New Constellations

Robin believes that our blueprint as human beings is to be born in deep connection to nature, at ease with being a keystone species. The question he asks is not only how we can rebuild this connection, but how we lost it in the first place. He traces UK history to times during which our earth and land based cultures were destroyed, and asks what it would take to rediscover and learn from these deep roots in our soil. Robin is co-founder of The Old Way, which we featured in a previous encounter. 

Made by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen with Iris Andrews, Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak.

Music made for New Constellations by Art School Girlfriend.

Transcription

Discover more at newconstellations.co, and join us on Instagram and Twitter @newconstells

Gemma joins The Old Way, a year-long course tracing the migratory route of hunter-gatherers through the seasons - searching for food in the woods, along the coast to the seashore and over the moors. The experience invites us to learn from our ancient past to help shape better futures by exploring our own rewilding and how we can reconstitute the webs of connection that we have lost with each other and the natural world. 

Made by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews, Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak.

Recorded music by Emily Fawcett

Andri Snær Magnason grew up with the wild Icelandic Highlands in his heart and soul. As a student of Nordic mythology he perceives that we are living through ‘mythic times’ such is the extent of the climatic and ecological change that we will see in a lifetime. As a writer, poet and director, and a father of four children, he finds words to help us understand the era we are living through, to question the flawed logic of economic and political systems that plunder our home, the earth, and shows us how a new generation has what it takes to enact the changes we need. 

Made by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews, Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak. 

Music by Kai Engel under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence

Goddur Magnússon has the gift of being able to spot and channel the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. He does this by connecting to beauty, which he sees as his closest contact to the future. As a renowned Icelandic designer, teacher and grandfather-type, he says the best way to pass on his knowledge is to befriend his students and learn with them. So he explores where we are heading, what is new in the air and how we can map it, starting with the answers in our gut.  

Made by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews, Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak.

Music by Kai Engel under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence

Discover more at http://newconstellations.co/, and join us on Instagram and Twitter @newconstells

Hrund is a creative innovator, cultural entrepreneur, filmmaker and dreamer. She believes fostering creative mindsets, original thought and diversity is the key to unlocking the infinite possibilities of human beings in today’s world. Author and co-director of the documentary INNSÆI – The Sea Within, Hrund is a passionate advocate for intuition and creativity in a world of distraction and stress. She shares how she reacquainted herself with her own innsæi, insight into the pioneering interdisciplinary program she set up in the wake of the financial collapse in her native Iceland, and inspiration from ancient Polynesian navigators.

Made by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews, Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak.

Music by Kai Engel under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence

Guy Singh-Watson is an organic farmer, entrepreneur and self-professed veg nerd, passionate about reinventing the food system. Founder of Riverford, Guy vowed not to allow the company to become driven purely by the bottom line, so in 2018 sold 74% of Riverford to its employees at about a third of the market value. Passionate about sharing his decades of organic farming and business knowledge with others, Guy wants to prove that business can be a force for good and has always believed organic food should not be elitist, but accessible for everyone.

Made by Jo Barratt. Conceived by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews, Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak.

Discover more at http://newconstellations.co/, and join us on Instagram and Twitter @newconstells

Music made for New Constellations by Art School Girlfriend.

Derek Bardowell is an author, award-winning charity leader, park runner, reimaginer and devoted dad. Once a music journalist and for many years a disruptive funder, Derek works at the intersections of race, culture and philanthropy and believes everyone has the right to feel at ease in themselves, in their bodies and in the places that they live. His first book, No Win Race explores race and racism in modern Britain through the prism of sport and was a Sunday Times and FT Book of the Year. His new book, Giving Back, reimagines philanthropy through a reparative lens and will be released in August 2022.

Made by Jo Barratt. Conceived by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews and Lily Piachaud and Hadeel Elshak

Discover more at http://newconstellations.co/, and join us on Instagram and Twitter @newconstells

Farzana creates the capacity for transformation. Through the lens of her experience as a youth and community worker, a writer, a director and a leader of Healing Justice, she asks what it would take to envision abolition in our lifetime and to truly practise freedom. She works with communities to imagine and organise around visions that reimagine public health and to build eco structures of health and healing from them. She explores how we can live in integrity - in congruence with our reality, holding our emotional, spiritual and energetic experiences intact like landscapes.

Made by Jo Barratt. Conceived by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews and Lily Piachaud.

Music made for New Constellations by Art School Girlfriend.

Discover more at http://newconstellations.co/, and join us on Instagram and Twitter @newconstells

Sophy is a weaver of wisdom, traditions and the twin forces of will and love. An engineer and therapist by training, Sophy has spent a lifetime exploring how things work within us and around us. She believes that western culture has lost the rituals that help us come to terms with the fact that everything we love we will lose. As a founder of the transition movement, a grief tender and in her work restoring healthy human cultures, Sophy helps people see how they are part of systems of trauma and how to create return pathways to states of health.  

Made by Jo Barratt. Conceived by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen, with Iris Andrews and Lily Piachaud.

Music made for New Constellations by Art School Girlfriend.

Find out more about Sophy's work: Healthy Human Cuture, Grief Tending

Learn more about the people influencing this work, many of whom are mentioned in this episode, here.

Full transcript

Discover more at http://newconstellations.co/, and join us on Instagram and Twitter @newconstells

Chagford is a small town on the north-eastern fringe of Dartmoor, in South West England.  In  2019 the Parish Council declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency, following similar declarations by Government and councils all over the UK. Jo and Gemma helped Chagford Parish Council gather the views of residents for a community conversation about climate and the natural environment.

Made by Jo Barratt and Gemma Mortensen.

Music by Dhevdhas Nair. Additional live music performed by Lisa Rowe, Rupert E Smith and Amye Farrell.

With thanks to Chris Chapman and the Chagford Parish Council Climate and Ecological Emergency Working Group.