‘Relational Beings’ counter mapping: collective notes and reflections

Notes from a gathering of the Bioregional Learning Network as we experimented with Understory mapping technology alongside Relational Beings practice as a new layer of our counter-mapping practice.

The session was facilitated by Sam and Simon from Parlour (our Understory collaborators), and convened by CoLab Dudley. Parlour are a social tech not for profit organisation seeking to use technology and play for good to support communities to explore, make visible, and have conversations about the complexity of the systems we navigate. This experimenting with Relational Beings mapping and Relational Beings practice is also part of our Understory enquiry around reconnection to place and the more-than-human.

Ingredients

• An emerging peer learning network.
• A warm invitation to come together and continue our counter-mapping enquiry.
• Little packs of Relational Beings prompt cards as a Yule* Gift received in the post.
• Wintering time to practice the prompts alone or with loved ones.
• An openness to co-evolving the practice and experimentation.
• Social technology and wisdom of our collaborators Parlour to help visualise the relationships.
• A creative place to gather and share our experiences of nature connection.
• A rehearsal space for commoning knowledge in our bioregion.
• Beautiful creative artefacts such as poems, illustrations, masks, and maps.
  The wisdom and generosity of our more-human beings: Deer, European Robin, Japanese Maple, Moss, Jelly Ear/ Wood Ear Fungi, Ivy, Blackbird, London Pine, Oak, Ivy, Grey Squirrel, Pigeon, Magpie, River, and ‘Obviously Worms’!! 🪱

✨ You can read and download the Relational Beings prompt cards here and use them in your own practice. With invitations to explore, map, create, notice, sense, care, connect, and be in companionship there are lots of ways into this practice, and no wrong way to go about it.

Co-evolving a practice of reconnection with more-than-human beings and so reinhabitance with place

The lovely prompt cards in the photo at the top of this lab note are an iteration of the prompts shared by Simon (of Parlour) in 2025 and tested out by our Understory partners. The CoLab Dudley team edited this first iteration of prompts in collaboration with Simon. We could see the alignment between this practice and existing ways of re-storying our relationship with land and the rest of nature that are present in our network. In particular, we pay attention to how restorying can be cultivated through practices of repair, reconnection and regeneration. Relational Beings Mapping seemed just such a practice to weave into our ways of being together and fitted perfectly with our emerging counter mapping peer Learning Huddle.

Simon designed the edited prompts into beautiful cards which Lorna and Deb printed and posted to network members as Yule* gifts. The cards contained an invitation over winter to try out as many of the prompts as people wanted to, and then to come together in January 2026 to map their noticings using the Understory relational mapping technology.

*Yule is an old European midwinter celebration that occurs in December and includes the Winter Solstice around the 21st. It is part of a tradition of eight seasonal festivals over the course of the year that are all guided by Nature and the changing landscape. We choose to lift up these festivals as part of our practice of reconnection to Nature and restorying our relationship with land.

Using the Active Hope spiral to guide reflections from this session

Below I have placed reflections from the evening within the four stages of Joanna Macy’s Active Hope spiral (see above). Active Hope was the generative focus of our Winter Gathering curation and collective enquiry. As such it is live in our thinking and doing, and offered up gentle guidance to our reflections having tested out this Relational Beings practice and mapping.

The spiral has helped bring clarity to what the Relational Beings practice invites, as well as sparking questions for how it might continue to co-evolve within our network. In places I have brought two elements of the spiral together as they seemed to be entwined within this practice. Also you will notice that the four elements are slightly out of order. Again, this is a response to how the practice seemed to relate to the spiral on the night, but also a reminder that you can begin anywhere in the spiral, and return to different stages at different moments and in different ways over time.

Coming from Gratitude AND Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes

Coming from Gratitude is an invitation to reflect what we are grateful for. This process quiets the frantic mind and helps ground us. … As we experience the reality of inter-existence, we begin Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes. We can sense how intimately and completely we are related to all this is. It becomes clear how social justice and environmental justice are intertwined. We can taste our own power to change, and feel the texture of our living connections with past and future generations, and with our sibling species. [From — The Work That Reconnects]

In coming together on Dudley High Street on a cold January evening we shared personal experiences of the Relational Beings practice. There was energetic and in depth sharing in pairs of how being invited to slow down and truly notice deepened our connection to our chosen being. The gratitude was expressed through selecting a chosen being and dedicating time and attention to them, and in freely expressing the knowledges revealed, imaginaries sparked, and range of emotions that being invoked.

In mapping those noticings all together, and being in a room watching the local ecosystem connections and relations come alive on the big screen was thrilling. It made clear how many more connections and expressions of entanglement we wanted to make visible!

There were expressions of deep care, joy, curiosity, remembering, surprise, awe and reverence for chosen beings. Network members were moved to share insights about their beings, and to make creative artefacts triggered by their responses to their beings. Snippets of memories, stories and dreams of different beings had been revealed, nurtured and shared. There was an excited energy and hope to add many more beings to the relational map alongside the creative gifts they inspire to help tell better stories of connection. To restory our relationship with this land.

