Becoming Crew : Crew News

WATCH

What do humans who aren't consumers look like?

What happens when we find ways of feeding ourselves and each other without buying or selling food?

Sand River Community Farm in upstate New York is an experiment in gift economy and community building. The food from this place is now offered as a gift to the neighbours and strangers who find their way here.

Welcome to the farm where nothing is for sale.

WATCH

READ

Mark Sears, Becoming Crew guide, writes about some of the core practices we work with on the land to ground, deepen and navigate the mystery together in communities of practice.

LISTEN

I’ve been slowly getting back into the podcast recording, my intention is to record where possible out on the land at Ghostwood Down, as with this latest Episode 107 with Citizens Author Jon Alexander and to commit to creating more of my own sonic rambling productions like this one Episode 104 - Composting Spoiled Maps

Available on all podcast platforms.

Thanks for those listeners who continue to share episodes, message me about what they receive and those who flip to paid subscriptions to support the production costs. We are hugely grateful for your support.

Listen

PRACTICE

Forage and Make - Hawberry Tincture

If you’re in the UK the hedgerows are heaving with wild fruit, although they are turning fast. Tis a time for foraging, the practice of reciprocity in the abundance of Autumn.

Haw berries are everywhere - the fruit of the Hawthorn - a tree of the heart.

Packed full of Vitamin C they also contain properties that have long been known to have benefits for the heart and circulation.

You can make them into jam with other fruit, create a Hawthorn syrup or try a tincture.

Simply find some Hawthorn trees, ask them if you can pick some berries. Don’t take too many from one tree, say thank you after - wash the berries, fill a jar (or two), pour over brandy, whiskey or vodka to use an alcohol extraction process, screw on a lid, put in a dark cool place for 4 weeks. Then strain the liquid into tincture bottles. Squeeze the occasional drop onto your tongue to receive Haw Power for the Heart

PARTICIPATE

Our friends at Earthed are gathering folks for their summit in London on the 18th September, this will be an absolute inspiration fest of a day, with the leading practitioners in land and place based regeneration forming a stella line up of talks, panels and more alongside performances from Earth-centered Artists and musicians way into the night.

But it’s also about connecting with the community, folks who show up to Earthed gigs, beautiful humans who are out on the land across our Spaceship Earth, getting on with bringing life back.

I spotted 7 folks in the speaker line-up who we have hosted on the Spaceship Earth Podcast - which is a good sign! And my brother Simon is also speaking about his regenerative farming project in Italy - Radici .

If you make it, come and say hello.

Tickets

CONNECT

We have just posted dates for three new action learning experiences and monthly events through the Autumn/Winter with Becoming Crew.

First up is Becoming Fridays a monthly gathering on the second Friday of each month on-land at Ghostwood Down nr Bath.

A day of connection, practice and community with a small crew, to sit around the fire in council, have solo time on the land, tend to the land, eat together. A day of spaciousness, deep listening and contemplating the mystery of these times

Info and register here for Oct, Nov and Dec

Info

Into the Dark - a 5 week online action learning journey with a self-placed nature based rite of passage is back for the 4th year and we are hoping to host two crews, one at the end of this year and the other beginning of 2026.

Into the Dark is an invitation to slow down, to pay attention to the roots, to let go of what is no longer useful and to nurture the seeds of intention within you.

Info and register here

Info

And we are also experimenting with the ancient practice of Sitting in Council, at Folly Wood in Stroud 24th September 7-9pm and Bath in November - details here

We hope to make these regular gatherings.

SUPPORT

Meander is a magazine for bioregional culture, slow living, and regenerative futures.

Regeneration starts with reconnecting to the land, the seasons, and cultural rhythms of place. Meander curates stories, practical guides, and creative insights that inspire personal and community transformation.

This feels right up our street, a physical magazine that we want to see.

Support the launch of this new magazine by pre-ordering the first edition - Returning to place.

DANCE

A 6 hour mix from two DJ legends, the late and so great Andrew Weatherall playing back 2 back with DJ Harvey. Recorded in 2012 at Trouw club in Amsterdam and released as part of the RA 1000 mixes.

Dance

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #inservicetolife #practicedrivenchange #regeneration

Crew News: Inspiration in Service to Life

dan burgess — Thu, 08 May 2025 07:09:52 GMT

Greetings Earthling,

April came and went.

Beltane fires were lit.

The energy on the land of late has been vibing.

And yet the grief and pain of late stage capitalism, the decaying systems and exhausted stories of modernity and the spread of authoritarianism is ever present.

I’m finding the extreme contradictions of witnessing life on Spaceship Earth as challenging as ever.

