Deep Ecology Installations, Education, & Nature Rights Advocacy Work
We work with individuals and organizations to create installations, courses, experiences, curriculum and frameworks that bring to light the wisdom that non-human systems have been offering for millennia.
Together, alongside your specific project needs & intentions, we create work that brings awareness to interconnectivity, adaptation and our responsibility to exist and create in equilibrium with the Earth’s systems.
Weaving Interdependence
Adapting research on the behavioral impact of gratitude practices for promoting ecological interconnectedness
These practices are one of the foundational elements of Grounded In Motion. They are based on deep ecology principles, embodied educational experiences, and contemplative visualisation techniques. They have been integrated into academic settings, cultural installations, and retreat programs. The essence of Weaving Interdependence is built around a reflection and inquiry of how we have been offered from nature/plants/soil/water an essential and irreplaceable input which sustains our processes of living. These projects are blueprints for the culture we wish to see evolving, the culture we are creating, the ‘yes’ of what is possible versus what we are against when it comes to a culture of sustainability. This work has been cocreated and developed with Chris Egger, a behavioral and social scientist whose work draws on both contemporary scientific understandings of the world and contemplative practices to promote individual, collective and ecological flourishing.
Cultivating Mycelium Awareness
Soundscape designed to accompany visual
installations focused on the value of mycelium
An installation created to evoke wonder and an appreciation for our planet’s biodiversity and our humble place within it. In collaboration with Berlin based artist Celeste and Argentinian guitarist Federico Diaz it aims to enmesh visitors in thousands of hand cut images of flora and fauna, a reminder that we are all inextricably connected to the larger web of life. The artworks serve as gathering spaces for reconnection and healing so we may find our place as stewards of life. “As we forge plans for expensive carbon capture technologies, we destroy soil ecosystems that do this work more effectively.” This collaboration is a celebration of the wisdom of the soil and its underground networks. The soundscape and pedagogical workshop were designed to strengthen the relational tissues of our movements for justice and ecological healing, involving contemplative practices, writing exercises and moments of silent walking to give space for eco grief and joy.
Contemplating Science Course
Scholar in residency at Harvard to teach contemplative science to engineering students
“Contemplating Science” is a course that presents engineering students with a unique learning environment based in contemplation and ecology. Through embodied experiences/(something else)?. students explored alternate ways of knowing and being. As they reflected on the impact of their work in the light of ecological frameworks, they brought more nuanced and clarified awareness to the ethical, social and environmental considerations in their industry and field of design. The course paves the path for conscious and ethical engineers that will design in symbiosis with the world around them. Interested in developing a similar course for your university or program? Click here.
Educating for Sustainability
Developing a mission and educational framework for United World Colleges Costa Rica
This collaboration between Grounded in Motion and the international school network United World Colleges centres on designing and articulating the school’s mission and framework, aiming to develop UWC into a strong and innovative force in the Sustainability Education space. The framework emphasises a strong sense of place, a deep understanding of landscape, and the connection between education and its local geography, thus allowing students to become stewards of the Earth.
Elle Respire
Soundscape composed as a love letter to Earth’s unpaved soil
Composed and written during the early months of the pandemic. This piece speaks to the despair of an Earth struggling to breathe as we cover her in concrete and paved roads. It aims to remind us of how mother Earth witnesses our existence over time, and remembers our stories of joy and sorrows. It elicits how each blade of grass and other non-human beings hear and listen while reminding us of the fluidity of her existence. The letter has been examined in educational settings to guide students in elevating ecological consciousness, aimed at feeling into our interconnectivity with the natural world and the aliveness of sentient beings.
“Our voices are recorded and captured in the blades of grasses and shrubs, les couleurs de nos peurs - one wave after the next offering her seasons, hearing and holding our ancestors.” - a very brief extract from a piece composed and written to highlight the Earth’s breath. “Elle Respire” is spoken in recognition of all the places the Earth offers refuge, but also the ways in which we are restricting her breath, suffocating her terrain and covering her pores in concrete.
Curriculum designed to cultivate empathy for
soil using Elle Respire soundscape
After the piece was written and composed it was used in various educational curricula to raise awareness for Nature Rights and to deepen youth programs that are empowering the next generations to act as guardians of rivers and wetlands. The piece was also featured in a rituals of reciprocity retreat in Northern Michigan co-created by Grounded In Motion and Bear Earth Herbals.
Lake Affects Art
Built a network of geographically minded artists to reinforce a celebration of Northern Michigan’s landscape
This community project compiled and centralised artistic works from the northern Michigan shores of the Great Lakes, as well as artist interviews about their relationship with the land and waters. Through the artist’s work and an analysis of the materials and colours used, the project exposed the relationship between artist and the local lakes and forests, exploring the symbiosis of the two. This carefully curated database was then used for curricula in alternative schools and presented at local galleries to raise awareness around geographical ties between native art forms and ecosystems.
