====== 2022 Themes ======

===== Arcadian Rhythms =====
Why are we doing this?

So I wanted to explore that liminal space – you know the one I mean. The one that is hard to currently bridge, perhaps even to talk about. We seem to have decided to divide up the world into the white-coated lab science info with its gleaming surfaces and conservatively dressed scientists and those who embrace their pagan nature with its dancing wildly in a wood and distrust of the establishment, with it becoming ever more difficult to reconcile the two. And yet, despite this divide, it still doesn’t seem to be working for us. Which makes us think at ALSO, is there another way – can we respect, trust and love those giants of science and all that they have given us whilst enjoying the benefits of connecting with our animal selves in nature and of nature? For full disclosure when I first read about circadian rhythms I thought it was something akin to a suggestion for feeling more at ease with yourself – a bit like chakras or soothing tea – vaguely eastern appropriated for our western palate or some kind of deep mystical inheritance from millennia ago. And it is in a way. They are our inheritance certainly from our earlier past but every living thing still has a circadian rhythm. It responds to the times of the day, so it does matter when you eat, sleep and move wildly because at different times of the day our bodies want to focus on certain things, and like a badger returning to its original set – it will not be pushed easily off course.
 
So circadian rhythms for me, for ALSO, are perhaps the greatest example of where hard lab-based science and the mystical-magical natural animal world intersect and so we wanted to take a good look at this as one of our big themes for ALSO22.
 
Our big themes are the superstructure of the ideas in the festival; we are a next-generation ideas festival so ideas are threaded through all that we do for our guests in the field. We aim to provide through our work and our scheduling and our programming and our research to get to you - whatever path you chose through the festival and however you want to ALSO with us (hard or soft, fully engaged or letting it wash over you) or anything in-between – many interesting ways of experiencing the themes. We think you will bump up against these big themes, and this one, Circadian in Arcadia is an easy theme for us to help you explore.
 
Just being with us in the field, outside is enough to feel your ‘circadians’ gently resetting. You don’t need to do anything to be able to let them respond positively to being away from artificial lights and the artificial world we have chosen to inhabit for comfort and ease. Your animal self, however, remembers and responds to the different demands of moving your home to ours for this one weekend in July. Most people camp and most tents can’t keep out the natural lights. it is likely most of you will wake or respond to first light. If you come to the festival from home or stay at a nearby hotel – keep the curtains open – be awake for all the light of those days in July. Believe us when we say just two days with us will have an effect on your CRs and it is perhaps the easiest way for us to make you feel like your ALSO experience with us has been transformative.
 
If you’re here for the big scientific facts of this idea then look no further – have we got the right speaker for you. Joy of joys – Russell Foster – neuroscientist – Numero Uno in the world of understanding our circadian rhythms is with us with ‘Life Time’. Yes, understanding once and for all what they are, what they do and how working with them can enhance our lives and bring joy and practicality into those days when they can’t be our main focus.
 
We will be going deeper, giving many chances to embody this idea – take Russell’s double talk and understand it further and deeper, take one of many CR friendly classes in the morning or allow plenty of opportunities to celebrate the animal in you – and celebrate the things you share with every animal on the planet. Explore rhythm of life of days of the drums with our wildly fabulous music and dance programme – and of course, we’ll be celebrating rhythm In as many musical ways as possible. Try sleep engineering or listen to Max Richter, use Sarah McCartney’s Scent Tent to enhance the natural world of sleep.
 
Or conspire against them as you know that you can – fight the need to sleep at night by an incredible night-time programme of sessions, as ALSO presents its ‘Nocturnes’ a night-time series of nature-inspired walks, workshops and interactive sessions to help you explore the hidden side of your nature at night.

