Expressing the Earth Conference: Creative Workshop

We are delighted that the following workshop will take place this year's trans-disciplinary Expressing the Earth conference hosted by the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics in collaboration with the University of the Highlands and Islands. The event will bring together creative artists, musicians, poets and film makers along with local people, academics, researchers, students and teachers to explore, create and debate the earth and the environment in this spectacular area of Scotland.

WHAT WOULD A GEOPOETIC CREATIVE ETHNOLOGY LOOK LIKE?

Dr Mairi McFadyen and Professor Ullrich Kockel

In recent years, a network of creative practitioners and academics has emerged in Scotland keen to explore the potential of a ‘creative ethnology.’ Responding to the theme of ‘Expressing the Earth,’ we propose an open creative workshop inviting participants to reflect on the question, 'What would a Geopoetic Creative Ethnology look like?'

This workshop will be led by creative ethnologists Dr Mairi McFadyen and Professor Ullrich Kockel, with ecologist and place-based education expert Dr Sam Harrison. Mairi will explore the potential of a phenomenological research methodology to reach ‘the dense and intense sensations of life’ and will reflect on the role of the creative ethnologist as ‘poet-thinker.’ Creativity here is understood in the anthropological sense as the power of the human body to creatively transform and be transformed by a world. Ullrich will outline a model of a creative ethnology as ‘engaged toposophy’ informed by a radical human ecology, grounded in an ontology of place as an ongoing process rather than a conceptual ecological model. How does lived experience, taking place locally, shape our worldview? Sam will present a case study as one example of an ontology of place and lived philosophy of placemaking, sharing his experience of working with ‘The Shieling Project’ in Struy, Glenstrathfarrar. Together we seek the ‘wisdom that sits in places’ and to re-examine what it means to be part of the world.