Becoming Crew: learning to think how nature works
I’ve just recently completed a wonderful six month peer learning marathon hosted by Mr Spaceship Earth himself Dan Burgess. This was part of a structured programme from Enrol Yourself (now known as Huddlecraft), with each group led by one individual who brings together around a dozen peers who together spend half a year exploring their own learning questions, and most importantly learning from and supporting each other in their own journeys.
Dan, our host, is an old friend who I have known for a number of years as we are each escapees from the land of advertising and marketing, and now searching for how we can make more meaningful contributions to the world. Dan has been deep into this work for much longer than I have, being one of the crazy gang behind Good For Nothing and creator and host of the aforementioned Spaceship Earth podcast — if you haven’t yet had a chance to lose yourself in one of the gorgeous, meditative and inspiring episodes I highly recommend that you have a listen.
When I applied for a place on the peer group I made clear to Dan that I. Really. Needed. This.
Coming to a natural end of the seven amazing years I’d spent leading the charity mySociety, I needed a space and process to bring things to a soft landing — to give myself the time and support to work out where I was, what I could contribute, and how that might inform what I do next.
At the end of the summer I became we, and the group met to consider Becoming Crew (of Spaceship Earth) beginning with the question:
“How can we learn to think like nature works?”
This was inspired by the Gregory Bateson thought that “The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how people think and how nature works.”
The learning marathon itself is a simple but highly stimulating format spread over the six months. We met every two weeks (sadly usually on zoom rather than in person) with each of us taking a turn to run a workshop, with a number of in person weekends spent mucking around in the woods along with a final wrap up celebration. There will be a website charting each of our journeys going live in the very near future… (I’m adding this to make sure I actually help get it live!)
Going into the marathon most of us assumed this would be the basis for actively working on a new project or developing an idea to take forward. However what actually transpired were a series of connected individual journeys, and in my case I focused on a very personal exploration, my question being:
“How to turn being overwhelmed by climate grief into a daily practice of action.”
Whenever I share my career background with people I usually mention the tension I felt ten years ago as I was coming to the end of running a pretty successful ad agency, at the same time as becoming increasingly involved in the environmental movement and the Green Party — it was clear that those two things simply weren’t compatible and something had to give. Whilst I’ve tried to live within that tension in my day to day work and career since then, I increasingly felt, like many people do, that I just wasn’t doing enough as the slow-motion global tragedy of the climate and environmental crises unravelled around us.
It was this deep personal grief that I wanted to spend time with. To really consider what this meant for me, for my family and relationships, to better learn how to create the connections and daily practices that might help me come to terms with the weight of the challenge, and be better able to face it.
As we progressed through the pandemic, the fortnightly meetings introduced a tempo of regular workshops, discussions and connection — separate from the day job, a place away from the stress of decades of world events happening in just a few short months, a place to be vulnerable, quite a bit of sadness, and a lot of laughter. It wasn’t always easy to be fully present for 3 hours of video call in the evenings, but each week was so valuable with so much generosity.
It’s been less about coming to an answer or simple conclusion, and far more about getting to the point that I’m able to start to make those changes in my own practice and daily habits.
I find myself in a very different place from where I began. I’ve moved on from mySociety (leaving it in the amazingly capable hands of Louise Crow). I’m back on the bike, getting outside and putting the miles in. I’m becoming more able to deal with our lovely lockdown puppy — sorry Pixel but you’ve been bloody hard work.
I’ve done a whole ton of catch up reading, although to be fair I now have a stack of books as tall as me that I still need to get through.
This learning marathon has got me to a point where I actually feel ready to properly consider where I should be contributing my time over the next few years. I’m leaving mySociety with a whole lot more energy than I expected and the desire to go deeper with a more direct focus on a practice that properly contributes to society and coming to terms with the climate crises.
I’ll write more about what I’m going to be doing later on, but for the moment I’m clear that what I’m looking for needs to be closer to the approach that Immy Kaur likes to refer to from Emergent Strategy by adrienne marie brown in developing movements which are ‘an inch wide, mile deep’; all highlighted in Jon Alexander’s wonderful book ‘Citizens; why the key to fixing everything is all of us’.
So thank you to my two ‘buddies’ Evva and Maria, to Stan, Heather, Julian, Ilma, Ben, Sophie, John, Sarah, Dan and Seemah for all her help in the background. I learned so much from each of you, I’m more grateful for your time and energy than you can imagine and excited to see what we each do as crew going forward.