===== Ch ch ch changes. =====
 
We wanted to have at our very core a realistic, attainable, positive strand of sustainability at ALSO22. It could be hidden, it didn’t have to be overt, we have long been influenced by Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics – she won our ideas prize (The Transmission Prize) in 2014 and her work has now been adopted by so many places and cities (Amsterdam and Copenhagen to name but two). If you have any responsibility for place in your influence we heartily recommend her work. And in the background of ALSO please know we are reforming the shape of us to deliver and design ALSO along the guidelines of the doughnut, and you can rest assured within the bones of ALSO is repair, reuse, renew. We have built ALSO by hand – we literally carry everything into the festival we use so we don’t want any waste. We feel the best use of our time is doing deep work with doughnuts behind the scenes rather than paying a marketing company to shout about what we’re doing on social media, but we wanted you to know...we are trying to solve how we use power in site, and we’d like to do something on Doughnut Economics in-festival for those of you who want to go deeper but actually our main thrust of programming for sustainability is in a totally different direction…
 
So our ambitions are to look at sustainability in a way that touches all of us and that all of us can pick up in the festival an idea or two to take back into our lives that could be transformative. So to hit our ambitions, of course, we hand to look at clothes. I hear the alpha males groan but allow me to seduce you into my thinking. Clothes feel silly as a way to look at the climate emergency, but it allows us to look at the subject through a filter that affects all of us, it gives us range, and it allows us to play to one of our core strengths – playfulness, and it means all of us in the field can be transformed without being overwhelmed and finally it provides the perfect hanger (GEDDIT) to consider our use of the planet’s materials. We hope by asking everyone to take a look at what’s in their closet - at what they wear and why – we hope we’ll provide a way for everyone who chooses to be part of ALSO to change what they are wearing.  It’s probably our most adult theme of ALSO, largely because when it comes to sustainability you could argue that the longer you’ve been on the planet the deeper your relationship with it – perhaps even the more you love it, so this theme is really for those old enough to buy their own clothes, and to be cognisant enough to have an emotional relationship with clothes (oh my god – what was I thinking wearing that?, I wish I was confident enough to wear that, I can’t throw that away because I bought that for that.) There will be complimentary sessions for our young but we want those who buy their clothes to buy into this theme in particular. Also, clothes and dressing up is fun, and yet this industry has a troubled soul. But this is an easy climate/planet/resource emergency to solve. Alpha males – it matters where you buy your fleeces! We know via the work we have done at ALSO and our sister organisation Salon London that the clothes that we wear make the production of clothes the fifth most polluting industries on the planet (via Mark Maslin).
  
We understand we are all still somewhere between tired and knackered and overwhelmed and concerned if we will ever get back to life as it was before – we have been through something together on the scale of which no one else alive has been and it is a lot. My point is – this is a way we can all look into how we can help our planet, immediately, drastically, and we all wear clothes so we can do it. To help we will offer so many chances across the weekend to get involved, to consider the way you dress, acquire and wear your clothes. From workshops to talks to a full-on fashion show (want to be involved – get in touch) – we want all who dress themselves to have a truly transformative epiphany in the fields of ALSO and one that comes with no stress, no angst, no worry – just truly celebratory. 
 
And if we can change all of that and make a lot of people and a lot of animals happy in doing so – and we will offer in-festival the tools to create this – I mean - what could be more ALSO? And it all begins with what you decide to wear.
 
So are you in? Have I interested you? Want to know more about how this theme will thread through our programming?
 
We are being helped by Orsola de Castro (founder of Fashion Revolution, author of Loved Clothes Last) who will be on the main stage to give us the information we need the bedrock of this idea, and in a double talk to go deeper for the many people we have in site who do love clothes and want to go deeper. We are also in collaboration with Lauren Bravo for the fashion show. Lauren is a sustainable fashion writer and wrote the brilliantly instructive How to Break Up with Fast Fashion and our fashion show (working title: ‘Darling Can you Walk?’) will be showcasing so many ways to explore your best self via excellent new ideas for redefining your relationship with clothes. Fashion designer and textile visual artist, Osman Yousefzada is in the field talking about the role clothes played in his fascinating life, and our Saturday night theme for clothes is wear-that-thing-in-your-wardrobe-you-love/makes you feel fabulous-but-don’t-wear. Why not wear it in the field with pride (and appropriate footwear for a field and something warm for later).
 
