Tag: Spaces

Eternal Forest Sanctuary: Vision to Living Commitment

Artist Evgenia Emets shares the development of her Eternal Forest sanctuary vision into its latest phase as the Seed of Eternal Forest, with opportunities for artists, scientists and thinkers globally to become a movement and mutually supportive network.

2,100 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes

ClimateCultures editor Mark Goldthorpe has followed Eternal Forest since 2019 and, for this post, shared questions with Evgenia as she was drafting it.

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“Eternal Forest is a living commitment that reminds us across generations: we are nature, and by regenerating forest, we regenerate ourselves.”

Looking back at your decision to start Eternal Forest, what was your inspiration for this, and what did you set out to achieve? How do you feel about that looking back now?

My original inspiration to start Eternal Forest came from witnessing the deep disconnect our culture has created between forests and people. I began Eternal Forest in 2018, six months after moving from the UK to Portugal, and shortly after witnessing the aftermath of devastating fires that destroyed large areas of land here.

These were not just forest fires. They were the result of pervasive monocultures, especially eucalyptus plantations, which have profoundly altered the landscape, increased its vulnerability and reduced its resilience. My initial question was to explore how we might reconnect humans and forests, not only through art, but also through remembering and reactivating our sacred relationship with forests.

Much of my inspiration came from seeing that for millennia, Indigenous and traditional communities across the world have lived in deep reciprocity with their natural environments, holding forests as spiritually significant and relational beings. The understanding that our material and immaterial cultures come directly from forests became a foundation for my work.

Showing artist Evgenia Emets at forest cave. Photograph by Marco Piano, Eternal Forest, 2025
Photograph: Marco Piano, Eternal Forest © 2025

Eternal Forest Sanctuary

In the early years, I created the vision for an Eternal Forest Sanctuary — a physical space (reforested or restored and protected) focused on biodiversity and natural habitats, created through art with communities as long-term stewards of this forest. While my experience and practice are rooted in Portugal, where I live, I see the intentional creation of forest spaces, which we can call sanctuaries, as necessary and timely.

Looking back now, I can say that dedicating my time to Eternal Forest has opened many possibilities in my artistic practice. It revealed new paths of knowledge about forests, showed new ways of learning and being with this wonderful and complex organism. It also opened new relationships with people and organisations: scientists, artists, researchers, and regenerators of many kinds. And artistically it offered me a completely different medium — I started exploring how forest itself can be a methodology and what I could do differently with my art if forest were my studio, my medium, my collaborator and my gallery.

As the project evolved, and as I evolved with it, my perspective also shifted. In the beginning, my focus was more on what was missing and where the gaps were. Gradually, this changed into uncovering and witnessing the beautiful possibilities that already exist in our relationship with forests around the world. Whether we encounter healthy forests or forests in need of restoration, there is always a way to experience joy, to lean into the deep unlearning and receive wisdom directly from the land and its beings.

“We are forest, and we are not separate from it” — this core perspective led me to explore subjects such as forest sentience, plant intelligence, finding ways to communicate with nature and being led by the land while working on projects.

Embodying deep connection

What have you learned so far that was maybe a surprise? Or what have others brought to the project?

One of the most surprising experiences for me last year was realising how deeply we are connected to the land through our bodies, our psyche, our imagination, and our emotions. Intellectually, this is something we already understand, or at least we think we do. But it was only through working closely with the land, especially while walking with the land and designing Eternal Forest in Faia Brava, that this understanding became fully embodied.

Showing Evgenia Emets, Eternal Forest. Photograph by Marco Piano, Eternal Forest, 2025
Photograph: Marco Piano, Eternal Forest © 2025

I began to sense how intrinsically interconnected we are, almost like entangled bodies that, once they have encountered each other, remain in communication. What happens to the land happens to us, and what happens to us also affects the land. When we work with land that has been disrespected or shaped by extractive behaviours, we feel that impact in our own bodies and inner landscapes.

The healing that takes place through restoration and through re-revealing the land’s beauty is mirrored by a healing within our own psyche and physical being. The experience of pain, the witnessing of beauty, the awe of natural phenomena, the sensual moments of being in close touch with the beings of the land, the spiritual closeness of encountering a rare animal — all that goes both ways, it’s a constant conversation. And then how all of that can be woven into practice, into artwork, linked back into the loop of co-regulating and co-evolving.

I am still exploring creative ways to tune more deeply into this field, and to find forms of expression that allow me to transform and alchemise these experiences and share them with others by creating sanctuaries, trails, poetry, and landmarks.

The Seed of Eternal Forest

What is the latest phase of work? What comes next?

