Songs of Return
With Chris Salisbury, Angharad Wynne, Sam Lee & Rachel Fleming
This is a ceremonial practice of three parts.
Part I: We will gather as a circle of dreamers online to celebrate our returning and leaving species in music, poetry and discussion. At this first meeting we will set our dreaming task to track the threads of the others than human in our lives, in our memories and our places and to listen very intentionally and particularly for their songs of return.
Part II: Together we will cross the threshold into a different type of listening to the world, through ceremony and vigil, through deep listening and through being on our own and with our circle on the land. This can either be done together residentially in the UK at a beautiful camping place on the banks of the River Dart in South West England, or you can do this in your own place with instruction on how to prepare and gather.
Part III: We will re-gather online to share our experiences, our songs of return and to gift what we have received back to the world.
Chris Salisbury
Chris Salisbury founded WildWise in 1999 after many years working as an education officer for Devon Wildlife Trust. With a background in the theatre, training in therapy, and a career in environmental education, he uses every creative means at his disposal to encourage people to enjoy and value the natural world. Chris directs the acclaimed Call of the Wild Foundation program for educators-in-training as well as Where the Wild Things Are, a rewilding adventure based at Embercombe in Devon. He is also a professional storyteller (aka ‘Spindle Wayfarer’) and is the co-founder and artistic director for the Westcountry and Oxford Storytelling Festivals. His recent books include Wild Nights Out: The Magic of Exploring the Outdoors at Night (foreword: Chris Packham) and Folk Tales of the Night: Stories for Campfires, Bedtime and Nocturnal Adventures.
Angharad Wynne
Angharad teaches from the old Brythonic tradition of the British Isles, the spirit ways of the ancestors of this land, and how we can recover and remember them to help us restore balance in ourselves and with the world around us.
Sam Lee
Sam Lee is a Mercury Prize nominated folk singer, conservationist, song collector, award winning promoter, broadcaster and activist. He plays a unique role in the British music scene. A highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated. Sam’s helped develop its ecosystem inviting in a new listenership interrogating what the messages in these old songs hold for us today Read more about Sam here https://samleesong.co.uk/
Rachel Fleming
Rachel Fleming has worked with animist education for many years, designing and delivering educational programmes for Schumacher College, University of Wales Trinity St Davids and Embercombe, with a focus on the meeting place between human, spirit and nature, between ‘ecology’ and ‘spirituality’. She is co-founder and curator of the Contemporary Animism programmes and loves to convene conversations that explore the deepest depths of why we are here, the ways we find belonging to the world and how to be in service to soul. She is committed to scholarship, word magic, creative imagination and the medicine of circles.
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Songs of Return
May 27, 2025 - July 24, 2025
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Venue: Online