Dress yourself in flowers, or dress yourself in perfume – we have the first-ever Scent Tent from Sarah McCartney, founder of perfume brand 4160Tuesdays in the field with so many ways of using scent as a way to communicate with others about the person you are….

Want to be involved? It takes a team of volunteers to run a fashion show. Want to try your hand at being a stylist, dressers, makeup artists, hair artists, set dressers, and models to make it work? Explore your highest fashion self, dig deep into your creativity, categories swirling around as potentials for groups of cat walkers are masculinity now, action wear that isn’t depressing, look what I got pre-loved, look at my second hand/swapped find, perhaps a ski Sunday segment - and why yes we are open to suggestions. A hugely inclusive big piece of programming from the tweens and above means everyone is invited to get involved or come watch our runway radicalism.

===== I move because I must… ======
 
I move because I must. The easiest of all themes to deliver because if any of our guests go anywhere over the weekend or even lift a finger then we’ve delivered it! Rejoice!!!
 
Well not so fast – of course there’s a little more to it than that – it’s ALSO after all. This theme is actually building on two themes that we have explored in earlier years at ALSO. Most of us in the field like to dance, or move – mainly to music, from the easiest of two-steps to our incredible dance workshops from bhangra to contemporary, Charleston to conga, we have constantly since the very beginning provided many, many ways to move what nature gave you, and we aren’t going to stop now. Our music programming is dance-friendly of course, we have DJs on the core team and as long as we breathe and do ALSO we’ll be encouraging everyone to dance, dance, dance.
 
Why? I’ll come on to that. But it’s more than liking it – to dance, for ALSO it’s an essential not dispensable. Whether we started to dance way back when because it made us look like a huge unpredictable many-legged creature to scare off predators or whether we did it to shake us out of unwanted states of mind or as part of the early spiritual ritual, we don’t know. But we did start dancing and it’s one of those things like language and music that turns up again and again and again in nearly every early culture as something we did. We existed and we danced.
 
And who are we to argue with that? But the main reason this is one of the big themes is because to move can be a shortcut to connection and joy. ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the big meta INSPOs for ALSO (available in the ALSO bookshop?). But the contradiction with dance is that if you don’t do it or if you left it behind, filed it away under things you don’t do or grown out of it or forgotten how or don’t stumble over enough opportunities to do it, we can help. We like to provide many, many opportunities to move, for you to use your body to move, to turn, run, lunge, jump, jack, lock your body in any way you want to throughout the weekend. We learnt from Caroline Williams in 2021 that when it comes to our mental health, movement is medicine – and from Phil Hammond at ALSO Twixtmas that if movement was medicine doctors would prescribe it as much as possible for as long as possible. Then this September - working through poet Yrsa Daley Ward’s book The How I read her words ‘I move because I must, I move because I must, I move because I must’. Her words felt so right for what I was thinking - and don’t they make this irresistible double entendre, or is it a triple entendre? Either way – excellent work because it is with her words that we can build upon all the previous years’ work and development of dance at ALSO and the work that we have done to get new ideas about moving to our guests. And perhaps using her words as the beginning of movement for 2022 will make this theme the easiest, the biggest and the boldest idea we can all grapple with in the field and learn or experience something to take back into our lives to make our lives broader, bolder and more beautiful. And so this became one of our big six themes for 2022.
 
Do you know Dr Dance? Peter Lovatt – the neuroscientist of dance – don’t worry – he’s booked on the main stage and whatever your relationship with dance, go to this and you will dance. Try not to if you want – but I don’t fancy your chances. If you’re new to ALSO and want a gentle introduction to how ideas can get into your life then this is a fabulous place to start…and because we’re not playing at this…we want you to do more, be more, go further, go deeper, bend, stretch, turn, change – you must remember how demanding ALSO can be if you give it the slightest chance…our themes have to exist on all kinds of levels from the tiniest tots that move to music we no longer hear to those who haven’t danced for half a century the theme should call to you…
 
…so….
 