One of the latest phases of my work is the creation of the Seed of Eternal Forest in Faia Brava in Portugal. The Seed represents a beginning. It is usually a small-scale intervention that initiates a much longer process of an Eternal Forest Sanctuary on a bigger size land.

In this case, we are working with a conservation organisation in Portugal called Faia Brava, on a very beautiful site along the wild and ancient Côa River, a UNESCO heritage site, with 30,000-year-old engravings of wild animals dotted around the river valley from the hunter-gatherer era. It is such an inspiration for any artist to be connecting with this ancient land. We are working in a context of ageing and declining rural populations, severe deforestation and land degradation, and extremely low rainfall, with conditions that increasingly resemble a semi-desert landscape.

Showing The Eternal Forest 'Seed' image on the ground. Aerial photography by Marco Piano, Eternal Forest, 2025
Photograph: Marco Piano, Eternal Forest © 2025

The first intervention we created is a 30-metre-diameter Seed. This is a symbolic moment that emerges from working closely with the land: observing it, listening to it, and understanding the ecosystem, including which species might arrive and which might remain over time. Our next phase is to go through the process of developing an artistic regenerative design for forest and ecosystem restoration across a much larger area of 10ha, a process that will unfold over many years.

When I approach design, I ask myself: What is the experience people will have when they visit this place? What is the experience of the local community and their relationship to the land? What kinds of experiences can other artists have here, and how might they contribute to the evolution of Eternal Forest and Faia Brava? Another important question is how younger generations will interact with this place, and how they might become stewards and guardians not only of this specific area, but of the wider surrounding landscape, which requires long-term care and attention.

The idea for the design of the Seed in Faia Brava is a symbolic labyrinth, an infinite loop tracing a four-petal meandering path. It takes you through several turns that mirror the inner journey of the pilgrim, the psyche of the land, and the land’s own long story.

The Seed holds trees, bushes and plants chosen for their white blossom, but also being native plants from this area. The idea is that as you visit this Eternal Forest in any season, the Seed always presents itself in colour — a variation of white, where every plant is medicine for the land, animals, and each other. Everything in the Seed is designed to attract biodiversity — pollinators, wildlife — and to create a deep experiential space for humans.

I am further developing designs and possible interventions for different locations. At this point, I am increasingly interested in creating concrete, physical projects that are co-created in collaboration with land and communities, rather than focusing solely on visual artworks.

What follows in the coming months is the formalisation of this work through the organisation Eternal Forest, which was registered in December 2025. Over the past year, and continuing into this year, much of the focus has been on developing projects and creating fundable proposals together with communities, landowners, and land stewards.

What is your vision for Nature Connectedness?

When we speak about nature connectedness, I feel it is important to acknowledge that the term itself already implies separation. To say that we need to ‘connect with nature’ suggests that nature is something outside of ourselves. In reality, we are not separate from nature, but we are living the great illusion, as we have disconnected ourselves from the understanding that we are part of it.

We have moved very far away from seeing ourselves as embedded within natural systems. For me, this is why creating physical spaces is so important. These spaces allow us to create conditions where we can return to harmony with a place, learn directly through practice with the land, and be in direct, embodied relationship with a specific landscape over long cycles of time. Only then we can truly embed ourselves into the land, just like an animal does — find out own paths, find our own rhythm, find our own sacred place, find our own home within the land again.

Inviting all: artists, scientists, thinkers

Is there a way for other ClimateCultures members to reflect on this work? Maybe to get involved?

There are several ways for ClimateCultures members, artists, to reflect on the work and to get involved.

First of all, Eternal Forest is held together by a set of questions that I hold personally and that we also hold collectively as an organisation. This is the first year that Eternal Forest is formally operating as an organisation, and while we are building this new structure, we are also opening the space for reflection and dialogue around these questions.

We are inviting artists, scientists, and thinkers to imagine together with us how Eternal Forest can become a movement and a mutually supportive network. How can artists anywhere in the world catalyse and create their own Eternal Forest with their local communities? And how can the Eternal Forest ‘mother tree’ organisation support them over the long term?

Showing Evgenia Emets planting Eternal Forest. Photograph by Marco Piano, Eternal Forest, 2025
Photograph: Marco Piano, Eternal Forest © 2025

This year in September, we will host an Eternal Forest camp at The Gathering in Portugal, a gathering for regenerative culture. I warmly invite everyone to join. We will release invitations in March, and alongside this, we will be running a series of online conversations. These will be spaces to reflect, contribute, and connect both artistically and philosophically with the community.

In the meantime, people can follow the project by subscribing to our Substack or joining our Telegram channel.

As we establish our first four sanctuaries, we will start opening art residencies.

