Moral Imaginations with Watchet

I am sitting and reflecting on the first full day of Moral Imaginations with the community of Watchet. It’s been so moving to be with this community, I was hosting them but in reality they were hosting me. The depth of empathy, creativity, imagination and ability to hold complexity and weave pain into beauty was awe inspiring.

Today we worked with the metaphor of the Impossible Train (https://phoebetickell.medium.com/covid-19-the-story-of-the-impossible-train-illustrated-version-c2c127978331) - moving through the steps of “warming up” the imagination and creating a space that welcomes true improvisation. Some of what came up in response to the train was shock, some of it was sadness, some of it was utterly beautiful and some of it was anger. One participant said “When I hear that story I feel angry - I’m not glad the train has stopped, I’m angry it went on for as long as it did. In fact I’m not imagining myself as a character getting off the train, I’m probably the one that started the fire”.

While we are working together and entering these deep imaginative realms, we are accompanied by music:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4uwhEB0K4gtoWGSAqxkV55

And resident Moral Imaginations artist Reilly is creating as we go:

As part of this yesterday we started by speaking about the economy, and how it could be different, and it was a conversation that just spilled and unfolded into the space, not forced or facilitated by continuing from a space and permission to speak the truth and to speak vulnerably - and our discussion on Wednesday of the how life could be different had seeded thoughts and ideas and questions in all of our minds.

Two younger participants spoke about their imagining of a ‘currency of kindness’ that was focused on giving and not hoarding. Another Watcheter spoke of money being like manure: “making a stinking heap when it’s all piled up, but spread out everywhere, it makes a fertile compost that can help a garden grow”.

Moral Imaginations Labs often end up in everyone using deeply ecological metaphors. What would an economy of Ecology look like? Another metaphor that emerged was the metaphor of the river, of a river that could gather momentum and flow and force and wash away the old ways of doing things - even the ‘sticks in the mud’ that would sometimes hold on very strongly to old, stubborn ways. Reilly again did the image we created together very good justice:

I feel lucky to have the opportunity to be with the community of Watchet and honoured to go through this process of deep imagining and sharing a powerful journey. Someone commented that we went from people shedding a tear, touching the sense of something lost, of belonging, of longing for belonging, and then to acting out sketches and skits, roleplay and a sense of lightness and humour, and forgetting the worries of the world.

The whole Moral Imaginations crew, me included, are deeply taken by Watchet and its lovely community. Awe-struck and awe inspired. Tomorrow is a big day as we move into the “More-than-human” day of the process, and by the end of tomorrow we’ll almost be all the way through the Lab! And then comes the job of writing up and transcribing and editing all of the creative co-created material that has been developed by community members in this short but intensive time.

Thank you to Onion Collective and Watchet and Power to Change for making this work possible.