Welcome
Arrive at St Giles House.
Settle into your accommodation and explore the grounds.
Welcome drinks
Gather in the Library, in the main house.
Welcome from our host, Nick Ashley-Cooper. Introduction to the weekend from the Realisation team.
Dinner in the marquee in your small groups
Ceilidh in the marquee with The Ceilidh Tree.
Becoming More Real
Running with Ed Haddon
A light jog around the grounds.
Yoga with Rowan Cobelli
These gentle movement sessions will explore subtle motion. Suitable for all ages and capacities.
Wild swimming in the stream
Self-led. Ask for directions to the stream.
Breakfast
Passions of the Soul
Rowan Williams
Soul makes sense of our lives and surroundings and is linked to having a story to tell and a song to sing. Soul speaks to why stuff and objects aren’t, ultimately, satisfying and also why a good life is a play of giving and receiving. Without a sense of soul, the way we live will go astray, hence the negative connotations of “soulless”. Rowan Williams will help us develop an awareness of this fundamental aspect of ourselves and the world in which we live.
Break
Q & A with Rowan Williams
Discoveries
A variety of smaller pop-up events to dip into or attend in full. Time and locations available in the morning. Check the noticeboard and take part as you wish. Watch out for:
A step into time: a practice approach
Ivo Mensch
The Realisation Players pop-up
Discovering the maverick within: a coach explores
Ed Haddon
Into the parkland with the oaks
Benedict Pollard
Recovering the place of the soul in science
Mazviita Chirimuuta
A game of chess with a grand master
Jonathan Rowson
Poetry and perceiving other worlds also here
Mark Vernon
Collect a picnic lunch.
Workshops
A chance to explore becoming more real through a choice of practices, thinking, embodiments. Pick one for today. Some are repeated tomorrow.
Realising how you see
Vanessa Brassey
Drawing combined with some philosophy can untangle thoughts and show how the everyday act of seeing is laden with assumptions. Assuming no artistic experience, this workshop will explore how we can perceive the world through different lenses. This workshop also runs on Saturday.
Yoga as inquiry
Rowan Cobelli
What is it to be a self? Where do the boundaries between ourselves and others lie? How are we present in the world, to ourselves and others? Using movement as well as thought, this workshop will be an embodied exploration of the dimensions of our being.
Staying human in an age of AI
Esmé Partridge
AI is talked about as both a tremendous threat and holding great promise, so what wider narrative about ourselves can guide us through this fast evolving territory? An exploration of technology and the soul drawing on a variety of insights from the philosophy of Plato to the psychology of Iain McGilchrist.
Let’s Make Beautiful Music
The Realisation Players
Music is a key to the soul. Join Christopher Ash and Jonathan Ainscough as they guide you through instant song creation, collectively writing the Realisation theme tune. All voices welcome.
Winter is Here. And So Is Spring
Indra Adnan
To move from the polycrisis to flourishing futures requires radical change. Yet like winter moving into spring, it can also be a natural phenomenon. What can we leave behind and what can be adopted anew to put ourselves back on track?
More importantly, who do I need to be to achieve this act of metamorphosis? This workshop can be taken by itself or paired with a praxis workshop on Saturday.
Tea
Small Groups meet to reflect on the day.
Collapse
Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Experience a performance art piece created for public space. Dominique will respond to the nature and site of St Giles House. The action offers a space for contemplating themes of collapse and entropy through the medium of a human body.
Dinner
Fireside chat with Bettany Hughes
Well known from her sparkling TV programmes, tracking down the greatest figures and locations of the ancient world, as well as her richly textured books on wonders and philosophers, Bettany Hughes will join us to explore what she has learnt about being human, then and now.
Getting More Real
Running with Ed Haddon
A light jog around the grounds.
Yoga with Rowan Cobelli
These gentle movement sessions will explore subtle motion. Suitable for all ages and capacities.
Wild swimming in the stream
Self-led. Ask for directions to the stream.
Breakfast
Sea-ing through power: Trust, Text, and Theatre in the making of international law
Siva Thambisetty
The capacity of human beings to care for planet Earth at the speed and scale required will, in part, depend upon the rules that govern conduct. In March 2023, member states of the UN agreed the text of a new Treaty to govern biodiversity in the oceans beyond national jurisdiction – widely regarded as an important success story for multilateralism at a time when faith in institutions is waning. Few have the privilege of bearing witness to the process of international law-making and planetary governance when the stakes are so high, and there is much to learn from them about what we might place our hopes in. Siva Thambisetty acted as an Advisor to the Chair of 134 developing countries; as a participant in complex negotiations lasting several years she will share the impact the process had on her. She will give testimony to the human dynamics– trust, text and theatre – in which global agreements can be reached.
