In this short intensive course we will study myth, story, poetry, image-making and philosophy as an interconnected whole that can nourish, ground and power our imaginations to become a force for goodness, justice, truth and beauty in the world.
Ecology and Imagination is a five-week online course for those working at the edge of change: in science, policy, art, business, education, and beyond.
Whether you are a climate researcher, a community organiser, an artist, or someone simply seeking a new language for the times we’re in, you are welcome. No prior artistic experience is needed. This course is about restoring imagination as a vital mode of knowing, sensing, and responding to complexity.
Full Description
In a world where conventional systems are failing to meet the depth of our ecological and social challenges, we are called to activate different forms of intelligence, ones that emerge through creativity, intuition, and poetic attention.
Poesis simply means making . ‘Making’ is part of the very essence of our life, whether we make a home or a garden, make food, make stories and make great changes in the world.
What happens when we treat decisions and dilemmas we face as living material to be worked with imaginatively?
Imagination is a mode of intelligence that allows us to stay present with what is uncertain, to surface the unseen, and to respond from a deeper place than habit or expertise.
When we begin to treat a conversation, a community meeting, a policy draft or the way we respond to the world in crisis as creative terrain, our entire approach shifts from the narrow focussed attention on familiar routines to a participation in a living inquiry into what is alive and present.
Imagination disrupts the urgency to fix and instead invites us to notice and reorient in unexpected ways. It asks us to loosen our grip on linear thinking and takes us into a terrain that could not be planned or predicted and that might fundamentally reshape us.
When we treat problems as creative material, we bring more of ourselves to the task. Creative practice shows us how to stay present when things feel stuck. It teaches us to shape and reshape, to hold things lightly whilst being utterly involved, to try again and to see with new eyes.
This course is grounded in the cultivation of this vital connection. If this connection is lost, life is lost.
For whom
Whether you are working in science, governance, education, sustainability, psychology, the arts or as an activist, this course offers practical tools to approach your challenges as a participant in the living, relational field of imaginative practice.
What to Expect
This is a practical, experiential course that will guide you in:
Applying creative practice not just to objects, but to relationships, structures, and problems.
Working with new forms of ‘material’ as creative resources.
Reimagining social forms, institutions, and futures from a place of responsiveness rather than control.
Together, we’ll explore questions like:
Can neuroplasticity be understood as a sculptural practice?
How is grief not just emotional, but infrastructural in the climate crisis?
What does it mean to prototype social forms as a creative response to collapse?
How might we awaken the moral imagination in activism, leadership, and care?
Why imagination?
Because the problems we face—ecological collapse, social fragmentation, loss of meaning—cannot be solved by technical solutions alone. We need new capacities:
To think in images and stories, not just data points.
To feel complexity without shutting down or rushing to fix it.
To imagine alternatives when old systems falter.
We will end with a session where participants can share their own emerging insights or creations.
For those who wish to go further, a 4-day residential retreat in Tuscany will follow, open exclusively to course participants.
Dates
The short course will be delivered as a series of 5 x 2-hour online workshops that will involve a mixture of presentations, readings, discussion and practical exercises.
June 21st Session 1. Led by Alan Boldon with Alice Oswald and Valentin Gerlier ( 5-7pm UK/6-8pm CET/ 9-11am PDT)
June 27th Session 2. Led by Valentin Gerlier, with Alice and Alan (6-8pm UK/ 7-9pm CET/ 10-12am PDT)
July 8th Session 3. Led by Alice with Alan and Valentin (6-8pm UK/ 7-9pm CET/ 10-12am PDT)
July 11th Session 4. Combined session with all tutors (6-8pm UK/ 7-9pm CET/ 10-12am PDT)
July 15th Session 5. Sharing of creative responses with tutors and wider group (6-8pm UK/ 7-9pm CET/ 10-12am PDT)
Depending on the number of participants and need, a further sharing session may be offered.
Notice that all sessions are at the same time apart from the first one, which is 1 hour earlier.
Sessions will be recorded and a link to the recordings will be sent to all participants after each event
Cost
£185
£150 concession
£125 concession (for people on very low income)
Do you have any questions about the course or need help booking? Contact us.
About the Teachers
Alice Oswald is a distinguished British poet renowned for her innovative explorations of nature, mythology, and the human experience. Raised in Reading, Berkshire, she pursued Classics at New College, Oxford, before training as a gardener—an experience that deeply informs her poetic sensibility. Oswald's debut collection, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), garnered the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. Her subsequent work, Dart (2002), a polyphonic narrative tracing the River Dart, earned the T. S. Eliot Prize. She was BBC Radio 4's Poet-in-Residence in 2017 and in 2019, she became the first woman to be appointed as Oxford University Professor of Poetry.
Dr. Valentin Gerlier teaches at Schumacher Wild and the Temenos Academy and is guest teacher and lecturer at numerous other institutions including the University of Notre Dame (London Gateway), the University of Cambridge, the Catholic Institute in Toulouse, France and the Institute of Critical and Creative Writing, Birmingham City University. His forthcoming monograph is entitled Heaven’s Wildflowers: A Blakean Theory of Nature, Culture and Imagination (2026).
Alan Boldon is an adviser at the Centre for Climate Psychology, social entrepreneur, artist, curator, public speaker and writer. He has held leadership roles in Business, the arts, academia, and charities and is known for pioneering initiatives that bridge the realms of education, culture, and sustainability. As a consultant he has advised senior teams in organisations, including many Universities, all around the world. In his most recent venture as founder and Director of Weave he is creating an international network of bioregional learning labs exploring ways to engage with and solve complex challenges.
Ansuman Biswas was born in Calcutta and trained in the UK. He has an international reputation for his inter-disciplinary work between science, art and industry . An example of this border-crossing is his mapping of Vedic and Buddhist thought to modern debates in science and philosophy. He has an on-going research interest in consciousness studies, in particular the subjective emotional correlates of objective physiological states.
Phoebe Tickell is a biologist and systems thinker who founded Moral Imaginations in 2021 and has done award-winning work developing Moral Imagination methodologies with organisations like Camden Council, DEFRA and London Marathon, building the case for "imagination activism".'
Sha Xin Wei PhD is Professor at the School of Arts, Media + Engineering and the School of Complex Adaptive Systems, and directs the Synthesis Atelier for transversal art, philosophy and technology in the Global Futures Lab at Arizona State University. He established and directed the pioneering transdisciplinary Topological Media Lab for gesture, media and responsive environments, which he transplanted to Montreal as Canada Research Chair in media arts and sciences. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, and Senior Fellow of Building21 at McGill University