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THIS PLACE PROJECT
We are individuals with different reasons for coming together, but we all agree that what the world needs now is community action!
We believe in the power of community
detective work (radical learning to find out how to become a fair society). We are aware how much we all depend on
each other, and on the wider systems we're part of. We know we need to take action!
"The issues we are concerned with seem beyond the competence of our present cultural traditions, either individually or collectively... Radical new cultural forms are needed. These new cultural forms would place the human within the dynamics of the planet rather than place the planet within the dynamics of the human."
(Thomas Berry, The Great Work)
This project emerged from the themes of the book we called 'This Place'. The poems and the pictures are about beauty... the tangible beauty of
plants and skies, and the illusive inner beauty of openness to change,
realisation of hard truths and the struggle for a more beautiful world.
The book is by Mike and Sam, both members of the Ground art and activist collective in Hull. After self publishing the book, we went to Glasgow to give some out at the COP26 protests. On the train we started plotting something more tangible... We managed to get some funding from SHED, so then we got serious. We asked Ella and John to help us, and they said YES! We started asking more friends how they thought we should do things. We've tried to take it slow and steady, but there's been a YES! in the air, so we've planned tonnes of activities jam packed into a month, which we hope will help us connect with each other, weave mutual aid networks, exchange experience and skills, and more...
(And we want to Record and Learn from all these activities as we go...)
"Human beings destroy their ecology at the same time that they destroy each other. From that perspective, healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal elemental connection with the phenomenal world."
(Chogyam Trungpa, Shambala: the sacred path of the warrior)
More About This Place!
We are part of this place, not just on top of it.
This Place Project is hard to define because its about everything! It's about our basic needs - how do we survive and who and what do we depend on? It's about the city and streets where we live, the food we eat, the people we interact with. It's about land, community, politics and our inner psychology, spirituality, trauma and how all this is connected...
We feel a need, and see around us a need, for us Hullians to rediscover the land beneath our feet.
This is an area wrought with depression and powerlessness. Breakdown of community, lack of financial resources, lack of access to land, lack of recent precedent for commoning, lack of confidence, compounded trauma, and recent historical reliance on the state, creating apathy and dependency. You can live here without ever knowing where your food, clothes and building materials are coming from, totally disconnected from the environments and people that produce what we consume. We are told that we are lucky and free and can have everything we could ever desire as long as we work hard for money and be good civilians with good British values, but here this promise rings hollow.
Its time to take back control over our lives and collectively heal our relationship to the place we live. This project is about finding out how to help one city get more in touch with itself, with its true nature, and less isolated in our separate struggles. Its about how we can join forces, and support each other to grow, change, heal. Its about spreading a culture of reliance on the land and each other, as opposed to reliance on the systems that covertly oppress us.
The project is also about re-discovering what has been taken from us long ago. We have a right to know and love and depend honestly upon our land, our ancestors, our neighbours, our herbs and trees and wildlife. We have a right to take part in a true democracy that doesn't ignore us and force us to keep harming each other and the planet.
We understand that a real, viable alternative to capitalism needs to be tangible, taste-able, even if temporarily, which is why we want to create these alternatives now!
Hull is a place where both religion and ritual are almost absent, which has its benefits, but means we are cut off from a whole mythical, irrational, spiritual, emotional, instinctual side of ourselves. These are the languages of our hidden trauma, and therefore also our healing. How can we make space in our collective life for these things that business and science and party politics have shunned? How can we create authentic ways of interacting with each other and our surroundings, communal events that are deep and real, mutual and resilient, genuine and wise, up to date and yet as old as the hills?
About Sam and Mike:
Mike Sprout:
Mike sprout, 32, is a visual artist specializing in wood carving, murals, painting, drawing, risograph printing and community arts.
Sam Donaldson:
Sam feels called to be a human rewilder, working to bring more soul and spirit back into human lives, organisations and systems.
He is passionate about real conversations, poetry, Zen, Quakerism and the art of commoning, is currently studying for a PGC in Psychosynthesis Leadership Coaching, and has a background in community work and activism.
You can read more about Sam here:
