What helps, or could help, us to change our understanding of the world, and how we learn and do?
A deep dive into learning patterns, design questions, intentions and wisdom emerging around how we understand the world, and how we learn and act. Generated through collective sensing and reflections of Stories of Place co-creators.
This is a deeper layer of learning behind Stories of Place 2024–2025 Composting #3 | Co-creators as earthworms, so this post will make much more sense if you start there. Our glossary might also help.
I find it difficult explaining what Stories of Place is to friends, neighbours, and acquaintances. It’s not a class or a hobby group, it’s not religious, and it’s not a space just for socialising. I tend to settle on describing it as a space where people with many different lived experiences and interests who care about Dudley can have curious conversations, tap into their imaginations and each other’s knowledges, and experience the unexpected by creating projects together that might bring us closer to futures where all life can flourish. This still mostly leads to uncertain side glances and open-mouthed confusion. I don’t blame them — our UK society is used to separating our interests from work as extracurricular. We spend money to focus on a hobby, usually as a student. The teacher sets a pre-determined agenda, curriculum or goal, and we likely an expectation of how it will impact our lives. In Stories of Place, everyone is a learner and teacher. What we do in each gathering completely depends on who turns up and how we are feeling in that moment. We have no idea what will come out of it, but we know to expect the unexpected.
When I introduce Stories of Place, I don’t talk about the climate crisis. This can overwhelm or put off the listener. Instead, I describe it is a gathering for people who care about their place and want more flourishing futures. This is an invitation centred on hope and curiosity; the critical thinking, mindset recognition and challenging conversations around the climate crises comes later. Jack’s first Stories of Place experience led to them wanting to return to “train my brain to think differently” and step out of their engrained ways of thinking. Dena identified with this, saying they “always end up wandering my way back over to CoLab, because I think whenever I feel like I need a reset of the way my brain is being structured, especially working nine to five.” Rick reflected that several co-creators have been on that journey and think differently now. Lorna said it can be a process of “unlearning”. This is not solely in relation to Stories of Place: the co-creators were sharing their experiences of being Time Rebels or interacting with events through Dudley Creates and Dudley People’s School for Climate Justice. Stories of Place acts as a gravitational anchor, with regular gatherings that co-creators can orbit around and cross through at different points and regularity, each time bringing experiences and perspectives from across our cultural ecosystem.
Stories of Place creates a safe space for people with different lived experiences, cultures, skills and backgrounds to find our way through complex ideas together through discussion, prompts, place-based experiences, embodied activities and action. We are able to interact with people who have previously co-created experiments and projects, and those who have not yet done so, each gifting and connecting their individual knowledges and talents. Some ideas might start off as rooted in business-as-usual mindsets, such as ‘this is what I would like to see happen as a consumer and service user.’ These ideas can shift to ‘this is what we could do together as co-creators’ by pausing to share and reflect with a richness of perspectives, skills and creative processes from people on different journeys: from Nat WB’s Nature knowledge to Bill’s ability to break the barrier of a blank canvas, to Erica and Paul’s memories of Dudley, to Lorna’s experiences of doing in Dudley, to Helen’s Limpet art practice, to Abby’s embodied diagramming connecting others’ ideas and knowledges, to Luke’s learning around counselling, to Rebekah’s experience with learning through play as a tool to foster joy and connection.¹ With a rotating diversity of lived experiences of whoever joins any gathering, we experience interactions of multiple ways of knowing and being, which leads to new reflections and evolving experiments.²
Co-creators frequently share knowledges and inspiration from different places and cultures, acknowledging their unique contexts before working with them within our own context.³ Rebekah reflected that “in the West, we can think that we’ve got to invent this thing, but actually… it’s sometimes more just a case of remembering but also looking to others.”⁴ Dionne’s experiment centred on Indigenous knowledges and traditions invited reflections on our own culture and values, and the effect of colonial mindsets on our relationships with nature, societal expectations and choice.⁵ Our gatherings invite complex, unusual, vulnerable and necessary conversations that explore the nuances behind our societal values and open up our thinking around ideas.⁶ Stories of Place invites journeys with bravery, discomfort, unlearning, boldness and confidence, changing our relationship with vulnerability and failure.⁷
Our prompt cards of questions and more-than-human kith aid us in voicing and adapting to difference. Dionne questioned who is missing from our more-than-human kith pool, as they didn’t feel they could identify with native UK species. The pool subsequently grew with kith who currently or could potentially migrate to the UK due to the climate crisis. While dreaming of fabric exchanges, Jan held the question “How might this re-frame understandings of the world?” which invited reflections on colonialism in the history of fabric. This enquiry led to an idea that inviting people to share their different cultural fabrics and ways of working with them.⁸ The prompt questions are a way to bring several research and reflexive frameworks (such as CreaTures Framework, Doughnut Economics Four Lenses, Culture Takes Action, and Pathways to Nature Connectedness) into everyday conversations without overwhelming people (too much) and creating accessible pathways to climate action thinking.⁹ We can then choose to take our new ways of learning and doing into our different places, networks and occupations.
