regolith / noun / the layer of unconsolidated solid and weathered material covering the bedrock of the planet
Are you ready to look afresh at your ‘old material’, creative preoccupations and unfinished projects? Do you want to create unexpected connections in your work? Are you seeking a way of being more sustainably creative in your life?
Regolith Lab is a new metaphor for creative practice.
It is a month-long intensive creative lab for writers (and other creatives who feel it would be of value to their practices) exploring new ways of working with our old material, whether it’s unprocessed experiences, forgotten beginnings, draft poems, unfinished novels, long-remembered aphorisms, recurring dream motifs and so on. It’s called a lab because it’s about experimentation and generation.
In this completely unique workshop inspired by the vast blanket of material that covers the earth and the moon but rarely goes acknowledged or appreciated, I will guide you through creative and body-oriented techniques for working with all the glorious material that is unconsolidated, scattered and fragmented within you. We won’t be seeking immediate consolidation; instead we will reveal what is uniquely ours, explore connections between the stuff that we carry around, and seek to recharge a new nourishing substrate through which new creative life might seed. This is a new way of thinking that honours the fragments as recharger of the groundwaters and essential material for growth.
Provocations
Culturally we love what is finished and coherent, but what if we created in ways that honoured the vast amount of stuff that is raw, discarded, ignored but persistent? Therapists know that this is the good stuff!
Many creative people are anxious for new and novel ideas, but like the endless production of virgin plastics is this a sustainable way to create throughout our lives? What if we learnt to recycle our ideas more effectively and fruitfully?
Bringing things together - colliding them, braiding them, locating the unexpected side by side - has always been a way to express our idiosyncratic creativity. We are the work of years; of paying attention, noticing and remembering. What if we didn’t waste that? What if we held an intention for honouring the cosmic-scale multi-disciplinarity within us?
“Perhaps the final word then is best saved not for bedrock, or tors, or the great canyons of the world, but for humble regolith; the vast but largely hidden, unconsolidated rocky material that blankets the earth, and whose upper layer we call soil…it is through regolith that our underground aquifers are recharged with the water of life. Regolith is the essential substrate for soil development, and for all life to burrow, root and grow. The presence of this weathered material is a vital part of the global ecosystem, and a reminder of all that remains jumbled, jagged and unconsolidated in ourselves, but from which life might still improbably flourish”
A word from me:
The quote above is taken from the end of my second book, Weathering. I am a big fan of the unconsolidated stuff, both as a sedimentary geologist and an embodied psychotherapist! As a human in my middle years I have decades of creating behind me (and hopefully decades ahead) and when I survey everything I have done, I recognise that I have always been recycling material, mining the mineral seam of my persistent preoccupations, seeking to bring old stuff together in new ways. My entire body of work reflects this and most of my work today draws on that combination of old stuff weathered over time into something new. My most recent zine incorporates poems and photographs written in 2008 that I have since returned to; looking at them through the lens of the present to see how they speak to my ideas today. These fragments didn’t have a home then, but they do now. Nothing we create is ever wasted and we never know when we might want to return to it. I have a deeply held belief that we don’t honour our old stuff nearly enough; that in the very modern rush for endless novelty we overlook that which is most important to us, revealed in our recurrent fantasies, churnings, and big life questions. But when we engage with that stuff - with the ruins and tailings too - we often find some essence of ourselves that won’t quit. We might find the soul or the heart of our deepest enquiries seated in the fragmentary rubble from our previous projects (or lives!), or in the very least find that special sort of satisfaction reserved for when we get a spark of new curiosity for something we thought was done.
Outline structure:
Over the course of the month we will meet as a small group online via ZOOM for 4 x evening group lab sessions where we will learn, generate and create. This includes embodied exercises, writing tasks and teaching material.
These are complemented by 3 x morning ‘aquifer’ sessions where we will come together and create for ourselves in a shared but quiet, contemplative, solo creative space online - think of it like a silent studio space. After I have facilitated the beginning of the session, we will let our ideas pool and spend time with them gently without pressure, tinkering with them as we need to, trying things out etc. I will be working with you on my own stuff.
Throughout the lab you will be supported with additional weekly emails to help you take your exploration further and there will be plenty of recommendations for further reading offered at the beginning and the end of the lab.
In addition we will close-read a book together - a sort of mini book club - that supports our lab work, asking questions that might inform our own creative practices.
