ART & PERSONAL LEADERSHIP
COURSE / MODULE I
Ecological Entanglements
In an accelerated world and ecological disastrous times, we desperately need new leadership. We need radical new ways of being and doing. The transition towards a sustainable future starts with you. We need new stories, new values, a whole lot of courage and imagination in growing the future we long for.
We all have the agency to create change and to impact those around us, our communities, and the natural world. Personal leadership is all about how you show up in the world. It has nothing to do with a title, an organization diagram, having employees, or other types of formalities. This course welcomes people from all backgrounds.
ART, COURAGE, AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Art provides new perspectives on our mutual world. Art is not affirmative and raises questions rather than it provides answers or fixed meanings. This makes art a superb reflection partner and an aesthetic teacher of critical thinking. But also a great heart opener. Artistic methods and research are often interdisciplinary, which can be inspiring and generate ideas.
Artists have a high degree of accountability and are - in my eyes - courageous. They do not have the luxury of being neutral but raise their voices loud and clear. There is much to learn from them.
Guest teacher Phie Ambo was trained at the National Film School of Denmark, graduating as a documentary film director in 2003. Famous for her feature length documentary films true to the tradition of poetic, personal and cinematic language, Ambo deals with essential topics such as family relations, love, meditation, activism, consciousness, and relations between humans and the more-than-human world. She is also a co-founder of Den Grønne Friskole in Copenhagen, a board member of the coop, regenerative agriculture movement Andelsgaarde and former Head of the Danish Arts Foundation. Photo: Anastasia Kiake.
When you hear the music on this album, you’ll be less terrorized, says the inserted text in Peter Voss-Knude’s pop album The Anti-Terror Album. Together with a 1.1 tonnes rosa quarts, the music played an important part of Peter’s solo exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde. The exhibition discussed other ways to fight the fear of terror, namely love, joy, and pop music. In his artistic practice, Peter Voss-Knude has long circled around the Danish Defence and Denmark’s role as a war nation. He has two pop albums behind him, as Peter & The Danish Defence, based on conversations with soldiers at the Garderhusar barracks in Slagelse, which he had been visiting for some years. Photo: Lisa Bregneager
SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY
Spiritual Ecology is a field that connects both science, spirituality, and sustainability. It raises our awareness of how our species is part of the great ecosystem. On a par with the other species, not raised above them. Spiritual Ecology is a relatively new field of knowledge and practice that also draws on ancient knowledge and practices. Knowledge that was lost long ago in our culture where we have cut the connections to the natural world by separating ourselves from it and believing ourselves above it.
The lost knowledge in the Western world is about the fact that we are completely connected to nature. When we harm nature, we also harm ourselves. And vice versa. Everything is connected. Indigenous peoples possess this knowledge. Therefore, Spiritual Ecology is a field with many different voices. It looks far back in time, investigating why and how we ended up in this ecological and humanitarian catastrophe; it considers what we can do now to change our consciousness, language, stories, practices and being; and it looks far ahead in terms of how we will be the ancestors of future generations.
Spiritual Ecology has a lot to offer those who are willing to dive deep for a better inner connection and a clearer perception of their being and doing, as an intrinsic part of the ecology of community, organization, society, and the rest of the natural world.
WHAT IS THIS COURSE ABOUT?
WHO IS IT FOR?
Ecological Entanglements connects art and Spiritual Ecology to inspire your personal leadership and your path in this world.
You’ll get an insight into the thoughts and choices these artists are occupied with, an insight into personal reflections of what it means to be a creative human being. Listen to important artistic voices and engage in reflections on hope, priorities, storytelling, being, and doing in difficult times. The subject matters, we will address, will be connected to your practice in reflections, writing exercises, meditations, and discussions.
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​The course is for you who wish to strengthen and inspire your practice and your path. You are curious, would like to know more about art, and you are concerned with the well-being of our ecosystem. You find peace and meaning in nature – and you may even work for a sustainable world. You may have all types of studies behind you or work experiences, and you’re open for exchanges and sharing with others. You long for a better future for the Earth and her species. Maybe you’ll like to develop new sides of yourself that you haven’t had the opportunity of looking into before.
Guest teacher Shëkufe Tadayoni Heiberg is a writer, a publisher, a performance artist, and an activist. Shëkufe investigates her own connection to the natural world through the magic of language, ritual practices, and seed activism. By focusing on the individual seed’s life journey, she concentrates on what we can change instead of what we no longer can. A part of this investigation consists of building a practice of perceiving all living species as equals and to observe plants, not as a scenery for our lives, but as the mere foundation for all living beings.
