Rewild Your Writing: Embodied Landscapes
Week 4: Collective Imagination and Imagining a New World
Welcome back to Rewild Your Writing, a creative container and co-writing space for connecting with landscapes, places, and the more-than-human world. This week, we will explore carving out space to write, create, and be.
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Embodiment and Collective Imagination
How can embodiment and collective imagination go hand-in-hand?
Prentis Hemphill, founder of The Embodiment Institute, explains embodiment as,
It is not enough for us to envision new ways of being, but we need support to practice, to feel, and to stay the course of transformation.
I’ve worked in the youth climate space for several years now, and something I’ve become aware of over my time working in this area is that storytelling has the power to change and shift systems. We can utilise creative practices, such as storytelling, art, and movement, to foster transformation, both individually and collectively. This is the power of our creative practice.
The movement of collective imagination can be broken down into these factors1
‘(A) Shifting Imaginaries: Challenges dominant paradigms, fostering alternative, regenerative worldviews.
(B) Expanding Participation: Expands who gets to imagine the future, especially with marginalised communities, enabling diverse and accessible ways of imagining.
(C) Embodied Knowing: Utilises creative practices like storytelling, movement, and art to foster transformative insights.
(D) Inner Work and Outer Action: Balances personal growth with collaborative societal change.
(E) Collective Sensemaking: Develops shared understandings and agency among participants.
(F) Relationship with Mystery: Embraces complexity, uncertainty and deep interdependence, unlike conventional design or policy frameworks.
(G) Intentional World-Building: Moves beyond envisioning to actively co-create new realities.’
For today, I’ll be focusing on Embodied Knowing.
Our creative practices can serve as a conduit for collective imagination. What do I mean by collective imagination?
Collective imagination can involve the community in engaging with creative and embodied practices which aim to question the status quo of power and set intentions and commitment to create radical change to the current paradigm. So, for this course specifically, we can challenge how are relate to the more-than-human world (one where the current paradigm sees nature as separate from us).
What world becomes possible through our creative work? How can we foster creative imaginations for a more regenerative, interconnected world? Through our writing, storytelling, art, and movement, we can engage in collective imagination and visioning.
I have found this works best for me through my writing practice, as over the years I’ve questioned and explored my relationship to the natural world, and what we can learn from it (a lot of this written excavation work can be seen through my writing for Advaya). Through our creative enquiry, we can experience embodied ways of knowing. The words we write can help us feel, bodily and emotionally, new ways of understanding the world.
What’s below the paywall? Becoming a paid subscriber, you’ll get access to Rewild Your Writing. Below is this week’s reading, a creative exercise, writing prompts, and embodied practice.