To tie it all together, a one-to-one session is included (times to be worked out individually) to discuss any ideas arising that you may want to take forward and get another pair of creative eyes on. Together, we can feel into your ideas and think through how to take them further if you think you have something new on the drafting table.
Investment:
£450
(payable in one go, or as 2 x £225 - you will be invoiced mid-way/early December)
Lab Dates:
Wednesday 20th November - Week 1 - 6-8pm (UK/GMT+0)
Aquifer Session Tuesday 26th - 10-11am contemplative & quiet co-creative lab
Wednesday 27th November - Week 2 - 6-8pm (UK/GMT+0)
Aquifer Session Monday 2nd - 10-11am contemplative & quiet co-creative lab
Wednesday 4th December - Week 3 - 6-8pm (UK/GMT+0)
Aquifer Session Monday - 9th - 10-11am contemplative & quiet co-creative lab
Wednesday 11th December - Week 4 - 6-8pm (UK/GMT+0)
One-to-Ones available throughout the Lab but finishing mid-December
PLEASE NOTE:
The main Wednesday night sessions will be recorded for participants to listen to again, however the aquifer sessions will not be recorded owing to their ‘in the moment’ nature. If you cannot make one of those sessions you will be given prompts or exercises for you to use by yourself when you get a free hour! All times are GMT+0 (London/United Kingdom)
inviting mineral thinking and granular listening
Why do this ahead of the winter?
The winter months can be a dreary time creatively. The days shorten for us in the northern hemisphere and the lack of light can leave us uninspired and lethargic. That’s OK! We don’t always have to be ‘on it’ creatively. Winter is a time of high weathering. It is also a time of percolation and decomposition. We can let it be so! But this doesn’t have to mean downing tools the whole time. Perhaps instead we bring a different ethos to creativity in this season? Now is the time to recharge the groundwater. To let ideas drip through.
This late autumn lab is a chance to not only engage peacefully with our stuff from the past more generally, but is also a chance to draw together fragments from this year. You might use the lab to sit with rubble from 2024 and see what fits together. No pressure, no fight to make it fit. Let’s just have a rummage. It’s nice to have a creative focus for the darker days.
FAQs
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An aquifer is a geological formation that stores and transmits water. It is essentially saturated rock. It is vital storage and keeps groundwater replenished. Water is an essential lubricant of life.
In our lab an aquifer is a place to come and be creative together - letting our ideas pool for a time. In the aquifer we might catch some drips or simply float about in this tiny opening in the time and space of our lives.
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This is a generative workshop lab intensive for exploring our raw material and finding new links and inspiration in older material.
It will suit writers who are interested in creating surprising and novel connections for all sorts of purposes. And for creatives for whom writing ideas and exploring in words might be part of their broader process.
It offers a method that will suit anyone, but particularly creative souls who aren't afraid to 'not know' where things are going from the outset.
It will also be of interest to those who are writing or creating for themselves - therapeutic writers or those seeking self awareness.
Memoir writers, life writers, storytellers of narrative non fiction and poets are the primary audience but you may cover all this sort of genre in your drawing and painting, photography etc. There are no rules - if you feel drawn then sign up!
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To get the most from this lab I encourage you to let loose with your creative process. Get pencils, papers, pens, paints, notebooks at the ready.
You might also be called on to access old stuff on hard drives, in drawers, in the memory bank.
I will give you some other specifics on registration so that you can get yourself ready.
For live sessions, I also advise wearing comfortable clothing as I often get participants moving in my workshops.
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This is an online lab run primarily on Zoom and via email. It is on UK time which is GMT+0. Please bear this in mind if you live in a different time zone.
The main group sessions will be recorded but the aquifer sessions are not. However if you cannot make one of those sessions I will give you prompts to work with for when you can find your own free hour.
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The investment for this lab is £450 for the month and includes weekly live sessions (recorded for catch up), weekly co-creative sessions, a one-to-one mentoring jam, and email guidance throughout the lab as well as much more!
You can pay in full or in two instalments.
I don't offer refunds except in exceptional circumstances and subject to deductions for fees already incurred. I ask you to purchase mindfully and make sure you can get the most from the dates listed. Which are all UK time/GMT+0
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Of course, why not drop me a line at ruth@whitepeakwellbeing.com and we can discuss whether this is the lab for you!