…we work with a number of choreographers and will continue to do so – we do thread through choreography in a number of our sessions and don’t think we’ll stop doing it. We may have a big piece of participatory dance session for you, join in, or if you’ve got your own dance moves that need an audience try our ALSO All Stars on the main stage Saturday early evening.
 
I have to pay tribute to our many dance floors, and invite you to think about being on them literally travelling across them – we have so many dance venues and so many venues that transform into dance floors as night falls. Did you know that dancing on the earth is so beneficial for your mind, your brain, your health and happiness – please know that as you dance across them. Or join a class or book a workshop in something that you wouldn’t normally do, perhaps something that would surprise your friends, that you have long wanted to do, that you think will help your mind think new thoughts. What will we do? Many ideas are in play at the moment. Do you, like us, secretly yearn to be a clown, to learn the Charleston, learn Double Dutch, to take your stretching in a deeper direction, join a cheerleading troupe, get in the water, practise your synchronised swimming, take a nature swim, take yoga lakeside in the morning, or in the forest in the afternoon, or by the fire at night or forget yoga for the weekend, take a 5k run, a 5k historical run, explore the whole site on a 10k run or drift down to the floating stage and take Qi Jong or Pilates…the more you do, the more you book on, the more adventurous we will be with this programming and the more it will inform the programming that will come in future years, the more it will inform your future relationship with us.
 
Consider the programme like an invitation to move your body in as many ways as you can over the weekend. You move because you must – we are diminishing its power to pretend that this is optional for us as humans as animals. We move because we must.

===== Gods and Monsters =====
 
Our final theme for 2022 moves us into the mythological realm (or does it matter as old friend of ALSO Philippa Perry says myths are true) but as you wrestle with that I’m going to argue that this is perhaps the one I want to do the most. Encoded into ALSO is this ambitious desire to be constantly on the search for a structure that allows us to stay exactly the same in terms of the deep architecture for delivery but to change pretty much every other element in terms of what we deliver to our audience. Never the same thing twice – although what the dazzling and different hangs off should be replicable. One way we have sought to do this, when it works and it sometimes doesn’t, is to work with talent who are amenable to it and to grow in the direction that they want to grow. Our greatest example of this is rock star classicist, Natalie Haynes who has been in our corner since the beginning - perhaps understanding the ambitions we had to make the clever entertaining and the entertaining interesting. Most authors we can’t work in-depth with in this way because they don’t have a book each year to bring but then again most authors aren’t Natalie Haynes. So as she moves towards the publication of her next book – she’s kind of had a hand in the design of this theme. Her next book is about Medusa – her agent described it as bringing Medusa into the light – I know – beautiful, right and Medusa is there in Pandora’s Jar – Natalie’s last book, which we discussed in 2020 in theory and design and in reality in 2021. We love to work this way with our talent (when they will let us) and to go on part of their journey with them – or at least be part of it.
 
So this year’s Saturday Night parade (working title: Raising Medusa) is dedicated to this goddess and aims to do in a literal family-friendly festival ‘moment’ way what Natalie has been doing in her novel – to restore Medusa to the beauty and life she had before she was monstered. We want her lit – we want her out of the shadows. Ideally, we will have a statue version of her deep in the woods where people can go to give thanks (for whatever) or to wish (for whatever) and that statue – and leave tribute (or more likely electric tea lights) for we have all learnt that you do not approach a goddess empty-handed - and that statue will come alive for the procession. She was monstered by one of the gods for basically nothing and then again by the Victorians (it seemed) who like to use any of the classical gods to spread bile and spleed about the roles of women in society, which has been handed down to us. So anyone who wants to can join us at dusk at the lake stage, there will be the usual (and more) lantern workshops in festival to help create lanterns to guide the littlest ones and to create huge animal (real and mythological sea creatures) to accompany Medusa on her way. There will be opportunities to draw your own Gorgoneia on shields and we together with the Tribo Brazilian drummers will walk Medusa through the site along the banks of the lake at sunset and a good time will be had by all, including her…because we don’t have to accept the Victorian’s idea of history or myth or gods – we are free to change it because myths are true – remember.
 
