Peatlands and grief: how to collectively honour decay?

Join us on a journey through the deep territories of peatlands and grief in Amsterdam on the weekends of Nov. 30th and Dec.7 2024! In this 4-part workshop series we want to come together to explore the multiple ways in which peatlands and grief intersect and what we can gather from such explorations.

What if the polycrisis of today was not about life, but about death? We are living in a moment that chimes with the sound of destruction, and the hush of extinction. Yet we rarely leave the space or time to honour this loss. Peatlands are composed of generations of semi-decomposed organic material. They are holders of the deceased like no other Earth system. In doing so, they are also protectors of our climate, biodiversity and water reserves. Across the world, these wetlands are being drained, causing slow erosion and erasing these ancient beings from the landscape. The loss encompasses not only the ecological but sites of cultural and spiritual connection between human and earth.

In this four-past workshop series, we are opening a space for exploring how to grieve through peatlands and for peatlands. By curating places and practices that allow us to dwell in and move through our dark waters can help to create resilience in our work for liberation and system change. Grieving those who have been, are and will be encountered can reveal something about ourselves and, ultimately, what we want to keep hold of going forward. In doing so, this collective experience has the potential to take us beyond a doomism perspective towards a renewed sense of life and determination

About the hosts:

Frankie Turk (she/her) is a writer, filmmaker and co-founder of the collective RE-PEAT. Keen to explore the relationship between peatlands and grief, in 2023, Frankie took part in a 6-months peer-to-peer learning journey DeathxLife, hosted by HuddleCraft. She also co-directed a short documentary In Death is Life about peatland communities in Ireland with WaterBear.

Lara-Lane (she/her) is a writer, researcher and cultural worker. Sensitive to injustice, she has found the landscape around her to be her most generous support. This led to political engagement beginning with climate and social justice activism in 2018. Since then, the growing presence of loss and her desire for transformative change have rendered her passionate about holding space for collective grief as a practice of empowerment.

Holly Bartley (she/her), is a 24-year-old designer-researcher and filmmaker based in Paris. Holly's interest to co-create this workshop series grew during her master’s research project, where she explored connections between time, aging, and resilience. Holly is passionate about creating connections that empower communities and the environment.

About :

Established in 2020, RE-PEAT is a youth-led collective with a vision of an interconnected world where all peatland creatures and communities are supported culturally and ecologically. RE-PEAT works to activate those who are already concerned with environmental and social issues, and support people to adopt a peatland narrative rooted in environmental justice. Their activities include, workshops, talks, campaigning, festivals, art and design, restoration camps, as well as installations and exhibitions. More concretely, RE-PEAT’s strategy includes supporting leadership of youth and local communities, designing and promoting educational programmes and resources, creating peat-inspired art, facilitating transformative peatland experiences, and building bridges across transnational contexts.

This workshop series has been made possible through the support of the Collective Imagination Practice Community

Funded and supported by JRF Emerging Futures team, Canopy and Huddlecraft has stewarded the Collective Imagination Practice Community over 2024. The CIPC has collaborated with the Centre for Public Impact

Host or Publisher RE-PEAT