August 29, 30, 31
Active Hope:
A Weekend of The WTR
Crann Og Eco Farm, Co. Galway, Ireland
Friday Eve - Song Circle
Saturday - Work That Reconnects Open Workshop (10 am - 5 pm)
Sunday - Work That Reconnects Facilitator Training (10 am - 5 pm)
Join us for a unique opportunity to experience, learn, and study the Work That Reconnects, with experienced facilitators who have spent many years studying closely with root teacher, Joanna Macy.
Join for some, or all, of the weekend!
Friday Evening - Song Circle
Aug 29
Join us for the treat of Lydia Violet Music As Medicine Community Sing, an evening of song & sanctuary hosted at Crann Og Eco Farm!
For many millennia, music, and specifically music made together in community, has been a crucial way we bolster ourselves in hard times. Music can mend our bones and pour in the grace. It can transform our exhaustion and help us feel more held as a part of the choir. Just as it feels good to act in the companionship of others on behalf of life, so too is the homecoming of singing together. Lydia leads the songs around the spiral of Joanna Macy’s work.
All are welcome! No music experience necessary.
Doors at 6:30,
Sing from 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Lydia Violet
Is an Iranian-Armenian-American folk multi-instrumentalist, revolution-bringer, culture-tender, grief-worker, and mischief-maker. In her performances, she weaves together her songwriting, folk standards, Iranian ballads, love of harmonies, fiddle, banjo, and collective singing into an altar of music to rest upon. She has engaged in vibrant collaborations with world-renowned artists Climbing PoeTree, Rising Appalachia, MaMuse, and Lyla June. She is the creator behind Singing the Bones, a course with Leah Song of Rising Appalachia, and a music project that brings American artists together to explore and share folk music from their ancestries, encouraging cultural revitalization and diasporic healing. Through her Music As Medicine song circles, she facilitates music-making that not only summons beauty, but tends to some of our most pressing existential questions in these times.
Lydia has also studied dedicatedly with deep ecology elder and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy for the past 15 years, learning how we can metabolize planetary despair, anxiety, and community traumas into energy for resilience, action, and community healing. She founded and runs The School for The Great Turning, which creates access to an education that will empower humanity's life-sustaining legacy. www.schoolforthegreatturning.com
With Special Guest
Anna Swisher
Is a community organiser, gardener, movement teacher, and Work That Reconnects facilitator and mentor. Originally from North Carolina, she lives in western Ireland via a decade in San Francisco. She works in community
development, and facilitates courses and workshops for community groups and organisations.
Anna holds an M.A. in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She has further certifications in the Work That Reconnects, Eco- therapy and wilderness guiding, Permaculture, Yoga and Yoga Therapy,
JourneyDance™, and Mindfulness Education.
Anna has spent recent years deeply studying and facilitating the work of Joanna Macy, Active Hope and The Work That Reconnects, and now works with organisations, universities and community groups around Ireland. Her work focuses on helping people to make sense of a very confusing world, to build connection and resilience, and to find meaningful ways to play their own part in creating a sustainable future.
Work That Reconnects Open Workshop
Saturday, August 30th, 10am-5pm.
Bring bagged lunch.
**Workshop will be capped at 25 participants!
In this one-day workshop, seasoned WTR facilitator Lydia Violet Harutoonian, informed by her 16 years of dedicated study and co-facilitation with Joanna Macy, and WTR facilitator and mentor Anna Swisher will lead an immersion in Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects” (WTR). WTR is an experiential group work methodology that has helped thousands find clarity of vision and emotional sanctuary while living through this precious and precarious moment on our planet.
For the last five decades, Joanna’s work has offered inspiration and guidance for living courageously in uncertainty. It maps ways into our innate vitality and determination to take part in the self-healing of our world.
Each day we face the news of climate chaos, political warfare, species extinction, and ecological and social suffering, and we are asked to reconcile these collective traumas with all that is breaking in our hearts. It is natural in our time to feel despair, overwhelm, and grief. Come learn and experience tools for transforming our grief, anger, paralysis, and fear into compassionate connection with our world and communities, knowing our place in the web of life, and motivation to act on behalf of life on earth.
Climate anxiety and ecological despair are real, they are on behalf of a world desperate for our collaboration in remembering our dignity and grace. It is here that we grieve the ongoing devastation of our world, and nourish our compass for the times ahead.
Join us at the gorgeous Crann Og Eco Farm for this nourishing and powerful immersion into the Work That Reconnects to gain new tools in navigating the current crisis – on a personal and planetary level.
Lydia also integrates community singing in her facilitation. Music can be an excellent way to support participants in integrating their internal and relational experiences. For many millennia, music, and specifically music made together in community, has been a crucial way we bolster ourselves in hard times. Music can transform our exhaustion and help us feel more held as a part of the choir. Just as it feels good to act in the companionship of others on behalf of life, so too does the homecoming of singing together.
Work That Reconnects Facilitator Training
Sunday, August 31th, 10am-5pm.
Must have attended day-long on Sat, Aug 30th.
Bring bagged lunch.
**Workshop will be capped at 25 participants!
Lydia Violet Harutoonian and Anna Swisher will lead an in-depth introductory facilitation training in the “Work that Reconnects (WTR),” Joanna Macy’s experiential group work that has helped thousands find clarity of vision and emotional sanctuary while living through this precious and precarious moment on our planet.
This program will go into the fundamental pillars that Macy synthesized in her formation of the WTR. These include:
Foundations of the Work
Community Organizing
Living Systems Theory
Deep Ecology
Tibetan Buddhism
Despair Work
The program will then travel around the WTR Spiral, a life-affirming, transformative structure that serves as a roadmap and provides psycho-emotional resourcing in challenging times. Being core to the skills and teachings the Facilitator Development Program offers, the process of the Spiral will allow Lydia and Anna to cover essential aspects of this invaluable Work, while exploring complementary and contemporary gifts and challenges for facilitators and practitioners.
Who this is for…
For therapists, educators, organizers, leaders, and people in therapeutic work of all kinds… this work will help you support people, one-on-one and in groups, to metabolize their pain for the world. More and more people are being affected deeply by things like election anxiety, fear about climate change, existential crisis, and hopelessness or isolation. The Work that Reconnects has been reliably addressing these needs for over 50 years. It has been applied in diverse settings worldwide, and it’s relevancy only grows with time.
Get Your Tickets
Participants for the weekend are welcome to camp at Crann Og Eco Farm for an additional €15 (per person, per night.) Camping includes access to basic shared kitchen and composting toilets. We can also offer suggestions and recommendations for nearby accommodation; For this, please email AnnaSwisherIreland@gmail.com. The town of Gort is 10 minutes away for any provisions needed.
Friday Evening
€20
Prices shown in euros (€), but payment will be processed in (USD).
WTR Saturday
€75 - €120
Prices shown in euros (€), but payment will be processed in (USD).
WTR Saturday & Sunday
€150 - 300
Prices shown in euros (€), but payment will be processed in (USD).