We can also look beyond human knowledges to help us change our understanding of the world. Activities centring more-than-human kith invite a “myriad of perspectives and ways of being.”¹⁰ Through place detectorism, Helen, as Giant Ramshorn Snail, imagined the High Street 1000 years into the future. It was damp with undergrowth, pools and tufts of grass to hide in. Helen then wondered what might happen if we were more mollusc-minded, with our brains spreading out all over our bodies.¹¹ Through Stories of Place, Dionne gained “a deeper awareness of the complexity of relationships and the interdependencies of my coexistence with my environment, human and non-human.”¹² Our more-than-human kith invite us to reimagine our places with more-than-human perspectives and needs, transforming human-centric ideas into more-than-human-centric experiences. For example, Helen and Rick turned an idea for a travelling film screening structure to a more-than-human structure to create films from within.¹³ After sitting in the resulting Human Limpet, Dionne realised the value of contained, safe spaces: “I think we all need one of these at the end of the day, just get in your Limpet.”¹⁴ Human Limpet challenged our individual and societal notions around forms of space, natural building materials, acoustics, thermal comfort, and safety, and revealed potential for more-than-human ways of being in our everyday routines.¹⁵ As Helen reflected, “finding ways to experience the world differently will probably change our understanding of it, or how we know it.”¹⁶ Our kith invite a humility in our own human capabilities and challenge our human perceptions of more-than-human intelligences, which invite us to explore how we think and learn.¹⁷ What could the long-term reverberations be if we were more mollusc-minded?
Learning patterns:
- Regular gatherings with embodied activities in safe spaces that enable interactions between people on different journeys can invite unlearning, connecting of knowledges, reflexivity and difference, towards transition from business-as-usual mindsets.
- Invitations to pause in place can lead to noticing, sharing and learning from multiple places, cultures and worldviews.
- More-than-human kith invite multiple ways of experiencing, thinking, learning and imagining of multiple possibilities and intelligences.
These create opportunities for us to acknowledge and challenge dominant ways of thinking and power dynamics of teacher-student relationships that might close off conversations for people to voice difference. These experiences help us to recognise and wander from our siloed networks, usual ways of thinking and habits in place, which might otherwise limit possible futures.
Design questions these patters reveal for how Stories of Place might evolve this year:
- How might we gradually build confidence in unlearning, staying with and shifting discomfort, and failing, while retaining a sense of wonder?
- How might we create invitations for more movement and play in our activities and learning?
- How might we listen to, remember, and bring multiple ways of knowing, including regenerative traditions and Indigenous knowledges from our land, into our experiments?
- How might we make our collective learning and composting accessible?
- How might we bring more-than-human ways of being in other parts of our lives and systems?
- How might we question how or what we perceive as more-than-human perspectives?
Intentions for Stories of Place this year:
- Bring in more play!
- Share lessons learnt and tools in the Dudley Time Portal.
- Connect with Ekho Collective’s learning from the land we are on.
- Experiment with bitesize learning composting through different forms of sharing and interacting during Stories of Place gatherings.
- Creatively document our ways of being beyond Stories of Place.
Wisdom we might draw from:
- Building confidence to embody more-than-human kith — Helen’s social art practice often led them to exploring beaches as a Li mpet, which took time to build confidence to not “take this stuff seriously all the time.”¹⁸
- Bringing play into our lives — Sarah Round from the Bicycle Adventure Club invited people to ‘discover Dudley’s rich history and inspiring landscapes through the joy of play and the power of the bicycle’ through their Playtime in Dudley project as part of Urban Rooms Dudley — they created this inspiring video.
- Listening as critical spatial practice — Sonic Acts of Noticing are interested in “listening as critical spatial practice… might alter subjectivities and produce space in ways that emphasise care and shared learning as crucial for collaborative survival.”