Practices for Human Nature Relationships
Co-Facilitated symposium on shaping pro-environmental motivations for the Mind and Life Institute
Environmental influencers have long struggled to design interventions that promote long-lasting behavior change in individuals, and that can help create the social and political willingness to enforce stronger actions that could prevent climate change and the further destruction of ecosystems. Evidence shows that contemplative practices positively affect pro-sociality, but less is known about their impact on pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). This symposium was created to explore how contemplative practices might shape pro-environmental motivations and behaviors and what actions can be taken to see student consciousness shift over time. It brought together a team of scholars and practitioners from various disciplines and methodological angles ̶ neuroscience, environmental psychology, social studies education ̶ to offer insights into the topic from three research perspectives as well as practical experience. Co-create your symposium with us. Get in touch.
Deep Ecology Immersive
Ten-day deep ecology immersive retreat in Braulio Carrillo National Park, designed for UWC
This ten-day program is a nature-immersion experience offered to High School and University students at the Braulio Carrillo National Park in Costa Rica. In this program participants explore human-land relationships, local indigenous ceremonial ecology and community engagement. The methodology integrates Deep Ecology principles, sensory ways of knowing, contemplative practices, biodiversity metrics and systems thinking, among others. This program places UWC Costa Rica at the forefront of environmental education in the region.
Letters to the Earth
Designing learning journeys for gatherings and programs that center embodied knowing and environmental story telling.
It began with an impulse to communicate gratitude to the water and deepen our sense of place. Letters to the Earth is a project now embedded in courses, retreats, and curated installations to shift consciousness in a way that brings to the forefront our relationships with the more than human kin. To celebrate wildlife corridors and a sense of heartfelt purpose in acknowledging ecosystems as well as a visceral need to share words of reciprocal existence. Forming community through the sharing of letters is as much about the past as it is about the present and future. Writing and sharing letters of gratitude to waters and lands humble us. “Letters are radical devices because of their intimacy” thus allowing us to deepen our relationships and embodied knowing.
Balancing Hope and Fear
Collective hosted by Courage of Care on sustainable and intersectional environmental justice work
Carine Gibert of Grounded in Motion was one of 12 professionals invited to come together for three months to devise supportive tools for resilience in ecological work & climate activism. This collaborative fostered community building and collaboration between climate and racial-justice activists by engaging in contemplative practices and exploring ways in which intersectional social justice curriculum helps climate activists more deeply understand environmental justice. This group looked specifically at how ecological hazards and climate disasters have the harshest impacts on people of color, native tribes and the ways in which climate change and white supremacy are interconnected. At the end of the three months, a resource tool and course, Ecological Justice: Resourcing Climate Activists for Sustainable Environmental Justice Work, was created.
Nature Immersion Curricula, Cognitive Development, and SEL
Research collaboration on strengthening sustained attention using green space immersion with elementary school aged students
This project studies the importance of nature immersions for the development of social-emotional competencies and the balancing of hyperactivity within children. Questioning (the current indoor dominance ) and proposing the return to educational setups that incorporate academic activities that are regularly located in natural surroundings. It holds nature-based observation, activity and play as its method. In this project Carine Gibert of Grounded In Motion has paired up with neuroscientist Pooja Sahni, professor at the Indian Institute of Technology to design contemplative ecological education curricula. The curriculum focuses on cultivating a deep sense of interdependence with the natural world. . The study examines neuro-cognitive indices (inhibitory control, sustained attention and working memory) along with the behavioral observations to investigate the role of contemplative ecological pedagogy on psycho-social factors (aggression, impulsivity, sharing, respect for nature, ecosystems and non human life) as well as SEL competencies (empathy, gratitude, and self-regulation).
Relational Culture Symposiums
Panelist, Performer & Facilitator in a series of symposiums on ecological interdependence
A performer, facilitator and panelist at Courage of Care’s one day symposiums, Carine Gibert opened the Relational Care Symposium and Radical Communion Symposium with a special poem/song/performance and co-faciliated a panel called “On Belonging to Earth” alongside Rev. Dr. Melanie Harris and Cynthia Ong. As deep ecology practitioners, these symposiums offered moments to reflect on the relational tissues that make up our connections with and of nature. These gatherings lead with the following questions: What do we mean when we say the crises of our time are relational in nature? What is relational culture, and how do we build and strengthen it in the name of environmental justice and nature rights? How do we learn to encounter other sentient beings relationally, rather than transactionally? These symposium sessions offer guided practices, open discussions and activities to deconstruct what it means to live relationally and in this process heal our perception of separation from the natural world. Do you need a performer or facilitator for your event? Get in touch.