THE SPACESHIP EARTH PODCAST Dan Burgess

In this Episode I’m in conversation with the brilliant Immy Kaur and Kavita Purohit from Civic Square in Birmingham UK.
Civic Square’s mission is demonstrating neighbourhood-scale civic infrastructure for social, ecological, economic, and climate transition.
I’m a huge fan of their work, they are pioneers in the UK when it comes to demonstrating what communities can achieve when it comes to responding to some of the gnarliest, complex systemic issues we face as a species.
They use practical, decentralised approaches, translating complex systems change thinking into participative inquiry and co-design projects working with  place based communities alongside diverse practitioners, knowledge and wisdom holders and regenerative innovators.
When the times we are in can feel so overwhelming and mainstream political approaches exhausted, look to Civic Square and their ecology of collaborators for how we might create very different ways of imagining and realising better futures which put people and places at the centre around cultures of care, connection and solidarity.
We explore
* Systemic Issues and community approaches to finding solutions
* The importance of neighbourhoods and Public Goods
* Health Justice and ecological Health in neighbourhoods
* Demonstrating radical imagination
* The role of Doughnut Economics in neighbourhoods
* Community engagement and co-ceation approaches
* Different ways of knowing, re-pairing and re-imagining
Links
Civic Square
Civic Square Medium
Neighbourhood Doughnut
Stories for Life


Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

Earth Sessions are DJ mixes that I put out from time to time.
This unravelling world makes me despair today.
So I went down to the Spaceship shed and recorded this mix.
Ruff and ready.
When there are no words, there is music.
House Music
And Love.
Respect to the artists and producers who have created these tracks that are alive for me right now.
Full listing on site.



Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode I’m in conversation with Sarah Corbett, award winning campaigner, activist and founder of the Craftivist Collective.
Craftivism, where craft meets activism, offers a unique, intimate, transformative approach to addressing the gnarly issues of our time, emphasising the importance of gentle, emotionally intelligent, creative and persuasive protest in fostering meaningful dialogue, connection and change.
From crafting hearts to connect across climate movements to sewing personalised handkerchiefs sent to corporate leaders and so much more - Sarah and the Craftivist Collective invite people to embrace activism rooted in gentleness, compassion, humility and self-care.
We Explore
* Navigating the digital activism world: challenges and personal reflections
* Blending craft and activism for change
* The potential of gentle protest: crafting a kinder activism
* The power of hands in crafting, connecting and healing
* The transformative impact of craft on mental health
* Craftivism in action: from gentle protest to wider solidarity and systemic change
Links
Craftivist Collective
Craftivist Instagram


Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode I’m in conversation with Adah Parris - keynote speaker, futurist,  visionary artist, and activist who inspires transformative change through her practice.
Adah is working with many inquires - including ‘Cyborg Shamanism’ and the provocation ‘What kind of ancestor do you want to be ?’
And we dig into this and much more in this conversation.
This is also a conversation which explores the essence of diversity - of wider intelligences, of sensing the world differently and of co-creating different futures. 
A conversation between two late diagnosed neurodiverse people, we explore what happens when we challenge normativity, drawing on other forms of creative intelligence, what do we find along the path when we're walking on the edges of normal?
We Explore
* Personal and collective responsibility towards climate change and the actions necessary for a more regenerative future.
* Emotional and mental health in the face of conflict and crisis.
* Experiences of ADHD and Autism, challenging ‘normativity’ and the impact and potential of diversity in shaping our future
* Creating change through remembering our rootedness to the Earth
* Cyborg shamanism’ - blending technology, storytelling and spirituality for better understanding relationships, interconnectedness and planetary consciousness.
Links
Becoming Crew Live Gatherings
Tickets for Live Gathering with Bayo Akomolafe
Adah Parris
Adah Parris Instagram
Earth Echoes


Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

Every so often I record a conversation that feels absolutely vital for the stuckness of these times.
Full of insight, provocation, intelligence, trouble and beautiful fertiliser for what could be.
This is one of those episodes.
A conversation with Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy - both long term activists, political strategists and in their words ‘accidental philanthropy advisors’.
Alnoor and Lynn are two of the wisest souls I’ve hosted here.
Their ability to articulate with clarity, nuance, honesty and humility to the mess we are in as a species and how we got here, while gesturing towards beautiful ways through is remarkable, and is a true gift in my opinion.
They draw on this knowledge through wisdom, experiences and learnings from a vast diverse web of life, traditions, cultures, professions and expertise past and present, and the extraordinary book they created is a synthesis of all of that.
Post Capitalist Philanthropy - Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse 
_____________________________________
This Episode is a longer one. - However, we do offer you an intentional reflective pause half way through, a place to breathe and check in on yourself or take a break.
---------------------------------------
This conversation is deep, it sets out a dynamic perspective on ’the waters we are swimming in’ today and the ‘Age of Consequence’ we are now experiencing.
We explore:
* Navigating the polycrisis/metacrisis - how did we get here - understanding the systems through ‘structural, historical, constellational world views.’
* The inevitability of financial collapse and currency devaluation as the model of debt-based, growth-based logic self-terminates.
* The incompatibility between the Earth’s System and Neo-liberal late stage- capitalist modernity
* Ontological shifts and returning to life force - somatics, disembodiement, separation, identity, ancestry and death
* What is Post-Capitalism - values and realities
* Becoming ‘conscientious objectors’ of the dominant extractive culture
* Shifting to solidarity with all life: the power of connection and dialogue with the living world and ancient wisdom in modern activism and regenerative change
* Growing post-capitalist realities, cultures and infrastructure through community and practices
* Living and practicing new and ancient ways of being, knowing and relating
* Creating post capitalist infrastructure: a call to philanthropy and wealth redistribution
* Reflections on wealth, identity and the journey of collective liberation and transformation.
---------------------------------------
Are we willing to walk away from cultures of domination, control and violence ?
To recognise our smallness in the great mystery of life and begin to trust the life force within us and around us to guide us into practicing new ways of being and new cultures that put life at the centre again.
I really hope you appreciate this Episode, please do comment, share and post far and wide if it brings things up for you, we’d love to hear from you.
Links
Becoming Crew Live Event Gatherings
Post Capitalist Philanthropy
Transition Resource Circle
Culture Hack Labs
Sam Lee - Green Mossy Banks




Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe

Originally released in June 2022, I’m rebroadcasting for Earth Day Episode 60 with Dr Stephan Harding - Holistic Scientist, Deep Ecologist, Author and Co-founder of Schumacher College who was mentored by the scientist James Lovelock - responsible for the Gaia Theory Hypothesis.
Earth Day began in 1970 the year before I was born, and here we are 54 years later experiencing the accelerated unravelling of our Earth’s System, essentially from a perception problem, a relationship problem, a separation crisis.
Capitalist Modernity has failed to understand or accept that the Earth is alive, an ongoing complex, mysterious entanglement of intelligent living relationships which have created the conditions for life to emerge, including human life.
This is Gaia. A way of seeing the Earth that humans throughout the majority of our time as a species on this planet have always known.
The Earth and all life on it is sentient, animate and sacred.
Decades of destructive and extractive ways of being in relationship with the Earth means we’re facing into the consequences of that in profound ways now, how quickly can we wake up at scale and re-learn to see the Earth as alive ?
What Stephan would call Gaian consciousness…
“So lets call it a Gaian consciousness. It’s gradually taking root inside people, people are waking-up to it more and more. But it’s slow. Waking up is far slower than the rate of destruction. And what we need now is the rate of waking-up to overtake the rate of destruction. And the waking-up has got to happen on a massive scale. But I don’t know how that is going to happen.
The positive side is that cultural revolutions can happen very quickly. Revolutions in consciousness can happen very quickly. This one has got to happen quicker than any other, and happen fast and on a global scale. And it has got to transcend national boundaries, political boundaries, all the sorts of boundaries that we humans have erected between ourselves, gender boundaries, all those boundaries they have got to fall down. And we all have to unify to protect our very own planet, for her own sake and our sake and the sake of all beings. Is that going to happen?”
In this episode we explore
- Who is Gaia and what’s her history? 
- James Lovelock independent scientist, mentor and Gaia Theory Hypothesis
- From the scientific study of the Muntjac Deer to the deep connection of the wholeness of nature
- We are not just thinkers. We’re equally, feelers, sensors and intuitors
- We’re inherently animistic with a spiritual connection to nature. And we can still value science
- A cultural revolution needs to happen quicker than any other time, for the sake of all life
- Gaia Alchemy. Why put alchemy with science? 
- Healing a crisis of meaning and the Azoth of Philosophy
- Valuing the psyche over the ego. Do we invent ideas or do we receive them?
- Finding your Gaia place
I hope you enjoy this conversation.



Get full access to Becoming Crew at becomingcrew.substack.com/subscribe