Hawthorn blizzards in my hood

From the stunning hedgerows where I live, vibrating with life, where the Hawthorn blossom this last week has been popping outrageously like blizzards, while at the same time my instagram feed continues to show me starving children in Gaza, where food and medical aid has been blocked for nearly 70 days in total breach of international laws. And while media and politicians remain silent.

How does one hold the hypocrisy, the racism, the double standards, the selective empathy?

Personally I’m making space for grief and processing, for speaking intentionally to the madness and destruction of this decaying world order. Not through silence and suppression.

By getting out onto land and communing with our more than human family.

By finding small practical ways to tend to what is alive, to re-entangle with the great mystery of life and to continue to practice in community other ways of showing up, new ways of becoming.

Ways which centre connection, care, generosity, solidarity through creating space for processing, reflecting, listening, and slowing down.

The kinds of qualities we are going to need in abundance with the future that is unfolding.

And by committing to creative practices, to keep expressing, to sense make creatively, to find joy and to grow resilience and courage for challenging times ahead.

There is no time to wait for things to change, or someone in power to sort it out, (that’s not happening btw) we must become those changes in the places and spaces we occupy.

It’s uncomfortable.

As growth always is.

It matters how we show up, how we see things, how we treat each other, how we treat the living world, the words we use, what we give our attention to, never more so than now.

I guess if there is a theme with this months newsletter it is perhaps the invitation into uncomfortable participation, to tune into our abundant creative energies, the fire energy and growth of Beltane, to trust in our heart intelligence and begin to actively prepare the grounds for a shift in consciousness that centres care, connection and compassion between all humans and more than human nature.

I hope you enjoy these offerings and invitations.

Thank you for your support.

With love and courage

Dan and the basecamp crew

WATCH

There is a massacre of innocent humans continuing in Gaza, now intensifying, using the most sophisticated and violent weaponary ever created and now intentional starvation by blocking food and aid from entering - it’s indescribable if you choose to witness it . You won’t know it if you depend on mainstream media for ‘news’. Or maybe you’ve tuned out completely.

Who do you trust when it comes to claims of genocide and the breaking of International laws. Media and politicians in faraway places ?

I trust the grounded realities of doctors and the medics on the front line.

Listen to these international doctors and medics who have been working in Gaza, listen to what they have experienced.

There is a much bigger silence that is growing atop of the genocide in Palestine, it’s spreading across our institutions and cultures, watch the British actor and activist Khalid Abdalla speak to it in this powerful talk last week.

I have no idea what to do anymore, but silence cannot be. We must keep speaking. In our families, communities, work places, to the trees - anywhere.

Truth and integrity matters.

What else is there?

READ

is an incredible human, multi-disciplinary artist, smallholder and regenerative life experimenter - exploring the question of how the small work of how we live each day could actually transform the world.

In this recent post - ‘the world is procrastinating’ Elisa suggests the antidote in these times of overwhelming crisis may be to just experiment where you are with what’s right in front of you…imperfectly… Read and subscribe

“the world is procrastinating. if nothing short of profound transformation will do, as all the crises in all their intensifying forms assure us, how do we begin to alter?
the mindset that demands perfection and speed in our approach is a familiar one. we know it as the voice that drives us in so many punitive ways. we’ve seen it defeat itself, repeatedly. the chances that we can change, quickly, when what we tell ourselves is that change must be perfect, instant, large-scale, all at once, well.
my fiercest attempts to force change in my own being, top down, they never work. instead, it’s in opening space to slow down, play with this, welcome the partial, imperfect, the smallest possible step to simply begin, it sparks something. we let go of stalling on perfectly-finished, by inviting partially, imperfectly-begun. “

LISTEN

It’s been a few months of fallow on the podcast, I’ve taken extended time out as I needed some headspace to process the conversations and learnings from 2024 and for my own self-care. However, there’s a disturbance in the podcast force, Episode 102 is a recent live panel recording mixed with reflections from a River Avon Pilgrimage to mark the launch of local (to me) Bio-regional project We Are Avon.

This is an episode about moving into a deeper relationship with the more than human world in the places we call home, in this case the River Avon, becoming beings of place.

Centering food, river and land as powerful anchors for reconnecting people to place, this project aims to re-identify humans as 'regenerators’, as active participants in service to the climate and nature crisis we collectively face. Full details here

More episodes coming soon.

Oh and……I recently guested on Coconut Thinking podcast, where Benjamin Freud turned the mic on me to riff on my learnings and experiments over the years.

PRACTICE

Tree Wisdom. Do you have a difficult decision to make that you are sitting with ? Try taking it out to a favourite tree if you have one or just walk and find a tree you are drawn to. For me this is often an oak.

Simply sit down with the tree, greet the tree, touch the tree and then take some time to share your situation and the decision you are trying to make. Speak aloud, speak to the tree like you mean it. Explain the details.

