Nature's Playbook
Can the living world be a partner in our conversations?
It’s not common practice to bring the wisdom of nature into our everyday conversations as a partner and guide. Yet this was commonplace for our ancestors.
I’m interested in how we might address this imbalance with creative conversations that are designed to help us think with nature – without needing to be biologists, or ecologists.
What will we do together?
We’ll invite nature to be a partner in our conversation as we talk about things that matter in life and work.
These discussions might not be neat and tidy. That’s OK because we’ll need some creative tension, a sense of playfulness, and permission to explore.
One week we might explore the way elephants relate to each other and how that could inspire our team meetings, or succession planning.
Another week we might explore our real world challenges from the perspective of a fox, a meadow, a crab’s claws, or a feedback loop in the water cycle.
Here are some of the themes we might explore together:
Everyday biomimicry – designers, engineers and architects draw heavily on the patterns, and principles in nature. Why not do the same for the way we live, work and play?
Imagination & story – we have natural creative gifts for time travel, dream and narrative. We’ll use these to speak with mentor species, mountains, rivers, and Mother Nature herself.
The hard stuff – we long for a better future, and have a so much grief for what’s happening to life on earth. We’ll make space for our honest feelings to be seen and heard.
Conversations with nature
Edgar Morin said that the root of the ‘polycrisis’ in economies, loss of biodiversity, climate breakdown, culture, mental health and more is separation.
As these urgent pile up it’s pretty clear that our interactions with the world are not built on the firm foundations of belonging, integration with the wisdom of the natural world.
This might just be my own delulu, but I think that we need a different strategy or story – and that conversations with nature – not just about it – could prove seriously useful, and seriously joyful.
But how do we do that in our everyday lives, in our work, in our communities? I think we’re missing a cultural piece of the jigsaw because we’ve fallen out of the conversation with life.
So what if knowledge of nature isn’t just for biologists and conversationists – or for birdwatching at the weekend? What if we can think and act as nature does when it comes to leading a team, identifying our values, to responding an emergent challenge.
So what would it actually look like to re-enter that conversation?
I want to explore these questions through playful conversational experiments – so we don’t discount ourselves from the conversation with life by feeling too self-conscious, woo woo, or non-expert.
To bring this to life, here are some ideas for conversations with nature:
Everyday biomimicry – I’ve been using biomimicry (the conscious emulation of life’s genius) for years with leadership teams, and I want to open it up with more creative and embodied processes that help us tap into cycles, reciprocity, feedback, edges, emergence and interdependence as ways of thinking.
Speaking with mentor species – I joined an interspecies dialogue dialogue event with Ruth Catlow and it blew my mind. I’m keen to explore this further by taking perspectives from the more-than-human world to learn more about who we are, and how we relate to the living world.
Annual review with Mother Earth – what would it be like to explore the year you’ve just had with Gaia herself? Would feelings would arise and how might they be met? Would the topics be your integrity, direction and growth – or something else?
Playback theatre – an online performance by a Playback Theatre ensemble (a form of improvised theatre) to help us share our personal stories of connection and joy in nature, and our grief and loss for what’s happening to the web of life.
Booking & details
Who it’s for
These online conversational experiments are for anyone who is interested to see how story, imagination and play may be able to help make nature a normal conversation partner again.
The more diverse the group the better, so you might also be a cook, a cleaner, a crab, a chief exec, a creative, or a conservationist – there’s no limit.
OK, so you’re probably not a crab.
But you probably are interested in navigating complexity and uncertainty in ways that feel more connected to the living world.
What you’ll get from it
I hope you’ll leave feeling refreshed and renewed, and I want these sessions to have a practical impact.
You might find that you get new ways of looking at decision-making by using everyday
My main aim is to see if we can discover different ways of seeing and experiencing the world together, and whether that might influence who we are, what we do, and who we might become.
How this helps
I’ve been working in creative facilitation, experiential learning and conservation, regeneration and climate for years, and I want to develop some ways of holding the conversation with life that may (I hope) help us move closer to harmony and balance.
You’ll be helping me with R & D before I offer these to teams and groups, and I’ll be asking for feedback to help me figure out what works.
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Conversational Experiment #1
Annual Review with Mother Nature
What would it be like to have an annual review with Mother Nature?
It raises a few questions.
• What would she ask?
• How would she ask it?
• Would it feel nurturing… or confronting?
• Is Mother Nature an idea or something more?
• Would it feel like a regular annual review?
• How might you feel afterwards?
• What might change?
We’ll explore this idea in an unhurried way—working from questions and ideas, to a few small experiments that we can try and see what happens.
I’m aware that this idea is probably be divisive, and I think it could lead us into an interesting conversation about ‘us’ and ‘nature’.
The session lasts 75 minutes and is designed for up to six people. It’s free, but please treat it like a paid event. If you can no longer attend, just let me know so someone else can take your place.
It’s running on:
– Tuesday 28 July – 4pm BST (75 mins) Book here
– Thursday 6 August – 6pm BST (75 mins) Book here
All the sessions will follow the same structure but the results could be quite different – so you’re welcome to book onto more than one.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
A playful approach
If you’ve read this far then you probably don’t need much persuading on the value of play, but the topics we’ll cover are serious – so here’s Joanna Macy making the case:
“Perhaps play is more important that ever. Play can free us from taking ourselves too seriously. Excessive seriousness is blinding.
“We don’t need to walk around sobbing in sackcloth and ashes. Grief is natural, and so is laughter, and we can trust our own nature. We can trust life.”
