Requiem

Building Regenerative Cultures

Through multi-Species inter-Being

A global public engagement campaign that provides spaces for deep introspection about ecological loss that is ongoing at an unprecedented level on our planet; and to find pathways to community resilience, collective strength, and active hope.

Requiem 2022

Anthropocene

from despair to active hope
5 weeks exploration into creative self-expression

By providing community gatherings and shared spaces where we can explore this together, we hope to move from feelings of despair, anxiety, apathy, and grief, into a space of resilience and collective strength.

Through acceptance of this undeniable reality of our lives, and finding spaces to get in touch with our own feelings and thoughts about this, and sharing them, we endeavour to move together into a shared space of active hope for the future.

Programme Objective

To engage with the community to bear witness to, and collectively engage in deep introspection about ecological loss that is ongoing at an unprecedented level on our planet; and to find pathways to emotional resilience, collective strength, and active hope.

Program Structure

Through online conservations, interviews, panel discussions, workshops, and social media campaigns, we hope to create spaces that engage with the human experience of ecological loss in our world; and individual stories of coming to peace and building resilience. We hope to encourage participants to creatively express their own experience of this reality in their communities or of our collective experience on this planet.

Focus Questions for Requiem:

How do we respond regeneratively as a culture to the loss of life happening on Earth? What does it mean to be alive during the 6th mass extinction on the planet?

How do we grieve together, honouring and acknowledging their lives and our loss? What rituals are appropriate for this?

How do we hold spaces in our communities for this right now, as it is happening in our lifetime? What stories do we tell our children?

In 2021- 2022, ICA ran two co-labs on the topic ‘Requiem for lost species’ to engage the Ecoversities network, with the help of a microgrant from them. Out of these engagements developed the idea for one-on-one interviews with community members on this topic, with the meta-questions, and an analysis of the responses to understand the collective understanding and trajectory of this difficult yet very real part of our current lives.

If you would like to take part in this community project, you can either send in your responses through this google form or you are also welcome to take part in a conversation engaging with these questions with Lakshmi. To schedule these in, please send an email to [email protected]