And then just sit for 20 or 30 mins, longer if you feel you need. Phone off. Observe and notice, in your body and around you and the tree. Chances are you’ll leave with a decision. Thank the tree . More on cultivating a Wild Intelligence

PARTICIPATE

Francis Weller and a wide crew of Grief tenders are catalysing two decentralised grief solidarity days in May and June and encouraging folks to hold their own grief circles wherever you are. They have a preparation and info event on May 12th to help you prepare with Kai Cheng Thom, Desiree Adaway, Francis Weller, Alexandra Blakely, and Holly Truhlar

in their words

To everyone and anyone longing for a more liberated world: You are invited to gather and honor your heartbreak. Grief is not what pulls us away from the movement, it is what roots us deeper in care. And we were never meant to carry it alone.

I discovered Francis Weller’s book the ‘The Wild Edge of Sorrow’ in 2018 when I was experiencing extreme burnout and breakdown.

I realised through reading it that it was years of unprocessed grief that had floored me.

Through his work I have come to see grief as a vital flow of life energy, which in Western culture has become tabooed and suppressed. A grief and death phobic culture as he puts it.

I witness grief manifesting everywhere, often just under the surface for folks, but barely given any space for proper tending. Personal loss, loss of perceived futures, love that wasn’t received, the vast sorrow of our Earth’s destruction, and then there’s the current extreme and violent world order spilling out on our screens.

It’s immense grief.

I can see grief work becoming an essential strand in composting the decaying stories of modernity, part of a cultural initiation, collective soul work towards preparing the ground for more life-centered ways to take root.

Tending to grief as a creative portal for what could become.

SUPPORT

We Are Avon is an emergence of a place-based movement for regeneration in the UK.

It aims to act upon the interwoven crises of river pollution, climate change and food insecurity. Led by the people, a diverse web of communities, regenerators, farmers and projects who collaborate to regenerate.

This is a grassroots movement to provide healthy and affordable food resilience for the region whilst also regenerating the communities, landscapes and watersheds of the catchment area beginning from the local level with river and land in this Avon valley.

After a year of visioning and development, We Are Avon has launched its first crowd-funder to formalise and activate a number of community engagement projects. Any support you can give would be much appreciated

Support

CONNECT

We’re now open for hosting organisational teams who want to spend a day on a wild regenerating landscape to create space to connect, process and reflect.

As the world gets more extreme - slowing down, connecting, reflecting, creating space for processing is a radical act.

It might just be the most regenerative move you can make right now.

We will host and guide these days on Ghostwood Down, our new home for on-land work on the edge of the city of Bath, two hours from London.

Full details here

Last month we guided our first crew through a Community Solo Weekend on Ghostwood Down.

Two days of nature connection and personal exploration, fire circles for deeper listening and sharing our most alive questions and an overnight nature solo; a rite of passage for these times of great transformation.

It was quite an extraordinary experience, captured here beautifully by Ellie, one of the crew.

We are open for booking for two more weekends - Summer/June 13-15th and Autumn/September 19-21st.

With ongoing integration and community connecting Online.

Come and join us around the fire

DANCE

Sama Abdulhadi is a DJ and Artist from Ramallah, Palestine. Her sound is punchy hypnotic, energetic techno which she totally embodies as a performer. This set last year at Tomorrowland Festival is quite something - energy, intensity and transcendental vibes - a masterclass. The fire energy of Beltane for the dancefloor.

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #inservicetolife #practicedrivenchange

Crew News: Inspiration in Service to Life

dan burgess — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 09:39:00 GMT

Greetings Earthling

Spring is emerging here in the UK, and so are we

Earth is beginning to flirt…

Through light and leaves,

Green shoots rising,

Primrose popping,

Birdsong returning

Sunshine warmth on our faces.

And we feel giddy with gratitude for all that.

Perhaps the Earth is inviting us to step unashamedly into relationship with all this wonder and mystery ?

Maybe it is through re-entangling with all that is alive, where we might awaken our senses to know this world and our place within it differently

To re-member and re-connect with our unique creative intelligence and cultivate the courage to bring LOVE back to a world that is maxing out on hate, power, division, lies, hubris and noise.

After all, what we pay attention to really matters, we create the world we pay attention to…

So what if we paid closer attention to :

The most alive questions and feelings we carry inside us
Listening to each other with presence and non-judgement
The living world, the more than human openings around us and in the places we call home

What might emerge ?

I hope you enjoy these offerings and invitations here.

Thank you for your support.

With love and courage

Dan and the basecamp crew

WATCH

What is Art ? How is our creativity, imagination and expression needed in these times of crisis ?