- Rebekah Warmington, October 2024
- Erica Williams, Jasbir, Jhora Sangha, Lorna Prescott and Natalie Marsh, April 2024; Abby Staniland, July 2024; Dionne Williams, August 2024
- Dionne Williams, June 2024; Rebekah Warmington, November 2024
- Rebekah Warmington, October 2024
- Dionne Williams, Helen Garbett, Lorna Prescott and Jan Norton, June 2024
- Lorna Prescott, May 2024; Dionne Williams, June 2024; Lorna Prescott and Rebekah Warmington, August 2024
- Dionne Williams, Helen Garbett, Lorna Prescott, Luke Hudson, October 2024
- Jan Norton, July 2024
- Rebekah Warmington, August 2024
- Bill Laybourne, March 2024
- Helen Garbett, May 2024
- Dionne Williams, 2024
- Helen Garbett and Rick Sanders, August 2024
- Dionne Williams, September 2024
- Dionne Williams, Helen Garbett, Holly Doron, Luke Hudson and Rick Sanders, September 2024
- Helen Garbett, October 2024
- Dionne Williams, Helen Garbett, Luke Hudson and Rick Sanders, September 2024; Lorna Prescott, October 2024
- Helen Garbett, October 2024
Stories of Place Co-creators
Abby Staniland (Earthworm / Orkney Vole) grew up in Dudley, worked at the zoo and is now a budding landscape architect, bringing their connective imagination and visualisation talents. With other design students, Abby gifted dreams of local folk swapping waste plastic for Dudley pounds to mould into pop-up modular community tables for people to exchange goods, collaborate, create and learn together.
Alex Lui (Limpet)
Andy Edwards (Limpet)
Bill Laybourne (Sludge Worm) is full of fascinating facts and provocations, bringing laughter and inspiring disorder. Bill‘s sound-based social art practice led to co-creators noise making with more-than-human sounds of the High Street.
Caz Emery (Ginger) has a reputation for creating something out of nothing and getting stuff done, with curiosities around craft, nature and food. They are often found cooking plant-based meals on the campfire feeding and nurturing the Ekho Collective community.
Deb McDonald (Ant) is a network weaver, bringing knowledges and curiosities from Ekho Collective, and is particularly curious about how people can collectively engage with creativity, culture and heritage to co-create resilient communities.
Dena Khan (Bumblebee / Shark / Swift) brings an imagination that centres young people and how they can shape and renew places through creativity, connecting with multiple generations. They are curious about buildings being perceived as waste, and how we can bring life to them again through care and connection.
Dionne Williams (African Migrant Butterfly / Limpet / Mycelium / Northern Pool Frog / Red Squirrel) is a deep thinker and doer drawn to creativity and experimentation. Dionne has a gift for nurturing welcoming, safe and generous spaces, currently exploring how East African values might invite conversations and creativity that bring us closer to Nature-connected values in Dudley.
DKB (Dragonfly / Ginger) is curious about sharing sustainable farming and growing knowledges between different places across the world to help build hopeful resilience within the Earth crisis. This curiosity is rooted in their captivating childhood memories of running through their farm pausing to eat fresh mangos.
Erica Williams (Buddleia / Ginger) is a walking encyclopaedia of Black Country history, whose Storylines blog is rich with research connecting family history with wider systemic issues. Erica has a wonderful ability to connect ideas to inspiration from places across the world and knowledges gained from her background in teaching and training business communication, particularly in the marketing communications industry.
Helen Garbett (Little Whirlpool Ramshorn Snail / Limpet / Orkney Vole / Sludge Worm) always brings a contagious curiosity rooted in their social art practice exploring human entanglement with Limpets. Helen has a magical ability to shift us from imagining to making, inspiring us with their creations between our gatherings, and, of course, spark collective fascination in all things Limpet.
Holly Doron’s (Chiffchaff / Earthworm / Fountain Water / Great Diving Beetle / Limpet / Moth) favourite moments are watching people spark with others over a thought or idea so they try to create the conditions for this to happen while listening, note-taking and connecting learning and curiosities.
Jack Williams (Water Strider) brings their wildlife conservation knowledges from Dudley Zoo and is curious about what zoos might look in the future as spaces for community, nature connectedness and wellbeing.
Jan Norton (Hazel Dormouse / Peacock Butterfly / Robin / Zitting Cisticola) brings their creativity, stories with Nature, smiles and stunning skills and ideas with fabrics and stitching. Jan is a convenor of Stitchers in Time who research and create beautiful pieces connecting textiles, fabrics, stitching and other media with Nature, place, stories with heritage and futures.
Jasbinder Sangha (Puddle)
Jasbir (Water Strider)
Jhora Sangha (Pigeon)
Jo Orchard-Webb (Gorse / Hawthorn / Hedgehog / Mycelium) joins virtually from the Dorset seaside, bringing Nature perspectives and curiosities from Eric-the-dog walks along with their deep care for Dudley. Jo has a talent for absorbing and connecting everybody’s ideas with wider ecosystems and knowledge networks.
