Learning How Land Speaks

Over the past three years, the Schumacher College short course programme has hosted Living Waters, a series of co-operative inquiries with rivers worldwide; a fourth is planned for 2024. These inquiries take seriously the proposition that the world is a living being, hosting a communion of sentient beings.

The world and its beings is not only sentient but is open to communicate with us in various ways, if only we will attend and learn how to listen.

River Dart

Learning How Land Speaks is a series of Substack posts which give an account of these inquiries, covering the theories behind our work, the practices and protocols we have developed, and narrative, poetic and visual accounts of participants’ experience.

These inquiries are informed by living cosmos panpsychism as articulated by philosopher Freya Mathews; the biopoetics of biologist Andreas Weber; the place-based ecology of Sandra Wooltorton, and Gaia theory as articulated by Stephan Harding (in preparation). The co-operative inquiry process is developed from the original work of John Heron and Peter Reason, in which participants engage in cycles of action and reflection, visiting their River at least weekly, sharing and discussing their experiences with others in a small inquiry group.

There is a fuller Introduction on Learning How Land Speaks, where you can also find the posts we have made to date. We invite you to sign up as a subscriber to receive weekly updates as our writing unfolds.