The success of Eternal Forest depends on people around the world who raise their hand and say, “We have land, with or without forest, that needs protection, and we feel the local community is ready to engage. We want to create a legacy that lasts.”

We are open to collaborating with artists, art foundations, curators, landowners, public institutions, conservation organisations, rewilding initiatives, and tree-planting projects. So I invite everyone who resonates with this work to follow the project, connect with us online for now, and, over time, to become part of this co-creation journey.

Find more

Discover more at Eternal Forest — which includes the short film below on Eternal Forest in Faia Brava 2025 and other videos and art — and on the project’s Substack and Telegram channel.

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From 2026, ClimateCultures is inviting members to say a sentence or two about how they use AI in their work and in their posts for us. We will be exploring this in future posts here and at our ClimateCultures & more Substack.

Evgenia — “I use AI to transcode my speech because the way I write a lot of the time is I speak (sometimes walking in the land!). Then I edit my text. Once in a while, I use AI selectively for research — more technical and comparative. All the stories, images and illustrations are original.”

Evgenia Emets
Evgenia Emets
An artist intersecting land-art, sound and visual poetry through experiences, forests, artist books, calligraphy, performance, objects and community engagement, and whose 'Eternal Forest' integrates ecological thinking.
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A Strange Country

Psychotherapist Susan Holliday discovers an intricate world of imaginal possibility (a strange country) in an overlooked detail of a familiar landscape. Turning away from global events for a moment reminds us that change often starts with something small.

2,060 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes

It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time, or the traveller who enters a strange country.1

– Bill Brandt, photographer (Camera in London)

I wake before dawn to the sound of a robin’s song piercing the morning chill. It takes me less than an hour to dress and make my way to the wrought iron gates which mark the entrance to Richmond Park. A heavy dew rests on the still shadowed grass, seeming almost to hover above it like an overnight spell. All around, the bracken is rusting into its autumn glory. I make my way up a gentle slope through a stand of birch, beech and oak trees to reach the crest of the park. Here the sun has just tipped over the horizon and cast every leaf, blade and branch into fine gold. A huddle of deer nuzzle the grass, making the most of the quiet before the weekend cyclists arrive. I must have walked in this park a thousand times and still it takes my breath away.

The park is always a ‘strange country’ to me, a correlation of ever-changing elements, light, season and subjectivity. At first I just see what I have seen before, but with every step my preconceptions fall to the floor. Unclad, my eyes begin to see beyond recognition. What I’ve come to realise, over many encounters with the park, is that as my perception deepens, it moves from the general and the big, to the particular and the small. On this occasion it shifts from the broadbrush palette of grass, tree and sky, to the particular curve of a branch; the tritone beech leaves rustling their blessings over the waking park; and the oceanic wave structure of ageing bark.

Walking for days at a time, nature writer Nan Shepherd notices how her perception deepens gradually, so:

The eye sees what it didn’t see before, or sees in a new way what it has already seen.
So the ear, the other senses.2

This strikes me as a beautiful description of how we come to see more keenly. The word ‘gradual’ refers to something coming into fullness over time (from Latin gradus, meaning ‘step’). Gradually, we see what we ‘didn’t see before’. We begin to see ‘in a new way’.

So it is only on my way back down the slope, as I re-enter the shadows, that I notice the dazzling spiders’ webs which jewel the bracken. They were there all along. I passed them on my way up. I just didn’t have eyes keen enough to see them. Crouching down now, to take a closer look, I see a lattice of tiny pearls, strung together with impossible intricacy. To me, their beauty stems in part from their near perfection (the essential word here being ‘near’). Each little rectangle of negative space is uneven, each one an incomparable structure, building through repetition into something greater than the sum of its parts. These lines have not been measured or calculated. They have been drawn through countless micro movements of the spider’s body.

A strange country. Showing: Jewelled spider's web. Photograph by Susan Holliday 2025
Jewelled spider’s web. Photograph: Susan Holliday © 2025

A strange country: the  gift of intricate hinterlands

Each web is a ‘strange country’ all by itself. The longer I look, the more I feel drawn into this other world. I imagine any one of these webs would be fine enough to grace a noblewoman’s robes in a Tudor court. I find myself wondering what it might be like to shrink down in size, to place my feet on its little ladders, or to hold one of the pearls in my hand. Children quite naturally see this way. The most unremarkable detail becomes an opening onto an intricate hinterland. Through their imagination and the suspension of preconception, these details become enormous. We have only to think of the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, or the wardrobe in C.S Lewis’ Narnia adventures to remember the power of this portal vision.

And this brings me to the heart of the matter. For as adults we tend to regard the ‘small’ as lesser, as marginal and of little consequence. This has never been more so than at a time when everything is valued according to quantity and scale. The small can so easily be dismissed as a mere trifle, rather than valued as a coherent whole with its own integrity and particularity.