In the current crisis of democracy does Art matter? Our good friend Jon Alexander hosted Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse in London this week to discuss ideas from new book, What Art Does.

READ

Jez Green in this community has been writing beautifully for some time about his relationship with a stretch of land ‘Pomona’ near his home in Manchester.

This recent post is a raw, reflective response to the latest devastation of the land from the relentless machine of development, where ‘progress’ meets the living world in the places we call home, read and follow along

LISTEN

A beautiful 20 mins from the wise and generous Michael Mead.

A riff on Wisdom Vs Knowledge and stepping into darkness as necessity to grow other ways of knowing and finding what is uniquely ours to do in these times of huge challenge. On all platforms.

PRACTICE

Have you ever got up in the darkness and sat outside with the dawn chorus as it unfolds?

Becoming Crew guide shares 3 minutes of inspiration to encourage this practice in these glorious next months in the Northern Hemisphere.

PARTICIPATE

Our friends at New Ways are hosting a couple of free interactive introduction sessions this month to explore:

💡 What white supremacy culture is—not as an accusation, but as a system we’re all shaped by

💡 How these traits show up in the world of work, leadership, and our daily lives

💡 How we can begin to recognise, unlearn, and do things differently.

SUPPORT

ACTionism is a film about the art of finding your people to take collective action. About collectively moving from passive consumers to active citizens. A story centered around doing things together with others.

Born from the inspirational Re-Action collective and friends of the podcast Gavin Fernie-Jones and Ellie Meredith

ACTionism is spreading through community screenings. Encouraging communities to take action about the things that fire them up.

Organise a screening in your community

CONNECT

Imagine a weekend camped out on wild land, living in community with others, including a guided overnight nature solo experience.

Two days of nature connection and personal exploration, fire circles for deeper listening and sharing our most alive questions and an overnight nature solo; a rite of passage for these times of great transformation.

We are so excited to be offering three weekend Community Solo experiences this year as well as bespoke experiences for organisations.

We’ll be camped out on Ghost Wood Down, 27 acres of regenerating downland on the edge of the city of Bath. 2 hrs from London and 30 mins from Bristol.

The new home for our Becoming Crew On-land offerings.

Three dates are now booking Spring/April 11-13th, Summer/June 13-15th and Autumn/September 19-21st.

With ongoing integration and community connecting Online.

Come and join us around the fire

DANCE

Digging this one out from 2003 - A beautiful experimental electronica mix from Nick Warren. From downtempo vibes into future breaks, this was a pioneering mix from 22 year ago which still sounds super fresh today in my opinion.

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #inservicetolife #practicedrivenchange

Crew News: Inspiration in Service to Life

dan burgess — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 16:23:49 GMT

Greetings Earthling

June came and went.

Please find news, offerings and invitations for this moment.

Thank you for your support.

With love and courage

Dan and the Basecamp Crew

WATCH

Retrofit Re-imagined

What if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned and governed by the people who live there?

The #RetrofitReimagined film from the incredible Civic Square and friends takes us on a journey across the UK in Autumn 2023. During the second Retrofit Reimagined Festival, they explored the power of neighbourhood-led retrofit through the core theme of rebuilding our relationships with the land, the materials we consume, and our relationships with each other.

Retrofit should not only see the home, street, and neighbourhood as key strategic sites for decarbonisation, but also places of deep imagination for addressing the inequalities of wider, interlinked systems, of which our built environment sits at the heart.

If you dig this, check out our episode with Immy Kaur and Kavita Purohit from Civic Square, listen on all platforms.

Crack Flowers #2: Unexpected stories to Rewild our Minds, Hearts & Cultures from

Three short stories to rewild your mind, shift horizons and help you regenerate life on earth.

Crack flowers is seeking to bring new perspectives, ways of thinking, seeing and being into your life. The stories that make you question your worldview, knowledge and beliefs.

LISTEN

Episode 89 - Lily Cole - Interbeing, Relationality and the Roots Inside

Lily is a model, activist, social entrepreneur, writer, actor and mother who has campaigned and acted persistently on multiple social, environmental and climate justice issues throughout her working life.

She is committed to exploring new possibilities and ways of being which put care and life at the centre.

I connected with Lily last year when we were both invited to attend a climate activism retreat at Plum Village, the Zen Buddhist Monastery in France founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

The Plum Village force is strong in this episode.

This conversation is grounded in this moment, it’s a dive into the deeper parts of change, the inner and outer dimensions of our values and actions and how they influence and shape the systems we seek to change.

Available on all platforms

Simple, beautiful practice wisdom from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

PARTICIPATE

Becoming Crew online gathering with special guest Ella Saltmarshe - Tuesday July 16th 6.00 pm GMT

Time is a story.

And we can change that story.