Want to be involved in the design/delivery – email us, yeah?
 
Talking of truth and myth we will be going further into the role of myth and legend in the most glorious kind of Christianity vs. the classics battle as Natalie Haynes and Catherine Nixey (author of Heretic, Savoir, Lover, Killer – the many lives and deaths of Jesus Christ) on why we need gods and monsters at all. What a trip. On the main stage don’t miss it…
 
And talking about (great segue here) they who hold the pen writes the history we’re going to be looking firmly in the face of the future of news. It’s been a tricky time for the contract between we the people and the news in the last few years. What is the role for journalists – what is the future of their industry – what is the future for us and our relationship with news in the age of many broadcast platforms. Alan Rusbridger (he off of the Guardian) is on the stage to give all of us (journalists and consumers) a future we could all be working towards, and welsh wonder Catrin Nye brings her big debate back to the main stage. 

===== Getting Out of Your Head =====
 
The most knowing of all the themes and perhaps the one that is easiest to understand when it comes threaded through a music festival. But wait! There’s more to it than that – it’s our way of sneaking up on mental health and this I think is our big theme about mental health (I know why would we separate it out, because it’s all about mental health isn’t it? Or so it’s occurring to me as I disappear down rabbit holes for hours on ends reading, thinking, questioning, changing, talking to people, desiring to know more.) To paraphrase the old saying of the 50s ‘well at least you’ve got your mental health’ seems like something to offer thanks for (and we all know how powerful gratitude is for mental health) but we’ll be trying to take it much deeper that you will normally find in a festival – we want to try to look at what a neurodivergent society can look like, what does that even mean and if it’s even possible or desirable – it’s time to find out more. Yes, lads – we’re trying difficult nuance – but I promise it will be pain-free.
 
In fact, we want to take a tour around the whole idea of diagnosis. We will have an eagle-eyed view of this from a psychiatric point of view as we welcome off his psychiatrist’s chair bounced straight onto the main stage, eminent psychiatrist Alastair Santhouse. Yes, he will explore the most important part of our health perhaps – our state of mind. What about the kids? We have Lucy Fowlkes who’s bravely tackling this other area of nuance in diagnosis as she considers from the question of difficulty in diagnosis – what do the kids want, how can it be improved, how are we talking about mental health, are we even talking about it in the right way. Are we, you know, people like us, good people, part of the problem (gasp!). Does diagnosis, help, hinder, help with nuance, help those diagnosed, help their families and friends, help with the person diagnosed and wait while this is all happening for so many, many people, could this feed into a more neurodivergent society? Or is that WAY too simple? We shall find out. We could even have Love Island medical-mental-health-mega celeb back in the field to talk in a hidden session on his take and perhaps flanked by his Mum and her knitting for mental health charity, you never know.
 
We are bringing Pragya Agarwal back, I guess my thinking was she last year seemed to be the star, I think she helped us all to get some perspective on our own heads and our own confusing and having been confused negotiation of a new understanding of race and bias that we needed. For this alone she is going to win Salon London’s Transmission Prize (in our 10th year!) and we are going to for reasons of expediency and potential UK lockdown in early 2022 going to have the prize-giving award in-festival. How this will work is dependent on what we have to grapple with nearer the time – but she is in this strand because she helped the most people get out of their heads and into a new mindset. Go PRAGYA! She will also be presenting her new work (world exclusive, lads) which is to look at how attached we are to gendered representation of emotions, so she has put her incredible behavioural economist brain on to that field.
 
