Dancing in the Ashes

When the lives and worlds we planned for fall apart, how do we keep moving with grace and curiosity? Dancing in the Ashes is ten’s biannual grassroots fundraising campaign. Our efforts at rallying resources this season are fueled by our recent experience at Liquid Cartographies — ten's long-awaited seasonal festival in Red Hook, Brooklyn. As a result of the Beard Street Pier fire on the night before we were to begin, the festival transformed into an emergent celebration of the magic in the minor and of the power of community solidarity and reciprocity.

During this season, we are also learning how to care for the closing and decomposition of An Infection, our translocal common-wealth of bewilderment. The communal aspect of ten’s work is fundamental and we know  we wish to support some kind of grassroots, translocal learning community in the future — but we are taking the time that we need to let this aspect of our work have a good death before we begin to sense into what comes next. 

Since our inception, The Emergence Network has been asking the question: are the ways we’re currently responding to the crises of our times part of those very crises? After a decade of inquiring, we can pretty assuredly say, “Yes. Many times we feed the overculture even in our attempts to fix intractable problems, catalyze social change, or attain some ultimate sense of peace or justice.” Our first in-person seasonal festival offered us a powerful opportunity to find out what’s on the other side of that question. We practiced living emergence in a situation that was devastatingly disappointing and simultaneously full of creative place-based experiments to support people to perceive commonly-held concepts differently. As we hospice one cycle of our work and compost what’s ready to decompose, we’re also nurturing the seeds of what wants to emerge next. 

This season, we invite you to support us in staying open to joy, experimentation, and renewal — learning to dance, together, in the ashes of what was and the questions of what might be.

*Note: if you’d prefer to make a tax-deductible donation to a 501(c)3 in the United States, please give via every.com here: https://www.every.org/oceurope/f/dancing-in-the-ashes