Join us for our last session of this summer series with special guest teacher Ella Saltmarshe, host of the multi award winning Long Time Academy Podcast, where we will expand our perspectives, exploring how becoming polytemporal can enable us to better meet this moment.

We will inhabit different temporalities, and explore the nuances of what particular ways of doing time can open up for the now.

We will spend time in the early days of the planet; we will get civilisational; we will cultivate intergenerational empathy; we may also talk to the birds…

Ella is a systems change specialist, anthropologist, writer, podcaster, teacher, activist and mother, founder of the Long Time Project, which seeks to cultivate a culture of stewardship and public imagination across society.

The session is an experiential (un)learning session hosted by Dan Burgess and Evva Semenowicz.

Everyone welcome - a space for (un)learning together.
Come and join us on 16th July, tickets here

TICKETS

Radici Farm

A family project, Radici Community Farm in Italy is on a mission growing regenerative futures on a living landscape. From farm volunteering stays, glamping and camping to arts and creative retreats. Check em out.

We hope to host Becoming Crew on-land events for European crews in 2025 with Radici.

Support

CONNECT

Overnight Nature Solo - September 20-22nd. Nr Bath, UK

We are hosting and guiding an overnight nature solo weekend in September.

We will gather on 20 acres of regenerating downland meadows near the city of Bath, UK.

Ghostwood Down has got a bit of history. Close to Bath and Bristol it is a downland landscape of ancient meadows being regenerated to a wilder state.

It is precisely the sort of place to be doing our On-Land work -> healing the land, healing ourselves.

48 hours

8 Soloists

4 Guides

Living simply together as a crew

1 night in the village

1 night alone (but together) on the land

Lots of time in connection and community.

Friday 20th September to Sunday 22nd September.

Follow up integration online

DANCE

Beautiful deep, emotive, haunting, pumping live session from sonic magician Artist, Producer and DJ Steven Weston

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #creativityinservicetolife

Crew News: Inspiration in Service to Life

dan burgess — Mon, 27 May 2024 21:40:15 GMT

Greetings Earthling

The world feels even more brutal today.

We live in violence.

From live-streamed genocide to climate chaos and extractive capitalism,

We are a civilisation experiencing extreme relational crises.

The only thing that feels certain is the need to cultivate our collective courage to face into the unknown.

We find courage by growing our connection to the Earth, to ourselves and to each other.

To grow our own unique creative intelligence to be of service in these times, through other ways of seeing, relating, knowing and becoming.

The Spaceship Earth Podcast and Becoming Crew offerings exist for these times.

Conversations, gatherings and experiences for (un)learning together.

Letting go of the destructive story of separation, learning to connect to wider intelligences and cultivating the practices of humility, generosity, care, compassion, imagination and being in right relationship with life.

Find news, offerings and invitations here in response to this moment.

Thank you for your support.

With love and courage

Dan and the Basecamp Crew

WATCH

Introducing Becoming Crew Youth Program

Since July last year we have been dreaming up and prototyping a Youth offering.

With a focus on 18 to 24 years, we begin with on-land gatherings this year and a 6 month pilot in 2025 in collaboration with a leading academic partner in the UK.

The foundational approach for this work is:

Practice-driven change
Kinship with all life
Creativity in service to life

The weekend gatherings include nature connection practice, community building, peer-learning and creative practice.

Creating spaces for young people to explore their deeper questions and express themselves freely.

A long post with more details coming very soon.

David Orr captures the spirit of this offering:

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind.
It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”
David W. Orr
Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College

We are seeking long term funding partners to support this work and journey with us, and organisations and businesses to sponsor weekend gatherings to help underwrite the costs.

Get in touch: dan@becomingcrew.com

Rachel Donald: Duende: From Scream to Song at the Edge of Insanity

I’m a big fan of - check out her vital weekly podcast Planet Critical if you haven’t yet, and this writing from Rachel last week hit me in the chest.

“Duende exists at the edge of all things: life, death; joy, sorrow; art, experience; song, howl. There are no mirrors at the edge, only flesh and bones and elevated heart rates and dilated pupils and spirits with whom we battle to invite one another into rapture.
There exist spaces beyond language, beyond the world of mirrors, where even words may begin to make sense if they come from the very roots of us that have spent millennia in this soil. There is meaning to be found at the very edge when we come together with raw throats and red eyes and dare admit the terrors we are facing. There is sanity to be won by coming home to our bodies.”

LISTEN

Episode 84 - Alnoor Ladha & Lynn Murphy: The Age of Consequence, Healing Wealth & Growing Post Capitalist Realities

I’m plugging this episode again because there is so much in here for this moment if you’re grappling to understand the violent mess we are in.