Honouring our Pain for the World

In Honouring our Pain for the World, and daring to experience it, we learn the true meaning of compassion: to suffer with. We begin to know the immensity of our heart-mind. What had isolated us in private anguish now opens outward and delivers us into the wider reaches of our inter-existence. Honouring our pain opens us up to our love, courage, imagination and sense of justice. [From — The Work That Reconnects]

Through the relational mapping process we name the challenges and threats our beings face. These threats are major contributors to polycrisis including biodiversity and habitat loss, climate dysregulation, and pollution in multiple forms — all of this human induced or amplified. Naming this pain, witnessing common and connecting threats grow on the screen was both alarming and a little overwhelming at first. There was a real sense of grief for what is being lost and endangered. But it was also a galvanising sensation that is cultivated through feelings of love, compassion, and a sense of alarm at the risks unfairly faced by our beings.

Going Forth

In Going Forth we move into the actions that call each of us, according to our situation, gifts and limitations. [From — The Work That Reconnects]

The next day, gazing on the Active Hope spiral on the walls of the lab, we began to ponder what does Going Forth look like in response to those named threats? And how does that relate, if at all, to this relational mapping process including the role of the social technology. We realised Going Forth could be many things to different people at different times over the course of their ongoing practice.

Perhaps it is engaging in more noticings, deepening the practice of paying attention to our beings and their wider community of beings? Perhaps it is knowing this is a space and network where we can come to better understand those threats and share our grief openly? Perhaps this practice invites a shift in perspective to an appreciation of our entangled life? Or perhaps in time it is a catalyst and confidence for small actions of compassion for those beings — through storytelling, consciousness raising, tending, protection of beings and more?

Some practical next steps for our Relational Beings mapping process and what that has inspired …

• Our combined Relational Beings map will be a lovely addition to the first local bioregional bundle ‘Common/Place’ — Simon and Sam anonymised the map from that evening so we can print it and share it as a map for our first bioregional bundle with a focus upon our tree kin.
• More counter-mapping with Yam From Here collaborators — We have more dates in the diary to come together to continue counter-mapping in any form be that relational mapping or using other medium to add to our bundle.
• Cross-pollination of Bioregional Learning Network and Stories of Place — Jo and Holly are exploring an idea where elements of the making hour of Stories of Place practice might be ‘grafted’ onto Bioregional Learning Network Learning Huddles as a way to make practical prototyping of seeds of the future more possible as we learn together about our bioregion.
• Gifts from friends in the field — Our Understory partners in Minehead and Watchet are exploring what they call the Community of Beings. Mapping that is designed to engage a much younger audience in the mapping of their favourite tree and that tree’s community: ‘Communi-tree’. This is exciting as we can share their tailored prompts and process with members of our Bioregional Learning Network keen to explore Relational Beings practice with young people in Dudley.

A record of some of our bubbling conversations and reflections over the evening as we mapped our beings, and shared our experiences and ideas …

“Can we use cold tech and collective knowleges to support system conversations?”
“Obviously worms!”
“The process opens you up to a unique type of serendipity”
“Socialising the tech.”
“Magic of it all popping up and I’m not a tech person — the level of detail and ability to isolate different layers”
“A being that resists quietly, reoccupying and refusing to disappear — resilience”
”Change in the colour brings wonder of beauty and transformation of colours”
”The connection to home. Seeing Robins everywhere and always having that familiar comfort zone — home — garden.”
”I run with the deer, physically, spiritually, creatively.”
”Mystery, Connection, Excitement, Pop-up, passing ships in the night.”
”I realise my bond with Ivy has endured for a long time and is significant to me.”
”I’ll send two poems, I’ve yet to relation map.”
”Miniscale universe, close looking and noticing, seeing patterns and connections. Beautiful ordinary urban carpet.”
”Greater feelings of awe and wonder. A feeling of ‘knowing’ my being more fully.”
”It feels like a great adventure — noticing, documenting and deepening relationship with beings, I feel more connected to them, and am curious to see how this develops.”
”I’m going to go back [to my being] as I have drawn this from memory.”
”Surprise at the diversity of beings when invited to consider their community of beings.”
”I like that it [the tech] was accessible.”
”I like the different scales of being it brought together — zooming in and zooming out.”
”I am excited by the potential of working with young people with this”
”Practicing at home helped.”
”I wondered practically which of these prompts do i have time to do?”
”After reading them I kept them in the bundle and carried them around like an ongoing invitation.”
”Gifting of the prompts was important.”
”I want to go back and do more seeing other beings prompted more curiosity to extend the network of beings.”
”They are a prompt for physical conversations”
”I don’t usually write poetry but I wanted to for Ivy.”
”I’d like to see the change over seasons”
”We definitely want to share art and poetry on our map — it helps with imagination and seasonal anticipation.”
”It was such a simple joy for my whole family over Christmas.”