MARE 

LINKS TO CURRENT WORKSHOPS  

A NOMADIC ART SCHOOL

MARE is an ongoing experiment, a leap of faith in world building and alternative education. 
The execution of an idea first seeded in Stockholm over 10 years ago whilst I was running an experimental art space  - Konstapoteket  out of my studio space. 
This seed was then germinated during the last Conjuring Creativity conference in London when I was considering what more I could bring to the table if I wanted to  facilitate knowledge sharing and practice within Art, Esotericism and Ecology.

These seminar workshops are the first step towards forging a forked path, encouraged by initiatives such as TOMA (The Other MA) and Open School East, sourcing deep inspiration from Dartington and Schumacher College alongside other grass roots groups I’ve been involved with  along the way.  Holding an intentional awareness that we need places where enquiring academic discussion and research can co-exist alongside non orthadox theory and hands on practice regarding contemporary art/culture, magick and esotericism.  Investigating these possibilities through a lens of ecological kinship. 

One of the main motivations behind this model is a need to reconcile with cosmological ecologies, and the other biology we share the planet with, on a material and spiritual plane. With a knowledge that artists/creators and educators are often at the frontline of paradigm shifts - there has already been a shift in the forest school movement for children, started in Sweden which has recently been adopted in the UK and there are now a few university courses in Art & Ecology,  I feel that these courses are often finiancially just not viable for many and that running high quality deep dive courses is one opportunity to bring this current into our communities,  

The urge to facilitate and strengthen knowledge in these areas is birthed out of over 25 years personal experience of teaching and facilitating art, working with all ages and backgrounds, often outside of the academy.  With an inherent desire to foster space for post colonial, post capitalist learning, one which incorporates a combination of contemporary methodology and discourse in equal reverance with esoteric and magical/indigenous wisdoms.
To create a space where as artists we can re-concile lost knowledges supressed during the suposed time of Dis-enchantment.

M.AR.E has at it’s core an intention to recognise, honour and work with the entanglements of Magick, Art & Ecology through a serious of seminars and workshops, and eventual longer course.  

There is no academic goal or product outcome, rather a hope to activate and facilitate individuals to realise the potential they are capable of through their art making, and how this in turn has the potential to facilitate re-alignment, re-conciliation and co-creativity with our other than human beings and the planet.

Recognising the strength in authoring our own narrative, alongside the inherent truth in Myth when HIStory has failed us,  this school strives to practice a non patriachal, non cartesian hegemony of radical pedagogy and interspirit connectivity.


ABOUT THE FOUNDER  

Geraldine Hudson 


Working as a cross disciplinary contemporary artist with an educator background in socially engaged and therapeutic arts practice (working often with those on the margins of society) alongside early environmental activist work and my involvement in ‘counter culture’,   
Alongside being an educator I have worked both as an independent curator and for art institutions in Sweden, as well as being on various boards and art collectives.
In the past I had kept my own art practice and curatorial projects separate from my teaching work so MARE feels very freeing in the sense I am teaching a ‘curriculum I want to engage in and am eager to share with other artists.  

In relation to my own art practice, it was during my printmaking M.A  (20 years ago) when I started looking at states/philosophy of the wild, transgressions and individual freedoms in relation to the apparant human severance from other than human ‘nature’  ...  and after a a series of exhibitions which examined peripheral cultural historys in line with contemporary alienation, I began researching the land enclosures and the English Witch Trials.  This serendipitously coincided with a reacknowledgement of my own magical practice. As a way of being in the world strongly linked to the land and traditional celtic seasonal alignments. 

Living in Stockholm at the time enabled me to finally weave together these 3 strands of my self together.  I was lucky enough to meet some amazingly dedicated and inspirational artists working with magic/k, esotericism and spirituality during my time there, which gave me the courage to begin Conjuring Creativity (a series of conference events addressing art and esotericism) which was co-founded with Dr Per Faxneld. 

It was after holding the last Conjuring Creativity in London and being asked by attendees what was coming next, that I decided now is the time to take a leap of faith and assimilate my own practices with my role as an artist educator.   

If you’d like to know more abut my own art practice then please visit

https://linktr.ee/enidlareg


I welcome all dialogue and possible collaboration from any interested minds, anthropologists, artists, ecologists, esotericists, film makers, herbalists,  psychologists, teachers etc  .... all beings interested in this path and can be contacted via ghuds004@gold.ac.uk or conjuringcreativity@gmail.com

The first MARE workshops are run and facilitated by myself with the intention that the art school will evolve into a family of free lance educators sharing their passion and knowledge for artistic world building. 



M.AR.E workshops are either taught/facilitated by myself, at times with other practitioners both academic and creative who are all experts in their individual field.

The longer school course includes different guest tutors/practitioners