Indigenous peoples, artists, philosophers and mystics have long held a different view, in which every speck of the whole reveals universal patterns and principles. Fourteenth-century mystic, Julian of Norwich, encapsulated the essential paradox of the ‘great little thing’ in one of her revelations:

He showed me a little thing the size of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind’s eye and I thought, ‘What can this be?’

 And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made’.3

Four hundred years later, William Blake encouraged us to “see a world in a grain of sand”.4 Romantic fancy, some might say. In defence of the small, I could stray into the ways in which quantum mechanics and fractal geometry are opening up our contemporary understanding of the complexity and correspondence of micro and macro dimensions of our world; the profound influence of the minute. But I want to stay with my own experience, to say something about why I believe we need to turn our attention away from the titanic battles, the larger-than-life characters, the numbers, trends and averages, and lean towards the small, the slight and the fleeting.

They say ‘the devil is in the detail’, but maybe the sacred is there too. I don’t mean this in any religious sense, but in the context of everyday experience. We live in an age of distraction and consumption fuelled by fear of boredom and emptiness. As a psychotherapist, this word ‘boredom’ has intrigued me for years. It comes up a lot, either in the sense that life has become ‘boring’, or that a person fears they will be perceived as ‘boring’. It seems to me that ‘boring’ is the state we arrive at when we believe there is ‘nothing much to see here’, or perhaps ‘nothing new’. Boring is the ‘same-old-same-old’. It feasts on abstractions and averages, on preconceptions and generalisations.

‘Boring’ signals I have lost faith that within me, or in front of me, there could be more than meets the eye. More to be discovered. More strangeness. Perhaps I believe that I’ve seen all there is to be seen, or I’ve seen it all before. So I stop looking, or I start looking elsewhere. This is a bit like looking down from an airplane window on an outstretched continent, and believing it to be boring, simply because at this height (and at this speed) I can’t see the incomparable particularity, the infinitely varied and ever-changing detail of its topography. At close quarters, what I thought was entirely self-evident reveals itself to be a ‘strange country’, full of surprises and unplumbed depths. 

Showing: Bark detail. Photograph by Susan Holliday, 2025
Bark detail. Photograph: Susan Holliday © 2025

Each of us contains an inner landscape. A place, like the park, we may have visited many times. Perhaps we think we have seen it all. Until one day, if we are really paying attention, we notice a slight shift, a little anomaly, an overlooked detail ‘for the first time’. Virginia Woolf suggests these glimpses are “little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark”.5 How often we overlook or dismiss these curious intimations. Un-midwifed by our beholding, the inkling moment is stillborn. Yet the moment we start to notice the details of our experience, life no longer seems so boring, so barren.

Just imagine how this simple practice of attending to little daily miracles could change our relationship to each other and to the whole. When every detail (like the jewelled spider’s web) opens a door onto a world of imagination and possibility, life feels rich and vital. Perhaps then we would no longer need to consume our way out of emptiness.

Finding my niche

We differentiate ourselves through our particularity. It is through paying attention to the subtle qualities and slight nuances of character that we start to appreciate we are not just a number, a statistic or a type. Each of us is one of a kind. There is only one of us in all time.

In his 2021 book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, Bill Plotkin articulates the principle that each of us occupies a distinct ‘ecological niche’:

Soul, for me, is an ecological concept, not a psychological one nor a spiritual or religious one. Specifically, by Soul I mean a person or thing’s unique ecological niche in the Earth community.6

Hauled into the trawler nets of socio-economic grouping, diagnostic typologies, or target markets, it can feel increasingly challenging to distinguish our authentic singularity, the significance of our particular ecological niche.

Could it be that the current polarisation of society into crude groupings of ideology and identity originates in a deep wound, which is the experience of not mattering in our smallness. If everything around me reinforces the narrative that what I imagine, feel, think and long for is of little importance ‘in the grand scheme of things’; if what I choose to do with my life doesn’t really matter ‘in the end’, then I will find my sense of mattering through identifying with something larger. Through this amalgamation, I lose sight of the details which define my singular significance.

The tragedy is that this obscuring of the little things which make me uniquely ‘me’ robs the wider whole of my particular contribution. Collectively, this self-effacement quickens the degeneration of the planet.

If I am to find my unique ecological niche in the Earth community, I will need to give some time to wandering about the inner ‘park’ of my life, until my eye sees what it didn’t see before, or sees in a new way what it has already seen. Sensing my responsibility to my own particularity, I no longer look to ‘kill time’ (with distraction and consumption), but to realise my life ‘through time’ in all its richness and distinction.