Guest teacher Maya Sialuk Jacobsen is a Greenlandic-Danish researcher, and both a tattoo and visual artist. She is the brain and hands behind the research and tattoo project, Inuit Tattoo Traditions. As one out of few in the world, she is rediscovering a 4000-year-old tattoo practice that slowly disappeared from Greenland 250 years ago when the Danes colonized Greenland. The tattoos are part of the living and immaterial Inuit culture that has played a defining role for the survival of the Inuit communities.
THE MODULE
You wish to:
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Examine new ideals for a personal leadership
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Strengthen your voice, courage, and practice
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Know more about art and other types of knowledge, besides the rational mindset
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Get new inspiration and learn through participation
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Investigate the values of Spiritual Ecology
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Meet like-minded and build a new network
You would like to:
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Participate in all sessions – if you’re unable, you’ll notify Birgitte
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Prepare for the sessions by formulating questions for the artists, reading texts, watching videos, listening to podcasts, or other stuff (max 1 hour per meeting)
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Engage in discussions and exercises
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Set an intention of something you’d like to develop – a project, a text, a side of yourself – that the course and your fellow participants could help you with
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The structure:
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Four Zoom meetings and three meetings in Copenhagen
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Schedule and homework is shared in a Google Doc. Online meetings will be recorded and can be watched afterwards
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Slack is a communication platform for the participants
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The module contains four sessions with guest teachers and three with Birgitte
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There will be presentations of subjects, artworks, sensuous exercises, meditations, writing exercises, group reflections, sharing; music, texts, videos, and podcast
The subjects include: The need of new stories and ideals, culture anchoring, acting out of care and from the heart, new ways of organizing yourself, change of perspectives, silence and attention, confidentiality with yourself, ancestors, lost connections to the natural world and ways to reconnect, to create change for the future, courage, and radical choices.
Time and dates:
Tuesdays at 15.00 – 17.00
16 Aug online (introduction / Birgitte)
23 Aug online (Shëkufe Tadayoni Heiberg)
30 August online (Maya Sialuk Jacobsen)
6 Sep in Søndermarken, Copenhagen (follow-up / Birgitte)
13 Sep in Copenhagen / location follows (Peter Voss-Knude)
20 Sep online (Phie Ambo)
27 Sep at Birgitte’s in Valby at 15.00 – 18.00 (reflective evaluations / Birgitte)
Price: 6.000 ex VAT (for the employed)
Or 3.500 ex VAT (for the precarious or unemployed)
The course needs min 12 participants and max 35.
The course is in Danish.
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If you have any questions or would like to sign up, please call or write Birgitte:
(tel: 31147005 / email: contact(at)beinginpractice.dk).
Non-refundable payment upon registration. Refund only if the course is cancelled by Birgitte.
I am thrilled to the core about what this course has taken me through in terms of exciting perspectives on life, on nature, on how to act and be in it all. I would do it all over again in an instant.
Christina Busk, Miljøpolitisk Chef, The Danish Plastics Foundation
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The artistic angle was deeply relevant, eye-opening and fantastic – all the more so because I often, in my own practice as an exhibition architect, work with artists. One of the most important aspects of the course was the feeling of community – the sense of not being entirely alone and of finding so much inspiration for alternative ways of being in the world. A desire to walk down new paths ... and inspiration for provocative, mind-blowing thoughts as I begin to consider specific, concrete ways for those ideas to actually enter our lives. It’s been about hope, joy and about fighting many new fights, which will be exciting, deeply relevant, and absolutely challenging.
Architect & Scenographer
Through inspiring presentations from artists as well as stimulating reflections and discussions, Birgitte creates a very special space in her ‘Being in Practice’ course. It has shown me how important and right it is to be inspired by art and nature. To hone one’s senses, to become comfortable and familiar with yourself and thereby access the magic of everyday life.
Ellen Kathrine Hansen, M Arch MAA, PhD, Associate Professor
When you take part in Birgitte's course, you find yourself awash in a very special, heartfelt, poetic and loving energy. We have been challenged to listen to our innermost wisdom and yearnings so
that we remember why we are here and what is important for us to contribute to the world. Birgitte and the artists inspire us to look at our own practice, to pause and adjust your path in life. You quite simply become a better and happier person by being in the company of brave people like these, who have actively taken on the task of being someone who breathes through their heart.
Hanne Frøyr, Writer