Break
Choose one breakout session:
“Nothing is Agreed Until Everything is Agreed’ – Siva Thambisetty
Siva Thambisetty will facilitate a playful dive into process to give participants direct experience of negotiation where compromise, cooperation and mixed motives can play a role in helping solve global problems playing out in diverse contexts, including the Pandemic Treaty and The Convention on Biological Diversity.
Love for Nature and the legal imagination: What could Rights of Nature look like in the UK? – Paul Powlesland
Torn between a growing love for Nature and practising as a lawyer in a system that was self-evidently destroying the natural world, Paul Powlesland discovered the growing worldwide Rights of Nature movement, and joined with other lawyers, activists and nature lovers to find creative ways to bring it about here, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore what Rights of Nature are, what they could look in the UK and how we might be able to make them a reality.
The Flip, the Formation and the Fun – Jonathan Rowson
Three big changes the world needs, and why they need each other. This workshop will be a short talk followed by a praxis of collective inquiry into the future. The contention is that the world’s challenges are so great that we need a major spiritual shift in our relationship to what is real (the flip), a major educational shift that changes our relationship to what is good (the formation) and a major political and economic shift to change our underlying societal purpose (the fun). These changes are mutually reinforcing and need to be worked on together. The session can be seen as a playful but bold attempt to inform the design of planetary governance.
Discoveries
A variety of smaller pop-up events to dip into or attend in full. Time and locations available in the morning. Check the noticeboard and take part as you wish. Watch out for:
Recovering the place of the soul in science
Mazviita Chirimuuta
A step into time: a practice approach
Ivo Mensch
Discovering the maverick within: a coach explores
Ed Haddon
The role of virtues in being fully alive
Elizabeth Oldfield
Into the parkland with the oaks
Benedict Pollard
Reflecting on life at St Giles House
Nick Shaftesbury
Collect a picnic lunch.
Workshops
A chance to explore getting more real through a choice of practices, thinking, embodiments.
Making a difference in a fast changing world
Nat Wei
How can society be transformed peacefully? What kind of power can be exercised more purposefully? Where might inspire servant leaders? Join a social and tech entrepreneur, and member of the House of Lords, to pursue these questions and more.
Realising how you see
Vanessa Brassey
Drawing combined with some philosophy can untangle thoughts and show how the everyday act of seeing is laden with assumptions. Assuming no artistic experience, this workshop will explore how we can perceive the world through different lenses. This workshop also runs on Friday.
Revealing the hidden
Rowan Cobelli
How can we use activations and triggers in the body, as invitations to integrate more of ourselves into ourselves? Are the things we fight for and defend, mainly part of our own inner processes? We explore shadow, projection, and the wisdom and limitations of repression, within the path of love and self-honesty.
Realising Spring
Indra Adnan, Pippa Evans & Susan Harrison
Pippa and Susan will use improvisation to spark us all back to life, whilst in dialogue with Indra. The basic mantra of improvisation – Who are you? Where are you? What are you doing? – will resonate as we explore the praxis of “Yes And”. A defibrillator of a workshop.
The Antidebate
Michael Bready & Jonathan Rowson
Note: This workshop will start at 1.30pm and last 3 hours
In a time of great challenges, with new possibilities beckoning, there is a pressing need to make sense of what is happening and how to respond. And yet just when we need collective wisdom, our public discourse is in trouble. The Antidebate, developed by Perspectiva, is a new mode of participatory inquiry, that seeks to bring forth fresh insights from multiple perspectives into dynamic relationship.
Tea
Small Groups meet to reflect on the day.
Dressed in Water
Dominique Savitri Bonarje
A performance piece to contemplate themes of renewal and energy. The landscape of the dance will integrate themes of water as a source of life, copper as the metal of the heart chakra, the spiritual symbolism of the lotus flower, and the figure of the Reclining Buddha.
Dinner.
Music Improvisation followed by Dance Party in the Bat Cave.
What Have We Realised?
Running with Ed Haddon
A light jog around the grounds.
Yoga with Rowan Cobelli
These gentle movement sessions will explore subtle motion. Suitable for all ages and capacities.
Wild swimming in the stream
Self-led. Ask for directions to the stream.
Breakfast
Pack up rooms and tents.
Open Space
This has been a rich weekend of many threads. As we come to the end of our time together, what conversations do you want to have? We will take on the roles of hosts, participants, witnesses and wanderers, as you create our agenda for the next 90 minutes.
Meet in Small Groups
Realisation Chorus & Ending Ceremony
Followed by Lunch (optional) and Departure from St Giles