Perhaps the Earth can teach us

Absorbed in the intricacy of the little spider’s web, my eye flickers between the lines and the spaces between them, the negative shapes. I start thinking how the whole structure of the web depends on these little spaces. I begin to breathe more deeply, as though taking in this airy structure as a blueprint for my own existence. Like most of us, my life is pretty crammed, packed with activity, crowded with ideas, obligations and intentions. Loaded with stuff. Drawn into the ‘strange country’ of the little web, I begin to sense what it might be like to live a more spacious life.   

It occurs to me then, perhaps the Earth can teach us. Perhaps the small, the slight and the fleeting, in all their intimate beauty and particular significance, can show us other ways of living. To heed this minute and infinite intelligence, we may need to create little gaps in our lives, tiny spaces. Change starts with something very small. A deep breath, perhaps.

Walking on down the slope, I feel a little lighter.

Susan’s references

  1. Bill Brandt, Camera in London (Focal, 1948)
  2. Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Canongate Books, 2011)
  3. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love (Penguin Classics, 1998)
  4. William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, A Choice of Blake’s Verse (Faber and Faber, 1970)
  5. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (The Hogarth Press, 1927)
  6. Bill Plotkin, The Journey of Soul Initiation (New World Library, 2021)

Find more

Susan Holliday is a psychotherapist and photographer and you can find more of her writing at her website.  

Susan’s book Hidden Wonders of the Human Heart was published by Matador in 2021. You can read James Murray-White‘s review for ClimateCultures, Seeing Nature’s Wonders in the Human Heart.

Susan Holliday

Susan Holliday

A psychotherapist and writer committed to the rewilding of human nature, exploring the correlation between despoiling our natural world and the desolation of the human spirit ...
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Heritage, Art and Community Collaboration

Artist Julien Masson shares a recent community collaboration with artists, residents and businesses, which uses recycled garden furniture, instruments and miscellaneous timber found locally to create public art that reflects a mix of cultures and transform public spaces.

900 words: estimated reading time = 3.5 minutes

This series of bespoke artworks — a site-specific mural community collaboration, created in partnership with a cafe, a group of artists and local residents — creates a prominent terrace space in Southampton’s city centre. Our design and construction process is rooted in sustainability and inclusivity.

I worked on this as part of a core team, including fellow artist David McDiarmid, and in partnership with Mettricks café, to transform what was a blank canvas. Our aim was to turn a highly visible but rather bland area into a dynamic and creative focal point.

Community collaboration: showing public art using recycled furniture and piano parts with paint, Mettricks cafe, Southampton's cultural quarter
‘Music in the city’: recycled furniture and piano parts with paint, Mettricks cafe, Southampton’s cultural quarter

The murals feature a bold, contemporary design using vibrant cut-out letters and abstract shapes. These aren’t new materials; they are recycled pieces of timber found locally and donated by residents.

We consciously take materials that might have been tossed aside — from broken garden furniture and instruments to miscellaneous timber — and turn them into something special. This encourages everyone to think creatively about waste and promotes recycling.

A collaborative community process

Working on these collaborative projects often starts with initiating a conversation with local businesses and, often facilitated by their staff, we typically send out a call for material donations.

The community’s response is usually incredibly generous: local people donate wood and domestic items that would otherwise be destined for the skip or the bonfire. Our goal is always to keep these materials as local as possible, like a neighbourhood contemporary survey.

Community collaboration - showing artists in action.
Community collaboration – artists in action

The donations we receive are very varied: chairs, an old table, piano keys, shelves, a chimney surround, clocks, barometers, garden fences, and coat hangers, just to name a few. These pieces are not just raw material, they fundamentally dictate the form and character of the final artwork. I see it as a positive challenge to weave as many of these disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

We generally favour solid timber and plywood for durability, and what is interesting is that each donated item brings its own story to the final work. This presents a unique challenge, especially when trying to preserve wood that may have been exposed to the elements or damaged before being painted or varnished. Navigating these imperfections, however, adds a rich layer of authenticity, ensuring the work is genuinely true to the place where it is created.

Essentially, nothing goes to waste. Even the smallest off-cuts are saved and will find their way into future artworks.

Beyond the materials, the community shapes the ideas. I also run public consultation sessions where local residents and business staff offer input and suggestions. While it’s rarely possible to include every idea, I genuinely love the notion of people discovering their own small suggestions or personal memories hidden inside the finished piece, like a secret message hidden in the work.

The collaborative process is, of course, a mixed bag of challenges, with the back-and-forth dialogue of working with others being as challenging as it is rewarding. That said, I believe this partnership approach forces everyone involved to maintain a generous and open-minded stance, encouraging a less controlled, more spontaneous way of working. It’s a wonderful way to keep the individual ego in check and the creativity flowing.

