Kinship: Being Together
A transformative online course exploring community, relationality & belonging in the worlds we live in. What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to be in relationship with the ever-unfurling world we find ourselves a part of? What, exactly, is community? And who do we really mean when we say _we_? The Kinship 2022 course is an exploration into being together in a time when being apart has fractured our relationship to self, other, and the more-than-human in ways that have left us painfully adrift. It is a timely collective inquiry into how community, relationality, and belonging can revitalise our sense of aliveness as creatures of and participants in this animate earth, and how such a renewal might influence our actions towards greater flourishing. _One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone._ Shannon L. Alder
hosted by Hannah Close
Hannah is a writer, photographer, curator and researcher exploring philosophy, ecology, culture and being alive in a world of relations.
Module 1Why Kinship?
With Gavin Horn, Jeremy Lent and Charlotte Du Cann. We begin by framing our collective crises through the lens of relationship. We want to ask: how have our ways of relating created destruction? Where have we been separated from reality, each other, and our more-than-human kin? Why does the "crisis of rel...
Module 2Politics of Relationship
With Douglas Rushkoff, Bronte Velez and Justine Epstein. This module explores if relationships are inherently political. The speakers look at how certain relationships are conditional, and how relationships can both serve and extract. How are our relationships being influenced or controlled? We want to a...
Module 3Relational Ecosytems
With Gavin Van Horn, Tim Ingold and Tyson Yunkaporta. We look at the grounds on which relationships form. Where exactly does kinship arise? What is the importance of place in all of this? Why is context critical? We look at how the quality of the environment and the architecture of the spaces we inhabit ...
Module 4The Individual
With Minna Salami, Andreas Weber and Charles Eisenstein. We explore the role of the individual in relation to kinship. This module is unique in that there is a sense of "going against the grain". Many narratives around community and kinship have suggested that the notion of the individual is to blame for...
Module 5The Community
With Nora Bateson, Caroline Duque and Vanessa Andreotti. We explore how community creates belonging and kinship, and how it can also fracture it (building on lessons learned from the previous module). What, exactly, comprises a community? How does kinship come into this? Can there be community without ki...
Module 6The More-Than-Human
With Andreas Weber, Tiokasin Ghosthorse amd Andy Letcher. We explore the more-than-human in our conceptions of kinship. We look at how the "new animism" may offer pathways towards healthier relationships (and a sense of deep belonging) with the sentient, living world. We explore how personhood, respect, a...
Module 7Relational Imaginaries
With Sophie Strand, Stephen Jenkinson and Charlotte Du Cann. We delve into the role of mythology, stories, art, and poetry in cultivating kinship. How do stories create/relate to belonging? How do notions of kinship appear in and influence the way we weave our cultural (& other) stories? What do the stori...
Module 8Being & Becoming Kin
With Bayo Akomolafe, Gavin Van Horn and Rosanna Rippel. The end is near and we are asking, what next? How can we practise kinship in our own lives? How might we be able to help our communities, and those we don't belong to? We look at how we can reconceive kinship in the context of modernity. After all th...
hosted by Hannah Close
Hannah is a writer, photographer, curator and researcher exploring philosophy, ecology, culture and being alive in a world of relations.
hosted by Gavin Van Horn
Gavin is Executive Editor at the Center for Humans & Nature
hosted by Jeremy Lent
Jeremy, described by George Monbiot as “one of the greatest thinkers of our age,” is an author & speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilisation’s existential crisis.
hosted by Charlotte Du Cann
Charlotte is a writer, editor and co-director of The Dark Mountain Project.
hosted by Douglas Rushkoff
Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT, Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age.
hosted by Justine Epstein
Justine Epstein (she/her & they/them) is an organizer, facilitator, rites of passage guide, mentor, ad-hoc ritualist, naturalist, and lover of birds and wild things.
hosted by Brontë Velez
Brontë is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx trans-disciplinary artist, designer, trickster, and wake-worker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking and prophetic community traditions, environmental justice, and death doulaship.
