to the Usk Reservoir in the Brecon Beacons
**A Collaborative and Experiential Workshop for Artists, Facilitators, and Practitioners Working Therapeutically with Nature**
During this workshop, we will gather around places of pause and reciprocity. We’ll welcome silence, still points and other tender feelings. Collectively, we’ll lean towards the returning light of winter solstice and illuminate the often transient tenderness’s held within our relationships to our practice, to others and to the places that shape us. Through art-making, creative expression and spontaneity, along with invitations to stray among the untamed and natural spaces of Bronhafod, we will look together and open our hearts to new connections. Through acts of tenderness, there may be gentle openings for rediscovery, a nourishing of personal and collective roots and pause for new shoots to emerge from the undergrowth. This workshop will involve both time in a beautiful, cosy natural building as well as being outdoors with the elements and surrounding hillside. Together, through creative solo and group contemplations we'll explore themes of tending across the personal, social and ecological territories of our life and work. Acts of Tenderness is the final workshop in a series of events dwelling at the confluence of human-nature relations, tending, growing and communal story making. This workshop may hold particular relevance for those working across fields and themes of nature-based therapy, creative health and collective healing. Location: Bronhafod, near the Usk Reservoir in the Brecon Beacons. (further details on booking) Date / Timings: Saturday 14th December, 10am – 4pm Cost: £65, includes seasonal hotpot lunch & home grown herbal infusions from the garden. Please come prepared for the Welsh weather! For further information and booking, please click the 'Join Workshop' button above. Led by: Jess Tanner & hosted by Ella Gibbs “Tenderness perceives the bonds that connect us, the similarities and sameness between us. It is a way of looking that shows the world as being alive, living, interconnected, cooperating with, and codependent on itself. Tenderness is the art of endlessly discovering similarities. Creating stories, constantly bringing things to life, giving an existence to all the tiny pieces of the world that are represented by human experiences.” - Olga Tokarczuk
A RESONANT LAND
6th - 8th September
A deep nature immersion in the Olchon Valley, Herefordshire "The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep." ~ Rumi ............................................................. How can we renew our stories of connection with Mountain, River, Seedhead & Rock? What can the land teach us about becoming better listeners? Can we follow the hidden threads that lead us back into song? ............................................................. A Resonant Land is a deep nature immersion taking place in the Olchon Valley, a magical, hidden landscape where Mountain and Sky meet. We invite you to join us as we step through the door, the door that is always waiting, round and open. If you feel called to make a space to hear yourself again, to see yourself in the other and to feel yourself and the more-than-human in all of its aliveness, come gather with us around Fire and Star. This immersion will offer time for deep listening, as we tend to our selves, each other and our more-than-human relations, through creativity, movement, song and expansive time with the land. ............................................................. And we go back to sleep, our threads of connection hidden from view...... And we surface again, turning into the storm and into the beauty of it all once more..... This dance, back and forth across the doorsill ............................................................. We, Jess & Jenna, feel called by this landscape and by our own longings to renew and strengthen the threads where these two worlds touch, to clear a space for the emergent and the generative ways of being that weave us more deeply into resonance, kinship & reciprocity. These gossamer threads that bind us, hold us and restore us for the way ahead. ............................................................. What to expect: Over the weekend we will offer creative pathways into: Listening with & learning from the land Space for silence & song Movement practices with nature Stillness and deep rest Fire and togetherness Solo time immersed with the landscape ............................................................. This immersion is for you if you are longing to: * Reweave a connection with yourself, others and the living landscape * Gather around the fire under starry skies in a nurturing, like-minded community * See yourself and the more-than-human in all of its aliveness * Slow down enough to savour the threads that hold resonance ............................................................. When: Arriving 4pm Friday 6th September - Departing 3pm Sunday 8th September Location: Olchon Valley Campsite, Herefordshire Olchon Valley Campsite is a small, family-run site on a traditional hill sheep farm in the Black Mountains, on the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The campsite is a mixture of wooded pasture and meadow which is vibrant with butterflies, grasshoppers and other invertebrates. At over 1,000 feet above sea level, Olchon Valley Campsite offers a peaceful, rural site in an area of stunning scenery and spectacular dark skies. Accommodation & Facilities: Camping & camper van pitches, kitchen facilities, hot showers, compost toilets and several large undercover spaces. At an extra cost private/shared yurts and wagons are available for booking directly through the venue on a first come, first served basis. Please contact us for further information Cost: £290 Inclusive of all sessions, two nights camping/camper van pitch, two communal breakfasts & suppers On booking, you can choose to pay in full, or secure your place with a £100 deposit. Our cancellation policy can be found on the booking form. (see link at the top of this event page) Please bring ingredients for two shared pot-luck lunches. --------------------------------------------- Facilitators: Jess Tanner: Jess is a nature-based practitioner & ecological artist exploring human/nature relations through the practices of tending, ecological movement & story making. Jenna Blencowe: Jenna is a song carrier and wilderness guide, exploring threads of connection to soul through song and thresholds. @heartofthewild_jenna "Where Mountain communes between Earth and Sky And Kite throws shadows across the old red sandstone These escarpments Of black hill, tumble and ridge And all the while the Olchon brook is singing Her silver ribboned hymn Weaving upland, valley, farm and Monnow We will meet you there."