The Rainmaker
Art, Animism and Restorative Practice
November 2025 – January 2026
Course Structure & Fees
Online Course
Sunday 2 November – FREE OPENING TALK: Of Those Who Call The Rain (4pm UK or 6pm SA)
Followed by 8 Online Sessions – for the Rainmaker Circle only
(Sundays, 4pm UK/6pm SA – 6.30pm UK/8.30pm SA)
16 November 2025 – session 1
23 November 2025 – session 2
30 November 2025 – session 3
7 December 2025 – session 4
14 December 2025 – session 5
21 December 2025 – session 6
11 January 2026 – session 7
18 January 202 – session 8
Fees
Online Place: £575
We have a number of lower cost places set aside for people from South Africa. To apply for a lower cost place please fill in the application form.
An Invitation
We invite you to join our online circle as together we explore the cultivation of deep connection with the natural world through the combination of ancient ritual and the practice of making.
Land artist Hanien Conradie and ritualist Colin Campbell will be guiding a process for artists and non-artists that looks at how we can return art and making to its place as a healing and restorative practice for the land, and how artists and healers can once again be united within the same person to serve their community.
In African traditional practice, the Rainmaker works on behalf of their village to restore balance and harmony by making beauty, repairing damage and offering gifts at the rivers and springs in gratitude for the rain. By painting tree stumps with ochre, by replanting where the earth is exposed, by making exquisite arrangements of the natural materials of place, the clouds themselves cannot help but be allured to release their waters from the sky.
During our time together we will be cultivating this deep and subtle attunement that allows us to work with the creative forces and flows of nature. We will be awakening the Rainmaker within, and we will step together, in a circle across the world, into the potent, liminal space of spirit, ancestors and nature herself, as we hone our practice of artist and healer for the benefit of the human and other-than-human communities we serve.
Says Hanien:
“Early in my practice as an earth-artist I learnt that finding intimate relationship with the natural world is one of the key aspects of healing our contemporary world. One of the most powerful ways to create a sustainable future for humanity on our Earth is if we could restore our internal integrated conception of ourselves as part of a larger community of beings, all belonging to the same planet. And so, when we say community, we mean humans and all other-than-human beings.
I soon discovered that cultivating deep connection within community is not that simple and that it requires an exploration of alternative ways of relating to myself, to others and to the natural world.
When we met, Colin had a desire to integrate his artist-self into his healing practice and I had a longing to tap back into my spiritual healer-self and give her a place in my creative practice. Over the years we have explored and discovered ways of cultivating deep connection with the natural world by combining our knowledge of ancient ritual and the practice of making. Located within this place of deep relationship between healer and artist, we bring you our offering called The Rainmaker. “
We will be learning how to prepare ourselves for greater connection and attunement through ancient ritual practices. We will be connecting deeply to the places that are sacred to us through ephemeral creative interactions. Ultimately we will be learning how to cultivate an authentic and unique expression of ourselves in the world.
The process will take you through simple and powerful rituals and practices that will gently and over time teach you how to cultivate your own nature-based form of expression and healing.
Our time together will include:
- Ceremonial and ritual practice
- Talk: of those who call the rain
- Land-based ephemeral art and making
- The response of nature
- Talk: the voice of water
- Talk: prayers from the desert
- Silent pilgrimage
- Talk: the meditative mark, repetition as chant
- Making beauty to heal
- Making the invisible visible
- Summoning the spirit of creative flow
- Authentic way, meaning & making
Our sessions together will include ritual, teaching, discussion and group sharing. There will be tasks set each week for you to work with your own making in your own places, the amount of time spent on these being at your own discretion.
Your Guides
The lead guides of this apprenticeship are Hanien Conradie, Colin Campbell and 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.
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.