We have all had a lot thrown at us, so much, too, too much. And did we give ourselves time to process the trauma of life as we know it being turned upside down? I worry we didn’t. I worry we ran full pelt back into what we did before impatient with our minds, our memories and our anxieties that they wouldn’t just snap into shape as we needed them to be in. Maybe I’m wrong – maybe it’s just me (in which case relief) – maybe processing this as trauma is not a word you would ascribe to your experience of the previous two years – but just in case and if you’re sure that’s not you - I’m sure you’ve heard the tale of trauma being held in the body – so with both these thoughts in mind we have invited to the field Jennifer Wild (Go Wild for Prof Wild) via Oxford University to talk about both (and also she has written a book on the psychological secrets of being extraordinary – go ask her – I’ve read it and it’s too exhausting for me – but go for it).
 
So before we head over to the Rum Shack and the Northern Bar and other more conventional – more enjoyed by generations ways of getting out of your head, we will be laying other ideas in front of you for your delectation to see if they contain for you a spark of interest.
 
Anthropologist in the house! We need to get along – get out of our own heads and into others – not our words but if ever I’ve seen a book title coming towards us that we need it’s probably this one: How To Live With Each Other: An Anthropologist's Notes on Sharing a Divided World. He’s Farhan Samanani, he’s young, he’s Oxford-educated and he lives in Europe – he’ll be there to tell us why and how and it all starts with him. 
 
Anthropology not your thing (are you sure, do you know?)? Don’t worry – we have ways of making you feel our big ideas. Good news looks like breath is BIG for 2022, so we will do as many sessions as we can to see how it helps us to get out of our heads - why not see what your breath could be doing better for you. Perhaps it can turbocharge your health, or your resilience or failing that can it help you get into the lake water – we have Caroline Saxon (Champion Ice Queen of the Water) on hand to help. And breathe.
 
Can you prime yourself for an adventure? Always a fabulous way to get out of your head and if there was a neuroscientist of adventure they would surely say we are suffering from a deficit in our adventuring. So we are so pleased to ensure we can help you think about your relationship with adventure and how to plan one from going to listen to Belinda Kirk (outdoors adventure, supremo, author of Adventure Revolution: The life-changing power of choosing challenge, founder of the Big Night Out) or if you literally want to get all the stuff out of your head then why not write it all down with Cathy Rentzenbrink – the UK’s most superb teacher of memoir writing. She can help you sift through all that is uniquely yours and to transform it into story.  One of many ways to use your voice in-festival – which we always encourage – could this be the year choirs come roaring back with a vengeance, and talking of things we hope Juliet R will be involved with – please don’t miss Jeffrey Boakye’s Musical Truths on the history of modern black music in 28 songs with our own Juliet in the chair – a huge piece for us….

===== Travelling to a Higher Consciousness / Travel to a Higher Consciousness / Travels in Hyper Consciousness. ======
 
(Or the essence of being human)
 
Human consciousness (or even animal, plant or mineral consciousness I think) is hard to understand – even for those august experts, authors and academics we often have in the ALSO field. In fact, so difficult is the consciousness understanding area of academia that sits within psychology and neuroscience is that explaining it is known as ‘the hard problem’ which is exactly why we waited until year nine to grapple with it. Boom, boom.
 
And ALSO because we knew that Anil Seth’s book was coming at us and we had been talking to him about bringing his work Being You: The New Science of Consciousness to ALSO in 2022. And we are so grateful that next year he is doing exactly that…
 
Perhaps you already think it’s a hard enough problem being you? Do you? Or perhaps you’ve casually thought at times that the hard problem of being you has made you you?  Do you seek a scientific explanation of your consciousness or crave new, broad, and fabulous paths to hook up with your own higher consciousness? We want there to be many, many ways to celebrate this theme and they will be beautifully woven through the programming. 
 