Community spirit & public art

‘Bigging up Southampton’: upcycled timber and paint, Southampton’s Guildhall Square.

The bright colour palette is a direct reflection of the rich mix of cultures in the neighbourhood, while the design subtly integrates local heritage elements. Making the artwork accessible is important to us. Each piece is modular and tactile, incorporating varied textures and depth. This ensures the piece is readable by touch, a feature supported by a team member who organises touch tours for the partially sighted.

The artwork turns an otherwise bland space into an eye-catching feature that offers interest both at a distance and up close.

‘Land Ahoy’, upcycled timber, furniture and paint. Southampton Forward commission in collaboration with the Community of RedBridge and the Ship Inn.

Like our previous public pieces, this mural is modular and easy to repair, ensuring its longevity. We hope to continue this organic growth by adding more layers in the coming months, allowing the artwork to develop its own unique identity. Our team, primarily composed of dedicated members from The Keepers Artists Collective, alongside supportive local businesses, proves that with a little investment and community spirit, ambitious public art is entirely achievable.

We look forward to bringing similar work — giving locals something they can truly be proud of — to more neighbourhoods across the city.

Find more

The Keepers Artist Collective is a non-profit group of artists based in the city of Southampton, Hampshire, including Julien Masson and David McDiarmid. The 8 artists come from different backgrounds and disciplines, and share an interest in creating art, community-based art projects, and supporting other artist networks.

Julien’s previous posts for ClimateCultures include The Call of the Forest, which describes a residency in the New Forest, an environment that juxtaposes natural and human worlds, and Julien’s choice there of a physical paint medium to represent the digital realm that often distances us from the natural.

Julien Masson
Julien Masson
An artist whose works are all, in some way, related to technology and our relation with it and wishes to expand notions of what is art.
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Worlds in Progress: a Retreat to Feed the Seeds of Imagination

Poet and artist-book maker Sarah Hymas looks ahead to the Imaginarium ‘Worlds in Progress’ retreat she is running for a second year, an open, fluid, multi-layered spacetime for writers to sow and care for the seeds of imagination.

1,225 words: estimate reading time = 5 minutes

For fourteen years I ran a residential writing course, Write Like Nobody’s Watching, in South West France. After the pandemic, my enjoyment of it had changed. Even though I had, for the previous few years, been travelling down and back by train — a two day journey from Lancashire I loved — I found being part of a process that invited people to fly (no one else came overland) for five days of writing that had very little to do with the region where often people didn’t even leave the villa increasingly problematic.

The heat in the last couple of years compounded my unease. Some years it was too hot even at 10.00 am to cross the patio to reach our outdoor workshop. We had to set up under trees and I remember even having some of the one-to-ones in the swimming pool, it was hot. I needed more and more time to retreat from the retreat everyone else was taking. So I found someone else to run the week and stepped back.

Worlds in progress: creative building & building creativity

I didn’t want to stop facilitating the space for people (and often myself) to write and dream. I loved the process of building that spacetime. I just wanted to do it closer to home, in a place that was more accessible, less expensive. I wanted the place we were in to have more of an impact on those of us visiting it. I wanted more community, less alcohol (yes, my 40-year-old self, I’m looking at you), more stillness. So when I was on a residency with Settle Stories in January 2024 in an old mansion in Giggleswick, working on their Storyful Way, I knew I’d found the place I wanted to trial a new Imaginarium retreat. One that would be more collaborative in its approach, inviting a creative investment from those coming to help build the space more explicitly than simply participating in a week of writing workshops.

I also knew I didn’t want to run it solo. Increasingly, I want to work with others, to share the stresses and joys of any project. Someone to plan with. Someone to talk candidly to. I had already run an Ancestral Imaginarium with Katherine Zeserson and knew she had experience of running residential retreats so she was the obvious choice. As well as experienced, Katherine is joyful, intuitive, creatively curious and energetic. We came up with the name — Worlds in Progress — to capture our ambition for the week to be an open fluid space of multi-layered worlds: the worlds of our transient community; the worlds we were all writing; and the worlds we would return to after sharing the week — the worlds that were often so tricky for so many of us — the worlds we’d like to nudge into different directions.

