Moving With...

Abstract

The Moving With… Project is concerned with connection, to Self, to Other, to Environment. It is a dance film, made and directed by Jonny Randall, produced and facilitated by Lucy Nicholson Tracking a series of dance walks between mother and son that use the principle of Ecosomatics; opening a dialogue between the multisensory body and the ecology it is part of; each supporting the other, as Collard-Stokes tells us, ‘Ecosomatic dance involves moving in ways that emphasize the body's connection to the natural world.’ (2024:1) The film has since screened at 5 film festivals, winning the Osprey Best Short Film Award. The film depicts the development into a participatory project across Cumbria and North Lancashire, the working with 8 partner organisations and schools, delivering workshops to nearly 300 people. The originality in this project lies in bringing an ecosomatic perspective into a climate education context with young people. Nurturing a care, connection and empathy with their immediate environment through bodily awareness, movement analysis, improvisation and artwork. Research tells us that a ‘curricular focus on scientific facts of climate change needs expansion, not least because teaching facts alone can increase young people’s feelings of helplessness and hopelessness (Ojala, 2012, 2015) which can lead to climate anxiety and apathy (Galway & Field, 2023; Ojala, 2013 in Greer et all, 2023 : 37). The somatic approach of this project aims to develop, through Kinaesthetic Empathy a care for climate whilst also supporting young people’s wellbeing and maintaining joyful engagement with the subject.