COMPOS(T)ING ECO-GRIEF: A REGENERATIVE RITUAL LED BY SOIL

Designed and facilitated for the University of Melbourne Climate Community Resilience group, this workshop centered on the complexities of grief associated with ecological loss, and explored the relationship between grief and hope. How might facing grief help us to seed the foundations for possible futures that feature radically different relationships with more-than-human worlds? Beginning with local ecological anxiety, rage and grief, participants mapped a range of emotions and experiences associated with ecological loss, composing a collective vocabulary and themes surrounding their experiences.

Following discussion on ritual forms and their function, the workshop fused ecological action with intentional acts of transformation, using a secular ritual framework to create a compost for the site where the Community Resilience Group regularly meet. The experiences and articulations of the ecological discussions were layered slowly into the compost along with offerings brought along by participants, alongside the ash of burned intentions and hopes, and finally water to represent the tears offered to various ecologies, bodies and communities already lost to the terror of climate crisis.

The compost acted as a central vehicle to build the future, with the community laying down their grief to be transformed by microbial flora and fauna into good soil, into which a future might be planted.

you can find out more on the University Climate Community Resilience group here.