The conversation is deep, it sets out a dynamic perspective on ’the waters we are swimming in’ today and the ‘Age of Consequence’ we are now experiencing.

There is also real hope and possibility in this conversation, to begin the work of growing post-capitalist realities.

The team put a lot of energy into the sound design on this one, headphones on.

Long and extraordinary.

Available on all platforms

A thoughtful and helpful reminder on self-care practices shared by Lyla June

PARTICIPATE

Live online gathering with special guest Bayo Akomolafe - Tuesday May 28th 6.30 pm GMT

Do you feel stuckness in this moment?
Have we been captured by the logic of 'whiteness' or is 'whiteness' the 'logic of capture'?
Is 'white stability' wobbling ?
Do you know how to shapeshift ?
What does any of this mean ?
Come and join us on May 28th for a live online gathering as we welcome back very special guest Bayo Akomolafe to explore this and his invitation into fugitivity. A two hour session including reflective and creative practice to work with the content we receive from Bayo.

Everyone welcome - a space for (un)learning together.

First in a series of three monthly gatherings - join one, two or all three.
TICKETS
Share
Ticket purchase includes ongoing access to our community of practice gatherings around the Wheel of The Year

TICKETS

SUPPORT

Where Olive Trees Weep

"Where Olive Trees Weep" offers a searing window into the struggles and resilience of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.

It explores themes of loss, trauma, and the quest for justice.

Ancient landscapes bear deep scars, having witnessed the brutal reality of ancestral land confiscation, expulsions, imprisonment, home demolitions, water deprivation, and denial of basic human rights.

This emotional journey bares the humanity of the oppressed while grappling with the question: what makes the oppressor so ruthlessly blind to its own cruelty?

The film launches next week.

Watch the premier and/or host a screening

CONNECT

Overnight Nature Solo - September 20-22nd. Nr Bath, UK

We are hosting and guiding an overnight nature solo in September.

We will gather on 20 acres of regenerating downland meadows near Bath.

Ghostwood Down has got a bit of history. Close to Bath and Bristol it is a downland landscape of ancient meadows being regenerated to a wilder state.

It is precisely the sort of place to be doing our On-Land work -> healing the land, healing ourselves.

48 hours

8 participants

Living simply together as a crew

1 night in the village

1 night alone but together on the land

Lots of time in connection and community.

Friday 20th September to Sunday 22nd September.

Follow up integration online

DANCE

Earth Sessions May : Dan Solo - No Words

Recorded in the Spaceship shed this morning.

Ruff and ready mix.

When there are no words - there is music.

House music.

And love.

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #creativityinservicetolife

Crew News: Creative Inspiration in Service to Life

dan burgess — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:18:40 GMT

Greetings Earthling

Welcome to our February edition Crew News.

This year our intention is to use this newsletter to offer you monthly updates, news and creative fertiliser to nourish, provoke and inspire your practice and actions as we try to navigate the mystery and overwhelm of these times while cultivating our courageous creativity that is being called for from us all.

Vibes for this time.

News from Basecamp

We are deep in recording mode, releasing two podcast episodes each month in conversation with some stella crew on Spaceship Earth. And planning some other surprises.

Our last episode with Dr Ros Watts has been landing well it seems from feedback. Big up your Tree vibes.

We have moved the entire podcast back catalogue over to Substack and turned on listener support.

If you can afford to help support the funding of this work we’d be very grateful.

We have recently finished our latest Winter Community Solo - an epic 5 week journey with a stunning crew.

In the words of one:

“Thank you all for sharing parts of yourselves, your stories and your warmth. Evva, Dan and Mark you guided us so beautifully.
This experience was far more profound than I had expected and has given me wisdom I didn't know I needed. “

We are now offering Community Solo to teams who want to work more deeply to build trust, connection and courage in these unravelling times.

In big news for us our flagship (un)learning course ‘The Remix’ is back for a second year, in a new form and now open for applications

Finally I’ve been writing short posts on Linkedin Mon, Tues, Weds & Thurs (MTWAT), it’s an experiment for me and seems to be appreciated, I store them here on the Substack, under MTWAT

We’d love to hear from you, if any of this stuff is connecting, please do comment, start a chat, reach out if something lands.

Thank you for your support.

Until next month, Take care of youself

Peace and Out

Dan and the Basecamp Crew

WATCH

Creative Activism in service to life from our friends at Patagonia Europe

Laxaþjóð | A Salmon Nation tells the story of a country united by its lands and waters, and the power of a community to protect the wild places and animals that helped forge its identity.’

‘Our relationship with nature not only defines our history, it shapes our future, too. Yet beneath the surface of Iceland’s fjords, an industrial fish farming method threatens to destroy one of Europe’s last remaining wildernesses. Open net salmon farms wreak havoc on the fragile environments they’re placed in, polluting pristine ecosystems while mistreating the farmed fish and driving local salmon populations to extinction. It’s an industry at odds with Iceland’s untouched landscape, and as a growing local movement has shown, nothing replaces nature.

