Worlding - the Workshop

Non-refundable fee £70, payable through this Eventbrite link. (Fees will only be refunded if A Sometimes Project cancels the event). Bring your own refreshments & packed lunch. Wear clothes and footwear suitable for a ramble in the countryside

Find the wild within you by grounding yourself in the world outside, become enmeshed and be-wild-ered as we adventure together in playful celebration of not simply the hyperlocal, but microlocal. Join us for the day, and make haptic maps, analogue connections and new networks.

Worlding: The Walkshop

Join Sam Kouzarides and Laura Denning for an all-day walkshop exploring how tracks of animals and the more-than-human, how deep listening and care-full play can inspire mark-making and drawing as creative forms of intuitive mapping from within the world. Using tracking as a strategy for decentering the human,  this walkshop focuses on how humans and non-humans, subjects and environments, are interconnected. This walkshop is ideal for artists and others who wish to foster a ‘from within’ relationship with the natural world.

Sam will share his expertise in tracking and teach us skills to increase our awareness of who is nearby but out of sight. He will lead us through some short exercises and games to increase our Nature Connection, including insights into families of animals, and understanding movement through track patterns. For instance animal gaits such as loping, trot, and gallop are all visible in the tracks that animals leave behind. We will heighten our Sensory Awareness, through games which involve listening/moving, and activities that focus on our wide angle and peripheral vision. Laura will focus on listening and sound making, using silence and onomatopoeia to broaden our understanding of sound as a sensory data collector. Each participant will create a sensory map using a bespoke booklet, that will be filled with marks and notes and anything you feel you wish to record that acts as a souvenir of the day.

We will stop to enjoy our packed lunch (bring your own). The day will end where it began, at about 4pm.

Worlding refers to the active, ongoing process of creating, shaping, and inhabiting worlds, encompassing ecological, "more-than-human" practices of making worlds together. It is viewed as a verb—a practice of storytelling, knowledge-making, and relationality that emphasizes "making worlds together" (sympoiesis). It focuses on creating sustainable relationships with non-human others during ecological crises that challenges the boundaries between a subject and its environment. Worlding is always in motion, a "doing" rather than a finished product. It focuses on how humans and non-humans, subjects and environments, are interconnected.

Tracking is the deeper understanding of the systems and patterns that make up the environment surrounding and incorporating us. Tracks and signs offer information on undisturbed, natural behavior, and is therefore a non-invasive method of intuitive mapping. Tracking requires varying attention, a constant refocusing between minute details of the track and the whole pattern of the environment. It offers an entry point into the idea of decentering the human, a perspective that treats non-human entities (animals, plants, ecosystems) as active, respected participants in a shared existence. This framework emphasizes mutual care, responsibility, and interconnectedness. Rather than seeing nature as a resource, this approach views humans as part of a larger community of related persons (animism). It recognizes that humans cannot thrive without the gifts of other earthly relatives, necessitating a return of care. It is an orientation that asks: "How will I move differently because of what I have received?". This walkshop offers an introduction to "radical, interspecial reciprocity," where the rights and needs of other beings are recognized.