Cultivating Joy: Finding and Sharing the Joyous Stories of Conservation Work (Workshop)

Together with Rhiannon Gallagher and Jennifer Childs from Parents for the Planet, the group will create a series of posters documenting conservation processes with their full range of joyous moments. This cultivation practice will hone important skills that we can use when the work gets overwhelming. As a group, you will create a common list of processes to work from. Then you will describe moments within each process that represent five kinds of joy: Accomplishment, Creativity, Presence, Connection, and Gratitude. You will learn to understand how these thoughts, feelings and emotions are not things that are, or that you have, but things that you do. That gives everyone more control over their optimism and wellbeing than we might think. The group will learn how to best tell those stories using language that resonates and influences. The workshop will end up with a collective visual poem across multiple posters, a tribute to the complexity and joy of conservation work.