Sunrise. Photo: Sarah Hymas © 2025

Our first Worlds in Progress Retreat ran in January 2025 with ten other people who work, create and play with text somehow. We offered sitting, singing and flexing every morning, for those who wanted. We suggested loose mealtimes to suit however everyone liked to eat — sorting ourselves out for breakfast and lunch — and to fit around whatever was the occupation for people’s days. We invited people to share their creative practice during playshops later in some of the afternoons. These were attended by maybe two thirds of the group, those who wanted a break from their own head, or wanted to explore what they were writing in a different way, or who fancied some playtime. We offered one-to-ones to anyone who wanted to chat about anything they wanted. We had cooking teams for the evening veggie meal and lingered long over them with chat and laughter that often took someone (or two or three) out into the January nights for further exploration of our wider world in progess. We were blessed with an astonishing week of snow and ice (far, far from the temperatures of the last year I was working in France when it reached 55° in the sun).

Ingleborough. Photo: Sarah Hymas © 2025

We wrote and researched. Even I wrote for a couple of hours every afternoon, beginning a new long-form piece that had been cooking in the recesses of my imagination for a while. We made new friends. We found commonalities. We were given space, we gave space. We learnt new words, new ideas, and felt safe enough to share ignorances, unknowns, uncertainties and silly things. In short, we did — for those five days — construct a world we wanted to inhabit and nourish and sustain.

Nurturing the seeds of imagination

Some people came with a sense of fraudulence. The original call out was for ‘text-based artists’ — for anyone whose creative practice worked with text in any form — and the word ‘artist’ triggered people’s doubt they were one — who were they to call themselves such? But the artistry that was seeded and flowered and continues to be shared from that week is clear to me. The careful crafting of love and generosity, the sharing, the giving and receiving of intention, and the relishing of beauty and preciousness in life. That confidence was felt across the board, it seemed. It was such a delight that everything came together to make this new form of Imaginarium such a blissful retreat experience.

It takes time for seeds to germinate. The seeds of our imagination don’t come in packets that explain when or where to sow and how long they’ll take to flower. The seeds of our imagination need various soils and weather conditions to nourish them. Our intuition knows these conditions. And perhaps these seeds aren’t too particular or tender. Perhaps they are. Nothing can tell us how long until harvest. We need to water these seeds with faith (by which I mean the fertile mix of trust and confidence), and a selective choice of positive actions (with a sprinkle of learnings).

And perhaps most importantly we need not to over-tend, not insist on a timeframe. Nor over focus, but to encourage with a light touch, accepting other shoots may grow in the soil we’re feeding, that rogue seeds are already in there. All life begins in the dark. The unexpected is inevitable. As a creative spirit it’s easiest to welcome whatever appears and ask: Who are you? How can I help you grow? How can you help my growth? In what world can we thrive?

Seeds of imagination: showing a germinating seed. Photo by Sarah Hymas.
Germination. Photo: Sarah Haymas © 2025

If you’d like to know about the next Worlds In Progress Retreat that’s happening in January 2026, then head over to this page. We ask for ‘Expressions of Interest’ (by the end of July) to be sure that what you’re wanting is what we’re offering.

Find more

The January 2026 Worlds in Progress retreat will take place at Woodlands, near Giggleswick, North Yorkshire. You can read about The Storyful Way, the project with Settle Stories that Sarah worked on in residency at Woodlands.

In her previous ClimateCultures post, On a Writer’s Imaginarium, Sarah reflects on the various forms of imaginarium she has created over the years as online or offline cross-genre shared spaces to support creative writing.

Sarah Hymas
Sarah Hymas
A poet, performer and artistbook maker focusing on the sea, its ecosystems and its interdependence with people, and the impacts of climate change and pollution.
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Creative Whispers: Nature’s Power to Wellness

Sapphic and neuroqueer artist Indigo Sapphire Moon shares her experience of nature as a source of creative whispers, which blossom into ideas like her new poetry collection, and a space for us to exist outside our human story.

1,100 words: estimated reading time = 4.5 minutes

The butterfly birthed from a pearl in the root of a sapphire tree. This tree blossomed small crystallised buds of sapphire and released fragrant bursts of amber musk and sandalwood. From there, those within close proximity of the sapphire tree grew still, patient and content. For the tree’s power lay within the butterfly’s own heart.

Nature feeds creativity

Nature doesn’t have a narrative. She is a reminder. Of our own power. When I embark upon nature’s pathways, I also have no narrative. No age, no gender, no sexuality, no race, no ethnicity, no history, no career, no education, no… National Insurance Number.

I simply am.

I can just be.

There lies our power.

Within this power, lies a bud of creativity that slowly transforms into blossoms of ideas. That’s how I feel when nature embraces me. There’s space to breathe. There’s contentment in the stillness of the water. There’s peace in witnessing the interactions between wildlife. In between these moments of tranquillity, I recognise the truth of my artistry. My creative voice speaks to me as it rides on a gust of wind and ripples of water.

The emptiness of quiet, paradoxically, gives birth to creative whispers which can grow louder if I hear an idea that piques my interest. These whispers come from my subconscious and this is opened up by nature. The encompassing presence of nature reveals sparks of ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced if I hadn’t been willing to listen.

