What is different for you now?
Reflections in words, images, and sound from Realisation 2023 festival attendees
Exactly one month ago over one hundred festival-goers arrived on the grounds of St. Giles House in Dorset, England to partake in three days of ‘unlearning and reimagining difference’.
Over the last several weeks I have been reading and listening to some of the stories of this ‘unlearning’ and connection, moved by each one as they dropped into my inbox or popped up in Bloom Collective’s ‘Ungather’ audio bot. From moments of flow in small group discussions, to descriptions of ‘unexpected kinship’, the following reflections evoke a vivid set of personal and collective experiences of the festival. There’s also a grounding to the landscape of St. Giles, such as in Ewan’s poem (‘the movement / of those trees like a / waterfall on the moon’), and Milli and Sarah’s photos. Inside the house, unexpected ‘collisions’ of a generative kind happened everywhere from the dancefloor — under the spell of Nick’s and Zoya’s DJing,— to the improv workshop, to impromptu musical performances on the last evening.
The reflections also point towards what might emerge in the afterglow of such an event: in the case of Rick’s voice note, it’s about taking care to ‘put the soul first’ in his new neighborhood in Berlin; for Dominique, it’s ‘realizing the possibility of living differently by listening differently’. Mark reflects on a ‘a greater ability to flow creatively with what arises in life’. It’s an apt complement to John O’Donohue’s poem ‘Fluent’, which Chris recited to our small group on the last day together: four eloquent lines, in this context prompting us to consider what new perspectives might be carried outward from this gathering.
One last note: this is a collection from those who felt moved to share. Much of what I received had a kind of suspended, magical tone to it, or an effusiveness that drew on lingering energy after the three days together. I also want to acknowledge what remains unsaid in this collection: that there were some grittier moments of tension and frustration, inherent to the weekend’s theme of ‘difference’. In addition to the deep connections, there were also moments of disconnection, and difficulty bridging across various forms of distance. If you attended and felt that at times, we hear you.
Whether you joined this year’s festival, attended in the past, have a kernel of interest to join in the future, or are learning about it for the first time here, I encourage you to read and listen and linger over the following collection of reflections.
~Leigh Biddlecome, Visiting Curator & Editor, Perspectiva
Much gratitude to the organizers of Realisation Festival: Mark Vernon, Pippa Evans, Nick Ashley-Cooper, Ed Haddon, Jonathan Rowson, Olivia Lacey, Elizabeth Oldfield, and to the staff and team at St. Giles. Without your care, none of the following experiences would have come to life. Thank you!
Fluent
I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
— John O’Donohue
This weekend I discovered - to my joy and surprise - that my own small stream was not alone. It was one of many. We joined together and formed a river. I return home with a greater sense of togetherness, humble confidence and expectation as we journey the next stage towards the sea.
~ Chris Bemrose
On my way to the Festival I posed myself a challenge: listen, to really listen.
Listening would be a game as well. I wanted to experiment with what might happen if I listened to the point where my ears began to buzz. And I did, and they did… buzz I mean. [...]
Whenever I began to feel ‘bored’, or began ‘planning’ my response, ‘judging' with what was being said or mind-wandering towards the next break and what food might be on offer, I took it as a cue to listen even deeper, to really tune into the acoustic field. [...]
In our small group on one of the days, someone brought up the topic of judgement and almost everybody confessed to being in judgement mode all the time, not just about others but also themselves. So I decided to speak up about my secret game. I offered it as an experiment and we all tried it in pairs, speaking one at a time of what we think others judge us for. As I heard my partner speak, I played the deep listening game. As she spoke I could hear myself in her words and had no more need to interrupt, to plan my response, to think of the tea break, I was engrossed in her words and her experience. I called the practice, the Listening Facelift, because it opens your face and makes you smile instead of eyeballing people and getting forehead wrinkles.
I feel profoundly transformed since the festival and this is my takeaway. It’s like ‘realizing’ the possibility of living differently, by listening differently and now I’m exploring it in every other aspect of my life.
~ Dominique Savitri
(From Milla, Rick, Isabela)1
anamnesis (9:22)
it was sitting on the grass
on my own on the last
night with the yellow moon
between those two trees
and that quiet that only comes
when you've left somewhere
loud with that half-drank
bottle of white wine next to the
tipped over glass next
to me and those emotions
i’d came out to get rid
of but then remembered
that’s not how it works with
the feeling of the cold grass
against my hands and those
mosquitos i kept telling to go fuck
themselves and the
sound of those horses
in the far distance
and those emotions i tried to
keep but then remembered
that’s not how it works
with the man on the wooden
bench whose face i
couldn’t quite make
out and the movement
of those trees like a
waterfall on the moon
and how it made me
realise there are other
ways of being than human.
~Ewan McKenzie
It was a serious festival and I learned to wear the seriousness lightly.
I loved meeting horse trainers, philosophers, fashion designers, artists, scientists, techpreneurs – such a variety of people, backgrounds and interests, and I did not feel out of place.
~ Sukhin Tye
(From Bryan, Patricia, Niklas)
Too many nuances to list, but perhaps the most significant are: (1) a deep sense of connection to something greater than myself which is manifesting in an exciting, hopeful and transformative way in the world – the festival was an embodiment of that I think. (2) a shift in my whole body-mind towards a greater ability to flow creatively with what arises in life, and trust the unfolding of (what I call) 'myself' within this greater reality, through both pain and joy.
~ Mark Cuthbert
‘The gathering in 2023 was described by Perspectiva as a focus on Unlearning and Reimagining Difference.
“The illiterate of the 21st century,” [Alvin] Toffler wrote, “will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”
I am reminded often of Toffler’s words, and I don’t yet have a sense of what we unlearned on a collective level, but I know what I unlearned on a personal level during my time in St. Giles. I unlearned a form of rigidity, an inability to move freely in this world. I have been trying for a while to unlearn my petrifying cautiousness, and I can honestly say that this festival brought me back to another way of moving through the world, one that is more trusting.’
~Patricia Hurducas, an extract from her substack post on the festival
(From John, Olena, Emma)
[...] We must, I feel, speak of impermanence and renewal, the interdependence of generations, and learning, understanding, and educating. […]
Humility, curiosity, vulnerability, care, and compassion stand out in the words I have taken from the weekend’s experience. I also heard courage being mentioned on a couple of occasions. If we can organise our inter-generational conversations around these words and their meanings, then, I think we might be on the right road.
~ Andrew Alexander
Audio voice notes were gathered by the ‘Ungather Bot’, created by the Bloom Collective (many of whom were Festival attendees) immediately following Realisation 2023. ‘Ungather’ was an ‘audio reflection experiment’ in which festival participants shared voice notes on the question, ‘What is a specific moment of positive connection you had at The Realisation Festival 2023’? A selection have been edited into extracts for this post. Thank you to Bloom for creating and sharing this with us!