Warning: you might not eat farmed salmon again after this, which is probably a good thing

WATCH

READ

Bayo Akomolafe: The Children of the Minotaur: Democracy & Belonging at the End of the World

A long, provocative, mind expanding read from our dear friend and Remix guest teacher Bayo Akomlafe:

“In our days of heat domes, microbial politics, chemical warfare, hormonal fixations and dopaminergic addictions, social algorithms, deepening cripistemologies, and the ever-present mythopoeic prospects of alien life bracketing modern subjectivity, it would seem imprudent to continue to consider the subject of belonging through the historical convenience of the liberal human subject. Through the humbling insights of posthumanist inquiries, ecofeminist questions, and indigenous research, belonging must now be brought down to earth, composted among other immanent things, and allowed to live and die and live again with its contradictory earthlings. It is in the heat of the heap that we revisit belonging’s most persistent modern political project, now stripped of its elite white linen clothes and mired along with earthworms, molecular critters, and ecological processes of all kinds: democracy.”

LISTEN

Vivien Sansour: Palestinian seeds of survival, shelter, and subversiveness

An episode for this moment from the brilliant and vital Podcast.

A powerful, troubling , insightful, tragic, but essential listen with Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Project—an initiative centered on caring for and preserving seeds as keepers of ancestral connection and models of subversive advocacy.

What can grief teach us about being truly alive? And how might seeds, and the compassionate acts of tending to them, be the “helpers and teachers” of mediating our collective grief?

PRACTICE

Cultivating presence with Roshi Joan Halifax from Upaya Zen Center

Feeling overwhelmed with the suffering and violence in our world.

Try 6 minutes cultivating presence with Roshi Joan Halifax from Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe, New Mexico

PRACTICE

PARTICIPATE

The Remix 2024: Activate your courageous creativity

The Remix is back for the second year - this time it’s a 6 month journey, on-land and online. More info here and here and register your interest here

If you are looking to cultivate your creative practice with a community of fellows in an experiential and transformative (un)learning journey designed for these unravelling times - then please get in touch, we’re pouring everything we’ve learned into this, it’s going to be very special.

The Remix 24

SUPPORT

Support the making of an important film from Reclaim The Sea

Reclaim The Sea is a C.I.C that aims to support people to reclaim the sea as a safe space when it has previously been one of trauma.

Working predominantly with refugees and asylum seekers, they run swimming, SUP and surf lessons in a trauma informed way to allow people to experience the sea in a safe and supportive community.

Reclaim The Sea - The Film is a documentary following their women's programme in 2023. It showcases the bravery of participants, many of whom who have never been in the sea before, exhibiting how their confidence grows over the course of the programme. Help support the making of this important film.

DANCE

Deep, pumping vibes from Simon Vaurambon and Guy J

Simon Vaurambon is a DJ and producer from Argentina.

He produces beautiful cosmic dance tunes and moves us with his deep, trippy, booming vibes. This 3 hr mix is Simon with the masterful Guy J recorded live in Argentina late last year.

One for running, dancing, walking, shuffling, in the kitchen, dark, woods etc.

Enjoy!

#thespaceshipearthpodcast #becomingcrew #crewnews #creativityinservicetolife

2023 endings

dan burgess — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 17:47:42 GMT

Greetings Earthling,

We hope this finds you ‘ok’ in these mysterious times.

This is a December edition of our irregular newsletter.

A mix of offerings and updates from us to you.

We’re off to compost the madness of 2023, uncomfortably aware of the privilege we have to do that right now with all the suffering going on.

Wishing you restful vibes if you can get them.

Until next year, thanks for connecting, supporting and journeying with us.

Blessings

Dan, Evva, Mark, Mark, Seemah and Kamara

If you’re looking for a process to stoke your own re-imagining this winter and orient yourself for the seasons ahead, we have our next Community Solo coming up on 25th January and there are still places. Over the 5 weeks together we will be:

connecting to community & collective wisdom
rooting in nature, in the places we call home
exploring how might our unique gifts be of service to the web of life
working with stories, creativity & group reflective practices
learn more

When it’s time to (let your ego) die

Laura Storm is a pioneer in regenerative leadership. She was an early guest on the podcast back in 2018. Laura has just published a beautiful, deeply personal essay exploring how our ‘collective fear of darkness, death and wintering be the main barrier for regenerative transformation’.

This theme, the acceptance and essential practice of death, endings and letting go is very alive for us too.

Read the whole post

Becoming Crew X Youth

The future feels exhausted.