hosted by Adah Parris
Adah is a polymath, anti-disciplinary artist, tech futurist & activist whose work explores the anatomy of transformation.
hosted by Tim Ingold
Tim is a British anthropologist & Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.
hosted by Tyson Yunkaporta
Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk.
hosted by Minna Salami
Minna Salami is a Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish feminist author and social critic currently at The New Institute. Her research focuses on Black feminist theory, contemporary African thought, and the politics of knowledge production
hosted by Dr Andreas Weber
Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, nature writer, and mystic. He focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living.
hosted by Charles Eisenstein
Charles Eisenstein is a world-renowned teacher, speaker, and writer focusing on themes of civilisation, consciousness, money, and human cultural evolution.
hosted by Nora Bateson
Nora is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute, based in Sweden.
hosted by Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures
GTDF are a trans-disciplinary collective of researchers, artists, educators, students & Indigenous knowledge keepers.
hosted by Tiokasin Ghosthorse
Tiokasin (Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota) is a speaker on Peace, Indigenous & Mother Earth perspectives.
hosted by Andy Letcher
Andy is Senior Lecturer at Schumacher College where he is programme lead for the MA Engaged Ecology.
hosted by Sophie Strand
Sophie is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, & ecology.
hosted by Stephen Jenkinson
Culture activist, worker, author ~ Stephen teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded the school with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010, convening semi-annually in Deacon, Ontario, and in northern Europe.
hosted by Bayo Akomolafe
Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) is Chief Curator and Executive Director of The Emergence Network.
hosted by Rosanna Rippel
Philosopher. Cognitive scientist. Based in Sweden.
The Kinship 2022 course is an exploration into being together in a time when being apart has fractured our relationship to self, other, and the more-than-human in ways that have left us painfully adrift. It is a timely collective inquiry into how community, relationality, and belonging can revitalise our sense of aliveness as creatures of and participants in this animate earth, and how such a renewal might influence our actions towards greater flourishing.
About Kinship
Our relationships are what enable us to step forth into being and enlivenment. Without relationship there is no thing, no body, no where, how, or why. So long as the relationships that sustain us here on earth are severed, so our sense of being here wanes. It is our relationships (to self, other, and earth) that offer us the greatest sense of belonging, and it is belonging that offers us the meaning we thrive on as a species.
Kinship is a way of relating that asks us to go beyond extracting value from the “other”. It is relationship for relationships sake, and for the sake of life itself. It is a form of relationship that acknowledges the deeper workings of reality by operating on the same principles as the very breath which keeps us alive: reciprocity, emergence, and sensuous awareness.
Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land. - Robin Wall Kimmerer
About the course
We want to ask the questions: When we are not indigenous, _what are we? How can we belong? Why do we find it so challenging in the globalised consumerist world to practice healthy relationships and community? Can kinship arise through online relationships and those we form in demanding and fractured environments like cities? _
How do skewed power dynamics affect the quality of our relatedness? How might a sense of kinship help us navigate polarisation, and how might it encourage us to move beyond our deeply held views? How, ultimately, can kinship orient us towards greater individual and collective flourishing?
Whether or not you have unorthodox relationships with rocks, or find your wings in the world of words, we invite you to explore kinship with us, and reconceive relationship in the contexts we find ourselves in.
While Advaya seeks to hold a responsible container and work with facilitators and teachers who pledge to do the same, we do not hold a therapeutic status and therefore cannot be liable for any difficult emotions that may arise through your personal exploration of these topics. Topics will include sensitive material around colonisation, gender, race, oppression and so on. By joining this course, you agree that you will engage with the content at a pace that you are able to. Some of the things discussed may feel challenging for you - in many cases this can be a good sign! We invite you to participate with an open mind, and to build greater tolerance for views that you might not chime with ordinarily - this is to begin the journey of Kinship. It does not mean you have to agree with everything said, or that you should put yourself in a position you feel extremely uncomfortable with, but we do invite you to stretch your boundaries for the benefit of both yourself and others.
