Making Connections with Anna Selby

Poet and naturalist Anna Selby reflects on the themes of Engaged Ecology and the spirit of nature-based, eco-spiritual education that is so integral to the teaching at Schumacher College.

Join Anna on our Making Connections short course or on the full MA Engaged Ecology here in January 2023.

Find out more about the short course:
https://www.dartington.org/event/maki...

Find out more about MA Engaged Ecology:
https://campus.dartington.org/engaged...

Making Connections is a short course introducing you to a range of manual craft-based activities, such as wood-carving, linen production, basketry and copper smelting. It then uses these experiences to transform your relationship with the natural world, or what we sometimes call the non-human world, for the better.

Being human is tied up with the urge to make. It is fundamental to how we define ourselves as distinct from other creatures. But in the capitalist system within which we now all live, making things has been largely moved out of sight into production lines, machine processing and supply chains. In this context it can be easy to lose any real sense of where the things we buy in the shops or online have come from, and how they were made.

By foregrounding the slow and sometimes laborious but revelatory handheld processes involved in creating a wooden spoon for example, or in extracting copper from ore by fire, the idea is that you will develop a deeper understanding of how and why things are the way they are. We also help participants to leave the course with a perspective that is less human-centred, and which takes into account the other beings and broader environment upon which we all depend.

As the climate and social crises of our time intensify, a return to simple and manual crafts can be the catalyst for us to more fully understand our place in the world, and in society, and to begin to identify what each of us can do to make a difference. This course is one way to find your way again.

This course offers the opportunity to join the first module of our MA programme ‘Engaged Ecology’ as an unaccredited student.

📷 Sam Chevallier