Creative whispers in nature: showing a photograph of blossom by Indigo Moon
Blossom. Photograph: Indigo Sapphire Moon © 2023

Whatever our creative practice, nature has a limitless bounty of inspiration. From colours and shapes to textures and sounds, being in the presence of nature is undoubtedly one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had. When I return to the four walls of my bedroom, my mind feels lighter, refreshed and content.

I listen, tentatively, to those creative whispers. Then they become sparks.

Connected: a wild wellness

This in turn, impacts my mental, physical and spiritual wellness. The term ‘wellness’ means different things to each individual. Something I find promotes wellness within myself, such as meditation and nature walking, may not work for someone else.

And that’s wonderful.

It’s important we listen to our true selves and discover what promotes wellness on an individual level.

As I mentioned earlier, nature has no narrative. She opens up space for us to exist outside of our human story, to exist outside of our bodies. Our stories are a gift from the universe. A chance to exist and experience ourselves as spiritual beings without the human perspective. This allows me to tap into other perspectives of nature and connect with other spirits that share the Earth with us. Paradoxically, existing outside of my human body makes me feel more grounded than I ever have been. The path is clear and my roots are solid on the Earth. I’m no longer tethered to human thought or mind, which can sometimes feel like a damnation for me, personally. 

On a spiritual level, in those moments of calm and contentment, listening to birdsong or the gentle motion of water, I am reminded of my consciousness. The vibrational energy that lives at the heart of my spirit, and in the spirit of every living entity. We are connected.

Creative whispers in nature: showing a photograph of a Robin tilting her head, by Indigo Moon
Robin tilting her head. Photograph: Indigo Sapphire Moon © 2023

Inhale. Exhale.

I listen to the space in-between my breath.

There.

The hum of the universe.

When I reflect upon this realisation, of my being, I feel grounded, inspired, joyful and peaceful. My body responds. Every muscle is relaxed, my skin is warm in some areas, cold in others, and I breathe deeper.

Nature’s power aligns my mind, body and spirit. I feel well. Even if it only lasts for a few minutes, or a few hours. The feeling of wellness is divine. And for me, nature breathes that divinity, in and out, in silent hums.

From creative whispers to mindful self-publication

When I listened to those silent hums, I realised something.

Why wait for someone else to recognise my voice? My power?

I recognise it. That’s enough.

I had written a poetry collection and decided I was going to self-publish. I thought it would be harder than it was. But life is full of surprises. I found this accessible, easy to navigate, printing service (and I can’t remember the name of it, super helpful, I know). I uploaded my collection onto the website and they cleverly organised it into a printable book. They offered various options on sizes and binding. Once that was decided, they calculated the price based on how many copies I wanted. Again, I was surprised at how affordable it was. I paid less than thirty pounds for ten copies.

The only thing now was to find somewhere to sell them.

Luckily, I work for an amazing charity, Ideas Hub, which hosts a creative community space for artists to sell their work. They believed in me and my creative practice. And gave me a space on their bookshelf.

I know not everyone has the opportunity to find an organisation that allows artists to sell their work, especially if that work is self-published. However, don’t be discouraged. There are many digital platforms where you can self-publish your work. Research is key. Believe in your creative voice and recognise your unique spirit.

Creative whispers in nature: Showing a photograph of sunset on the River Crouch, by Indigo Moon
Sunset, River Crouch. Photograph: Indigo Sapphire Moon © 2023

You deserve to be heard.

To be seen.

Embrace your creative power.

Let the world see you glow and shimmer, like a butterfly from a sapphire tree.

The butterfly danced under the moonlit sky and left trails of shimmering sapphire dust in the air, churned into delicate shapes and patterns from the beat of her wings. She felt her own power now; unique and deep. The butterfly thanked the sapphire tree and flew higher and higher, into the heart of the moon.

Find more

Asters in Virgo, Indigo’s new poetry collection, explores themes of the environment, nature, well-being and queer identity. It’s only available as a physical book, and if you would like to purchase a copy, please email Indigo at indigomoon229[at]gmail.com

You can find examples of creative whispers at work in more of Indigo’s poetry in her post Only Star (some of the poems there also appeared in the creative responses to our Environmental Keywords series). And in I Am Purpose, Indigo shares a short story reflecting on the presence of signals from within, evoking ideas of conversation with the universe to illuminate times of zoonotic pandemic and climate crisis.

Indigo Sapphire Moon
Indigo Sapphire Moon
An LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent writer, poet, artist and activist, exploring environmental themes to investigate how storytelling and language can help us conserve and nourish the Earth.
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