The Rainmaker
Art, Animism and Restorative Practice
Siama, Gaberone, Botswana
With Hanien Conradie, Colin Campbell & Rachel Fleming
Course Structure & Fees
A residential retreat in Siama, Gaborone, Botswana
Dates: 9 – 19 May 2025
- Arrival: 6pm May 9th
- Departure: 2:30pm May 19th
Please note that this retreat is one of three possible Rainmaker events in different locations. Please see other locations here:
Every rain-making circle on every piece of land will be very different and create healing and balance for those present and for the place itself. Each is a stand-alone event but if you would like to attend more than one, please contact us to discuss a multiple retreat discount.
Structure
Attendance on each retreat also includes the following:
- One online Rainmaker’s Gathering, October 2025
- One online group mentoring session following the retreat
- 50% off online Art & Animism Masterclasses in 2024, details to be announced soon
Location
This retreat will take place in Siama, the traditional Tswana ancestral home of Colin and Niall Campbell, just outside Gaberone in Botswana. It is a wonderful opportunity to study the art of the Rainmaker on the land within which this tradition was created.
The closest airport is Gaborone, Sir Seretse Khama International Airport.
We will organise a shuttle from the airport to Siama (45 mins) on the afternooon of May 9th and return shuttle on the afternoon of May 19th.
Fees
£1875 or R28500 for African residents
These fees include food, accommodation, teaching and transfers. They do not include flights. Spaces are limited to a very small group so please book swiftly if you would like to come.
We have a small number of bursary places allocated particularly for those in Africa and others who are not able to cover this fee. To apply for a bursary please fill in the application form.
An Invitation
The Rainmaker is the one who works with hidden forces and flows of nature to restore balance and harmony into the world. Through making beauty, through repair of damage on the earth, through subtle attunement, deep listening, careful allurement and humble propitiation, the important work of co-creating, healing and making new is done.
In African traditions, the Rainmaker would send people onto the land to create beauty, to paint tree stumps with ochre, to replant where the earth was exposed, to make offerings at the rivers and springs in gratitude for the rain. By making art in this way, even in damaged places, the earth would become so beautiful that the clouds could not help but be charmed and release their waters from the sky returning balance and healing to the land.
In this time of transformation and potential, a time when we need to repair damage, make beauty and allure the powers that bring the restoring rain, we invite you to summon the Rainmaker within. We invite you to step beyond the known, into the liminal spaces of spirit, ancestors and the creative force of nature herself, to make art, to create ephemeral installations, to craft words of magic and beauty to bring down the “rain”.
This is a retreat for artists of all kinds, for those who wish to make beauty on the earth – with no experience required. We will be exploring art-making as a way of restoring balance and creating beauty in order to call for harmony and healing. It will take place within an overall container of ritual and ceremony that will help us make ourselves more permeable to the place and the forces and flows that run through it.
What to Expect
During our time together we will be working alone and together to create ephemeral art, within an overall container of ritual and ceremony. Our process is collaborative and emergent, created in relationship with the places within which we work.
Is this for you?
This is a deep exploration and place-based retreat for art and beauty making for all artists regardless of your chosen medium or your level of experience. It is for those who wish to deepen into a conversation with the unseen forces of nature and creativity, and explore how those are expressed through making beauty, with the overall intention of restoration and healing.
We welcome those who have allured the rain with us before and those who are joining for the first time. Every rain-making circle on every piece of land will be very different and create healing and balance for those present and for the place itself.
“All the ingredients were perfectly combined for this immersive, creative and animistic magical experience.
I appreciated the balance of talks, time working together; time working alone; the pilgrimage. The inputs from Colin, Hanien and Rachel complimented each other really well being rich and varied.”
“It was wonderful, the co-creation, the unfolding between Colin and Hanien. The trust in the participants and what we were able and willing to share. So intimate, moving. The strong land that held us, so open to being with us, and helping us to listen and be supported by the web of life, The Earth and all her souls in her layers over time and space.“
The Venue
“Siama is a small holding about 10 kilometres outside of Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, where Colin grew up. The old Victorian homestead is surrounded by a combination of cultivated garden and indigenous bushveld. About a 10 minute walk from the house, within the bushveld, Colin and his brother Niall built a traditional African Lodge for training their students and for ceremonial events. Although much urban development has taken place around the farm (and it is now far from the uninterrupted wilderness it once was) it still is home to a myriad of wild birds, reptiles and some Vervet monkeys. We are excited about receiving you here where we will be able to practice African ritual with Colin on his home soil, visit the local villages and commune with the major sacred sites within a short drive from the farm.” Hanien
Your Guides
The lead guides of this apprenticeship are Hanien Conradie and Colin Campbell with space holding by Rachel Fleming.
Hanien is an earth artist known for her diverse creative practice centered around ‘sense of place’ and ‘belonging’. Her practices include landscape paintings in natural pigments, ritualistic performances and ceremony, meditative pieces in natural pigments and installations in organic matter; all in relation to special places she knows intimately.
Hanien is an active contributor to interdisciplinary symposiums, online organizations and artists’ residencies where ecological research is conducted through creative practice. She has a Master’s degree in Fine Art (with specialization in painting and ecology), holds a degree in Architecture and she is a teacher who has taught at the University of Cape Town’s art school, Michaelis, and at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She has participated in numerous ecological exhibitions located in Southern Africa, Europe and the USA. In addition, Hanien runs private workshops focused on the discovery of new ways of relating to natural places, to other human beings and to herself through creative practice.
For more about Hanien please visit www.hanienconradie.com
Colin works with the wisdom traditions of South Africa, specifically those that are based on our relationships with the ancestors and spirits of nature. He looks at where these ancient indigenous practices collide and coalesce with the knowledge and belief systems of the west.
One of the most unique and precious treasures Colin Campbell bears is that he is one of the few who were accepted, taught and initiated by some of the wisest pre-industrial African knowledge carriers who lived in Southern Africa. Sadly, due to the decline of this indigenous culture and its associated natural habitats, Colin and his younger brother Niall, are now amongst the rarest-known custodians of ancient sacred African knowledge systems.
He now works around the world as a diviner, teacher and public speaker, developing forms through which to bring this knowledge to the modern world.
Find out more about Colin on https://colincampbell.co.za/
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.