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.
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.
Why imagination? If we are to tackle problems and encounter complex issues in the world, we must first recover our innate ability to imagine. This is because imagination is by nature closer to the source of things: it is pre-political, pre-scientific, pre-economic. All politicians, scientists, economists work with ready-made language, with patterns and with numbers, but what gives these their meaning and power are not the policies, theories and systems which use them but the stories, songs, sayings, speeches and symbols from which such resources come, and in which they ultimately make sense.
The imagination is not an evasion from reality but a more primordial mode of human creativity whose ultimate reach is the infinite mystery of being. It is the great stream of creativity. It precedes us and even precedes the dreamworld of our ancestors. It is the continuum to which we all belong.
This course is grounded in the cultivation of this vital connection. If this connection is lost, life is lost.
For whom
This course is for anyone interested in building bridges between disciplines. No experience in art or writing is needed or expected.
Course Outcomes
There is no intended objective or outcome other than a deep experiential engagement with the emerging material itself.
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 Alice Oswald, with Valentin and Alan ( 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 Alan Boldon, with Alice 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.
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)
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.
Lise Autogena is an artist and researcher, whose practice-led research has involved large scale performances, site-specific works, and multimedia installations, usually developed in collaboration with organisations and individuals across many specialist fields. These projects have used custom built technologies and visualisations of global realtime data to explore how the economic, geographic, technological and societal systems we are creating, impact on our human experience and sense of self in the world.These projects have been exhibited around the world, including Tate Gallery. Lise is a Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Art at Sheffield Hallam University.
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