At Work in the Ruins
What is possible when we are in the midst of a time of endings, unraveling and change of the stories we have been immersed in all our lives?
What are the new stories that can guide, inspire and help us be awake to what is happening?
An invitation to a collective inquiry & laboratory
HOW CAN WE CREATE GOOD RUINS, FOR THE NEW TO HAVE A PLACE TO LAND AND SET ROOTS?
How do we stay in relationship and what have we learned about collaboration that we need now in these times of turbulent change? It would be easy to believe we are facing the end of the world. But as our oldest myths and stories remind us --
the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world.
So what can we do when we are facing chaos and finding ourselves sitting in the ruins -- however you are experiencing right now?
How can we make a space within ourselves and together to turn and face the sense of loss, grief, anger and overwhelm that breakdown thrusts upon us?
How can we stay together when everything around us seems to be falling apart?
Especially as people who have worked as changemakers and who hold spaces for people to make good change together, what do we need to learn from these times?
The work of Dougald Hine, captured in his book At Work in the Ruins offers us four places to begin. Four tasks that can help us make sense of what is taking place.
There is work to do, even in the ruins.
The four tasks in the ruins...
Salvaging
Salvage the good that we may take along from the world that is ending.
"The first kind of work that makes sense is to salvage the good that may be taken with us from the ruins of the world that is ending. Among the tangled legacies of modernity, there are gifts that we would not gladly leave behind, so this is the attempt to bring with us what we are able to carry."
Mourning
Mourn the good that cannot be taken with us.
"The second kind of work is to mourn the good that cannot be taken with us. There is no need to settle where the boundary lies between what can be saved and what is to be mourned; you may answer that question differently to me and only time will tell which of us was right, but this still leaves us with work to do in the meanwhile. Part of the work of mourning is to tell the stories of the good things that couldn’t be saved, for those stories can be taken with us and they may turn out to be seeds."
Discerning
Notice the things that were never as good as we told ourselves they were.
"The third kind of work involves discernment: notice the things within our ways of living that were never as good as we told ourselves they were and the chance we are being given to walk away from these. It is the strange gift of a time of endings to bring into view the gap between the things we are trying to do and the ways we went about doing them around here lately. Make use of this gifts taken with us and they may turn out to be seeds."
Weaving
Notice dropped threads that may be picked up again – forgotten skills, overlooked wisdoms, practices that once fell out of fashion, but now glimmer with relevance.
"The fourth kind of work is to look for the dropped threads, the moments earlier in the story that have something to tell us. The way of life that is ending had a beginning, and other ways were ending in that moment or being pushed to the edges. So look for the skills or practices or knowledges that have been marked as extinct and obsolete, for some of these may yet make all the difference. There is no going back — but there are dropped threads that can be woven into the onward story."
We invite you to join us on a journey
To take up those four tasks together – and to hold each other as we allow, explore and express – we offer a five week online journey through the ruins.
Braided through our time together, we offer you stories and prompts for deeper thinking to find the heart of your own connection and work in the ruins that face you.
We will travel as a cohort, taking strength from each other and tending the fire between us. We may be facing a ruins, but we need not do so alone.
You might be challenged by what’s happening today, but we can draw courage in being together and understanding the hidden gifts that call us to keep going.
If you’ve felt that you longed for a place to turn towards what’s really going on, a space to speak what’s rising for you, and that you need companions on the journey, we warmly welcome you to join us,
Let’s be at work in the ruins together.
Sometimes you are born into the ending of a world...
This is a thing that happens, a thing that has happened in other times and places. How do you tell that you have been born into the ending of your world?
Because the future doesn’t work anymore, it no longer sounds convincing to extend a line from the recent past, through the present, to offer a promising onward trajectory. The story of the world you were born into is coming to an end.
So what do you do, if it is your discernment that you were born into such an ending?
Well, you can stop trying to make sense according to the logic of the world into which you were born – and start trying to make good ruins, contributions to the jumbled legacy of this world’s ending that might prove helpful to those beginning to make the unknown worlds that will come afterwards.
Special Guest:
Dougald Hine
Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer, speaker and the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. His latest book is At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Climate Crises and Other Emergencies.He publishes new essays on his Substack, Writing Home.
In our final session, we will share our harvest with Dougald and hear about his evolving sense of the four kinds of work in the ruins. He will also give us a glimpse into the new book he is currently writing.
View Dougald speaking about the work in the ruins
Our journey format
We will work collectively online together and asynchronously across our community, with questions, stories and impulses that prompt our thinking during our time apart. In this way we will practice community
SESSION 1- The Ruins / Salvaging
We know it by various names – crumbling, disturbance, collapse, destruction. Suddenly we find ourselves in a landscape that is constantly changing from one moment to the next. Systems of every size and magnitude are trembling. How can we make sense of this experience?
What is the good we can take from a world that is seemingly ending? What is worth salvaging, saving, even celebrating? As we sift through the wreckage of modernity, some things stand out. We take a closer look at this which is worth carrying forward with us.
SESSION 2 - Mourning
Each of us will be mourning something that must now be left behind. Perhaps our mourning focuses on what we loved but must now let go. What are the stories that need to be told and the songs that need to sung to honour that which is passing and to carry forward the seeds that may be useful in the future?
Session 3 - Discernment
What can we now see the never worked in the first place? Where is the gap between our bright hopes and expectations and how we went about fulfilling them? Some dreams have turned out to be hollow or never worth chasing in the first place. We stop for a moment together to discern exactly where we are and where we go next.
Session 4 - Weaving
In the oldest myths there is an old woman in a cave who is always weaving the world together. She continues to pick up the dropped threads and weave them into a new pattern. We, too, can look for the dropped threads of older ways of seeing, being and doing that could serve us again in a new way.
SESSION 5 - Where are we now?
We come to the point of harvest and synthesis. What have we discovered on our journey together?
We are joined by Dougald Hine who will receive our harvest and reflect back where his thinking now is about the work in the ruins and what comes after.
About our time together
Five Sessions
- 8 April 2026
- 15 April 2026
- 22 April 2026
- 29 April 2026
- 6 May 2026
TIMING
- 10:00 - 12:00 pm Pacific Time
- 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm Eastern Time
- 19:00 - 21:00 Central European Time
PRICE
- US$175
- If the price is an obstacle for you to you, let us know. Contact us and we guarantee that all can participate.
Accessibility
We don’t want your economic situation to get in the way of your participation. Contact us for group discounts, or if you need help making the course work for you financially.
Your Hosting Team
This event is a collaboration between Beehive Productions and the Change Days Community. It is a follow on from the Rotterdam Change Days held in November 2025. We are inspired and grateful for Dougald Hine continuing to offer his work and walk alongside us.
Mary Alice Arthur
An internationally recognised process host for almost 30 years, Mary Alice is a Story Activist working with story in service of positive systemic shift and for focusing collective intelligence on critical issues and a steward of the Art of Hosting.
Amy Lenzo
Amy is an online activist, focused on creating “hospitable space” online – environments that connect us to our bodies and the natural world; "containers" that open us to the joy of learning, and awaken the power of collective wisdom among us.
Rowan Simonsen
Rowan is guided by the question of how to live a simple, beautiful life with impact, asking the questions that really matter. He is the co-founder of Beehive Productions with Amy Lenzo, a Kaospilot and long time practitioner of the Art of Hosting.
Nik Beeson
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Esther Barfoot
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Melanie Zucker
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JOIN THIS IMPORTANT EXPLORATION!
This is a time to show up together, rise to the challenge and remember that we have prepared for these times our whole lives. It helps to be in practice and inquiry together.
Will you be there, too?
