Still booking: Radical Hope and Cultural Tragedy Bristol 18th April
Judith Anderson
presents
Radical Hope and Cultural Tragedy:
A conference to highlight the complex pressures within our collective mind in the face of dramatic climate changes
Bristol Folk House, 40a Park Street, Bristol BS1 5JG Bristol (European Green City of the Year 2015)
Saturday 18th April 2015
presentations - workshops - storytelling - play - dialogue
explore how many cultures, both animal and human, are facing tragic losses that cannot easily be thought about
http://www.climatepsychologyalliance.org/radical-hope-cultural-tragedy-conference-18th-april-2015-2/
Radical Hope by Paul Hoggett
‘I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing ‘
These opening lines from T.S. Eliott’s East Coker illuminate the pull of false hope, the hope that leads to tears. And perhaps we then become too quickly disillusioned by our leaders, and by friends and colleagues upon whom we had pinned such hopes. But often, shorn of our illusions, we slip into cynicism and despair or go off to find a retreat inside ourselves. Facing the worst and yet sustaining an optimism of the will, now there’s a challenge.
Facing climate change, species extinction, global conflicts and poverty, allowing ourselves to be disturbed by them, moved by them and yet remaining sane, is no easy thing. As therapists involved in the Climate Psychology Alliance many of our clients also face a private world which is in ruins and so we know something about inner strength, the nature of courage and the capacity to look into a future bereft of familiar landmarks. This is what we call, following Jonathan Lear, ‘radical hope’. And in April we will hold an event in Bristol, Radical Hope and Cultural Tragedy, dedicated to an exploration of this kind of hope, involving the writer Jay Griffiths, activist Chris Johnstone, playwright Steve Waters, Embercombe founder ‘Mac’ Macartney and many others. Go to http://www.climatepsychologyalliance.org/radical-hope-cultural-tragedy-conference-18th-april-2015-2/ for more details.
Janet Alty
XX j