At Work in the Ruins
What is possible when we see that we are in the midst of a time of endings, unraveling and change of the stories that we have been immersed in all our lives?
What are the new stories that can guide us, inspire us and help us be awake to what is happening?
A collective inquiry and laboratory
HOW CAN WE CREATE GOOD RUINS, FOR SOMETHING NEW TO HAVE A PLACE TO LAND AND SET ROOTS?
"The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world."
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?
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?
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.
We will work with these four lenses:
Salvaging
Salvage the good that we may take along from the world that is ending.
Mourning
Mourn the good that cannot be taken with us.
Discerning
Notice the things that were never as good as we told ourselves they were.
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.
We will explore...
This offering invites you to reflect on the delicate balance between hosting human connection and collaboration by building trust and cultivating personal connections and creating collective insights while working with rapid evolving technology and AI.
Through four real-time online conversations and prerecorded interviews with practitioners and thought leaders who are well versed in using AI, we will delve into how artificial intelligence can both challenge and enhance participatory processes.
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 first session, we will hear from Dougald about his evolving sense of the four kinds of work in the ruins. In each session following on, we explore one of the four tasks.
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
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?
As we open our time together, we are joined by Dougald Hine, who has mapped this journey from the vantage point of climate crisis and shares with us what he sees as the important work we need to do in the ruins.
SESSION 2 - Salvaging
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 3 - 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 4 - 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 5 - 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.
Format
We will meet in real-time over four sessions to look at our questions, share our insights, inspirations, and challenges with this emerging new technology, and explore how we engage with AI will be part of shaping our culture -- now and into the future.
Between each real time session we will share pre-recorded interviews with practitioners who can open new perspectives, possibilities and questions for us. These interviews will be available after the course together with recordings of all real-time sessions.
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 Berlin Change Days Community. We are inspired and grateful for Douglad 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.
JOIN THIS IMPORTANT EXPLORATION!
In this offering we will invite and listen to the excited and inspired voices, to the cautious voices, to the practitioners who have valuable experiences to share, to technologists, philosophers and hosts of meaningful social engagement. Will you be there, too?
Register Now!