Laura Jane Round (Hammerhead Shark)
Laura Onions (Limpet) has an inspiring ability to get stuck in with making, gifting their creativity and curiosity to other co-creators. Laura’s art practice is rooted in printmaking and how this can take on new forms out and about with Nature across the Black Country.
Lorna Prescott (Barn Owl / Great Diving Beetle / Hedgehog / Nettle / Red Fox / Swift) brings years of lessons from doing in Dudley alongside deep thinking around systemic issues behind our everyday interactions. Lorna is full of curiosity and wonder around anything more-than-human and deep time.
Luke Hudson (Dragonfly / Great Mouse-Eared Bat / Limpet) brings their fascination and knowledges around green living, Nature and psychology, alongside their curiosity and laughter, diving into and co-evolving whatever unexpected activities co-creators are dreaming up.
Miriam Atikpo always brings deep reflections with critical thinking rooted in a stunning abundance of cultures and languages. If she’s not with us, it’s because she’s busy spreading care in the NHS.
Nat WB (Bumble Bee, Hedgehog, Little Egret)
Natalie Marsh (Snail)
Nichaela Reid (Bumble Bee)
Paul Burns (Hawthorn / Mycelium) brings invigorating perspectives and prose as a creative writer with a fascination in more-than-human folklore. Paul is generous in sharing photos and videos of their local wildlife in between gatherings and always has interesting Dudley memories to share.
Rachael Othala (Fountain Water / Great Diving Beetle) always arrives full of Dudley energy and curiosity, inspiring other co-creators with their creativity through making and poetry. They are curious about how the LBGTQIA+ community and allies can explore art together.
Rebekah Warmington (Badger / Bear / Buddleia / Ladybird) brings her gifts in creative making and thinking, with an extraordinary ability to weave deep reflections in the moment. Rebekah generously shares her experience in learning with and from Nature and Indigenous knowledges. She is also deeply inspired by play, and how experiential learning can enhance and guide the connections we make in our journeys of exploration and discovery.
Rick Sanders (Beaver / Limpet) brings their do-it-together spirit, gifting inspiration from their practice in poetry and breathing creativity into upcycling furniture and textiles.
This research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through Midlands4Cities. It is entangled with my work at CoLab Dudley funded by The National Lottery Community Fund’s Climate Action Fund and Joseph Rowntree Foundation as part of a network of Pathfinder organisations reimagining and redesigning the world we want to live in to achieve deep, transformative change.
Lorna Prescott (Barn Owl / Great Diving Beetle / Hedgehog / Nettle / Red Fox / Swift) brings years of lessons from doing in Dudley alongside deep thinking around systemic issues behind our everyday interactions. Lorna is full of curiosity and wonder around anything more-than-human and deep time.
Luke Hudson (Dragonfly / Great Mouse-Eared Bat / Limpet) brings their fascination and knowledges around green living, Nature and psychology, alongside their curiosity and laughter, diving into and co-evolving whatever unexpected activities co-creators are dreaming up.
Miriam Atikpo always brings deep reflections with critical thinking rooted in a stunning abundance of cultures and languages. If she’s not with us, it’s because she’s busy spreading care in the NHS.
Nat WB (Bumble Bee, Hedgehog, Little Egret)
Natalie Marsh (Snail)
Nichaela Reid (Bumble Bee)
Paul Burns (Hawthorn / Mycelium) brings invigorating perspectives and prose as a creative writer with a fascination in more-than-human folklore. Paul is generous in sharing photos and videos of their local wildlife in between gatherings and always has interesting Dudley memories to share.
Rachael Othala (Fountain Water / Great Diving Beetle) always arrives full of Dudley energy and curiosity, inspiring other co-creators with their creativity through making and poetry. They are curious about how the LBGTQIA+ community and allies can explore art together.
Rebekah Warmington (Badger / Bear / Buddleia / Ladybird) brings her gifts in creative making and thinking, with an extraordinary ability to weave deep reflections in the moment. Rebekah generously shares her experience in learning with and from Nature and Indigenous knowledges. She is also deeply inspired by play, and how experiential learning can enhance and guide the connections we make in our journeys of exploration and discovery.
Rick Sanders (Beaver / Limpet) brings their do-it-together spirit, gifting inspiration from their practice in poetry and breathing creativity into upcycling furniture and textiles.
This research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through Midlands4Cities. It is entangled with my work at CoLab Dudley funded by The National Lottery Community Fund’s Climate Action Fund and Joseph Rowntree Foundation as part of a network of Pathfinder organisations reimagining and redesigning the world we want to live in to achieve deep, transformative change.