The story of more, of productivity and accumulation, of the myth of ‘progress’, of infinite economic growth - is unravelling at pace.

We’re in trouble. Many of us know it in our hearts.

Young people today are inheriting a collapsing world story.

So how are we supporting them in birthing new worlds?

We’re planning youth offerings in 2024 to do just that.

As part of this we’ve just hosted a gathering with 18-24 yrs to explore and prototype. Evva shares some reflections.

Upcoming Adventure: Community Solo - alone, together, in the darkness.

Our 5-week online winter enquiry to deepen into the mystery and embrace the fertile potential of winter is open for places - 25th January - 15th February .

Mark Sears gives the lowdown, what’s involved and why coming together at the start of the year, communing with life in the darkness, can help us find our light for the year ahead. Read the full post

Spaces available.

“To find a community that understands the need for solitude, silence and stillness, in these times, is precious and so very needed. I think we can all sense these deep whispers in our heart. Dan, Evva, and Mark very gently guide us down into soul. Into a place where we can meet each other in authenticity, care, and attention. It’s a slow space full of magic, from Evva’s calming meditations, to Mark’s beautiful storytelling, and the wondrous imagination and creativity of Dan. It’s a beautiful clearing in the woods, where you meet in the warmth of each other’s embrace and experiences, before heading off into the woods again, with confidence, that you are always heading in the right direction and trust that you are never walking all alone.”

David Hoogland - participant in Community Solo, December 22.

LISTEN

2023 for the podcast was a year of ebb and flow.

Life served up its usual complexity which made consistent recording challenging.

Nevertheless we continued to reach more listeners, in more places and our chunky back catalogue continues to surprise and delight.

The upside of exploring emerging futures is that all of our episodes have a long shelf life.

Our most listened to Episode this year on Spotify by a long way was EP 64 with Dougald Hine.

If I was to choose one episode that feels most helpful for the context we find ourselves in towards the end of this unravelling year, it would be this one.

I want to thank all the awesome guests and contributors this year for accepting the invitation to ramble with me.

Massive gratitude to everyone who listens, all those who send messages, dm's, comments, emails - they are fuel for us to keep going, so please keep your feedback coming.

To all those who share, rate and review thank you so much, you are helping more people find us each time you take those few minutes to leave your feedback or ping a link to a friend or share on a story.

We are living in divisive, destructive and fearful times - alternative platforms and channels that are asking different questions, exploring different ideas, more diverse ways of thinking, being and living that put life, love and care at the centre feels incredibly important to us.

So your support is essential. We are all crew in this way.

Top 3 Spaceship Earth Episodes for 2023

Available on all podcast platforms.

Our most listened episode this year - Dougald is co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project and Author of new book ‘At Work in the Ruins’ - the focus of this conversation.

In this book Dougald is opening up vital spaces for different types of questions, conversations and invitations to be considered and explored as we face into the unravelling mystery of these times - times of endings.

‘At Work in the Ruins’ is a gift for this moment for those who know intuitively in their heart and gut that many things from 'modernity' need to end.

Bayo is an author, writer, celebrated speaker, teacher, and self-styled trans-public intellectual - whose vocation goes beyond justice and speaking truth to power to opening up other spaces of power-with, and queering fond formulations and configurations of hope.

In this popular episode Bayo invites us to see the crises of our times with a post activist, post humanist lens, revealing cracks and bringing much-needed trouble to settled narratives.

Episode 76 is an audio artefact of our 3 month action learning adventure for story rebels - The Remix. It weaves contributions from all our guests, guides and participants, it is a memory bank for us,to remember the wisdom, connections and learning we received.

We hope you can receive a taster of The Remix wonder, we are currently planning The Remix 2024

If you like us are feeling overwhelm about the ongoing violence and suffering in Gaza and the wider impacts on people all over the world, we found this episode from our friends All That We Are most helpful.

Amisha in conversation with Ebyän Zanini, a writer, visual storyteller, and poetess

In their words the episode explores :: antidotes to oppressive systems :: ‘medicines’ of collective liberation :: redefining activism into forms of daily practice and art as activism :: harnessing guilt and shame as powerful emotions to guide us through transitions and birthing new worlds.

MERCH

I’m the worst at selling stuff. Awkward. But if you fancy gifting an Earthling hoodie or a Spaceship Earth Podcast Tee we have a few designs over on Teemill , they are made with about as much care as is currently possible for the planet and it all helps to support the ongoing podcast adventures.

BUY SOME MERCH

MOVE

Budakid - recorded live at ‘Into the Woods’ in Holland.

A deep pumping cosmic house mix which sounded marvellous played loud the other night.

For dancing and moving and arm raising.

For walks, runs, kitchens and things.