Let’s start with a definition (a very good place to start), so what is higher consciousness? Well, Wikipedia (the modern-day Oracle, innit) defines it as part of the human mind that can transcend animal instincts.
 
Not often experienced at a UK festival but we’re ambitious at ALSO.
 
A lot of our guests come to ALSO to get the big ideas, and even if that isn’t you, I really recommend Anil’s main stage talk - he’s a world renowned neuroscientist - with 20 years of experience working and researching at the neuron-face of the brain, and he is at ALSO to put forward a radical new theory of consciousness and self. All you have to do to understand it is to sit back and relax as you stresslessly find out what we know, what we don’t know and what we will know about being you…
 
And if you’re also at ALSO for all the many ways we explore our main themes, why not give a big talk a go this year. How many chances do you get in life to consider your own consciousness from the comfort of a Capability Brown sculpted site, with the summer grass under your feet, a mug of tea in your hand, your eyes becalmed by a beautiful lake view.
 
Want to deeper with this theme? Take the double talk. These seminar-type sessions are for the keen ideas types in the field or maybe the expert, academic author is someone who’s work you hold close to your heart. Go along – get the chance to go deeper. Don’t write I love you on your eyes though – unless you really want to…
 
And when you’ve got your brain cells round consciousness, in a talk way, you might feel the urge to understand deeper, stronger, differently better. Who are we to say how you want to understand this subject and it’s because consciousness is not a scientific subject that we can master that makes it such a good theme for us all to grapple with in the field. As Max Planx said ‘science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature because we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery we are trying to solve”, or channel John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John from Grease and feel your way.
 
So we aim to have many opportunities to travel to our higher consciousness if it is at all possible. But we want you to get into the idea of higher consciousness in more of a bodily way. Because if you come to ALSO just for the big talks you’re missing out on lots of chances to find out much more about the ideas, yourself and everything in the planet.  
 
We’ll programme opportunities to try to tap into your higher consciousness. This is not by its nature something easy to define. This part of the festival is not about definitions but ways to try to travel to it. Connections with your highest consciousness are by their very nature fleeting, ethereal moments so chase that high. Think of ALSO as a provider of new pathways to your higher mind – the one of love, kindness and universal sympathy. 
 
What am I talking about…..ideas under construction at the moment include – having a go at sleep engineering….seek out the opportunities to explore the opportunities to travel to your inner self. Try the walks and the forest – give gratitude to our goddess Medusa, try to grasp a moment or two of your higher consciousness using the force of the natural setting. Go gonging, take part in a morning gong-o-clock, see if sound works for you. We may have monks beaming in for a guided meditation. Did you know the definitive essay on consciousness is called ‘What it is Actually Like to be a Bat’ by Thomas Nagel – so we will, in homage to this essay, be putting on a number of bat walks with our very own bat man. We might have Richard Norris working his electronic mind magic, we might get Tangled with DJ/author Justin Robertson – he wants us to consider our pagan self, as does author Catherine Nixey, Salena Godden could help us glimpse our divine with her poetry performance – we may spring up a Labyrinth to help ALSOers access their inner knowledge their deep divine by walking the labyrinth with a question you need answering. It might be possible to ascend to your higher consciousness by using your breath – we’d like to offer astral projection for beginners. You can disappear into the sublime of our woods – commune with nature, take a self-guided nature walk, take a highly guided tree walk, bathe in our forest bath (we’ll be asking Richard Powers to advise us what to say to a tree), submerge yourself in lake water, dance in the forest or take part in our specially commissioned ALSO Pilgrimage designed by pilgrimage expert Guy Stagg who will use that age-old practise dedicated to the divine to see if we can benefit in the secular world by going on one. 
 
There are many ways to get to grips with your higher consciousness. Good luck and if not there’s always the Rum Shack, dancing in the shade of the trees on the roots and the land is a sure fire way to make it – even without a Dark and Stormy.