Poetics of oikos:
the study of home & kin
Monday 21st - Friday 25th July 2025
In uncertain times of ecological crisis, we have a lot to protect and much to love. But what or whom are we protecting, and what or whom are we loving? In the Western world in particular, we have experienced and enacted a radical separation from the world around us, leading us to believe and behave as if ‘nature’ is not people, and people are not ‘nature’.
Join writer, artist and facilitator Sophie Craven for a week-long intensive exploration into the poetics of oikos. The etymology of ecology is oikos + logy, i.e., the study of house or home and family or kin. In this week-long inquiry, we will explore how we might re-entangle ourselves within a wider web of interspecies relationships. We will consider what it means to ‘study home and kin’, and indeed whether it is more about how we ‘listen with being’.
Throughout our time together, we will develop a phenomenological, ontological and creative inquiry into becoming (re-)intertwined and (re-)entangled with the landscape around us. Using the ancient woodlands of Penryn and The Convivial’s learning space as our campuses, we will explore how we might re-story the landscape, or ‘world the world’ (Mika et al 2020) - and, if we’re lucky, be worlded in return.
Throughout the course, we will each choose or be chosen by a plant or other being from the woods or surrounding areas who will act as a guide through theory and methodology. Every day, we will return to the woods to be reintroduced to these guides anew and to further deepen our relationship and kinship with them. Alongside seminars and discussions, there will be time for collaborative, hands-on making within The Convivial’s learning space, as well as a final sharing of the first seedlings of solo creative inquiry in collaboration with a plant or being guide. This sharing is low-stakes and entirely up to you and your guide as to what it may entail - dance, poetry, painting, oral storytelling, sculpture, clay, etc. Materials such as paper, pens and pencils will be provided. Anything else you would like to make with will need to be brought by you.
Send your expression of interest to hellotheconvivial@gmail.com by Friday 27th June 2025.
Program structure
Day 1: Becoming chosen
Morning session:
Group introduction
Seminar: The sensing, sensuous world: (Feminist) phenomenology and Goethian observation
Group discussion / making
Afternoon session:
Walking into the woods
Introduction to and solo time with a plant / being guide
Group discussion
Solo oikos work:
Researching plant / being guide’s medicinal uses and its relationships to the world
Day 2: Becoming porous
Morning session:
Sharing of findings
Seminar: Watery borders: Membranes, bacterial passages and microplastics
Group discussion / making
Afternoon session:
Walking into the woods
Solo time with plant / being guide
Group discussion
Solo oikos work:
Researching plant / being guide’s experience of humans and environmental change
Day 3: Becoming entangled
Morning session:
Sharing of findings
Seminar: Worlding the world: Towards a postcolonial and posthuman metaphysics
Group discussion / making
Afternoon session:
Walking into the woods
Solo time with plant guide
Group discussion
Solo oikos work:
Researching plant / being guide’s echoes and recurrences in human imaginary (i.e. folklore, stories, mythology, literature, art)
Day 4: Becoming dream
Morning session:
Sharing of findings
Seminar: Storytelling with the unknowable: Myth, dreamtime and the chthonic divine
Group discussion / making
Afternoon session:
Free time to begin creating a seedling sharing (artwork, story, poem, dance etc) in collaboration with plant / being guide
Group dinner
Day 5: Poetics of oikos
Morning session:
Seedling sharings in the woods
Generative feedback
Afternoon session:
Seedling sharings in the woods
Generative feedback
Closing circle and farewells to plant / being guides
Send your expression of interest to hellotheconvivial@gmail.com by Friday 27th June 2025.
Facilitator
Sophie is a writer, artist and facilitator based in Cornwall, UK. She graduated from SOAS university in 2016 with a BA in Arabic and Social Anthropology, and a specialisation in memory, imagination and heritage sites, with fieldwork taking place in the West Bank of Palestine.
Sophie has worked in learning and facilitation for ten years, and in 2022 co-founded The Slow Work Garden, which hosts action inquiries into slowness, grief and ecology. In 2024, she completed an MA in Poetics of Imagination at Schumacher College / Dartington School of Arts, with a focus on human-mythic-interspecies cosmologies. She also holds a CPD qualification in Trauma-Informed Practice from University of Sussex (2021) and has trained in creative facilitation, healthy human culture and education for liberation.
Her current research and creative interests include mythology, folklore, ancient sites, phenomenology, mysticism, literature, eco-poetics and slowness as practice.
Course costs
This course is costed as follows:
£250 - low income
£325 - medium income
£400 - high income
£525 - supporter / organisation-funded
Please think about what you are able to commit without it feeling like a great imposition on your finances. For help with making an application for funding, please get in touch.
There are also three places available for low/no income locals of Penryn and surrounding areas at £100 each, as well as three places available at £25 (cost of lunch over five days and one dinner) for ongoing volunteers with The Convivial. This will be on a first come, first served basis. This course will be repeated in mid-September 2025, so if you miss out this time, do not despair!
We want you with us and we do not want finance to be a barrier. Please get in touch if this is the case and we can discuss other-than-monetary options for reciprocity. The Convivial is committed to continually exploring options for gift economy and skills exchange, particularly for people facing greater systemic obstacles to learning relating to poverty, ethnicity, religion, sexuality or non-conformity to cultural gender ‘norms’.
What the price includes:
A vegan lunch every day
Group dinner on day 4
Simple arts materials (paper, pens and pencils)
What the price does not include:
Accommodation
Travel
Breakfast and dinner
Additional arts materials
Send your expression of interest to hellotheconvivial@gmail.com by Friday 27th June 2025.