Ecological Storytelling & Wellbeing

ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING WORKSHOPS
We live in a time full of possibility, where sustainability and new perspectives are influencing every aspect of our lives.

However, we also face instability and stress as climate and ecological crises begin to affect us all.

Emerging terms like ‘eco-anxiety’ and ‘eco-grief’ highlight the impact of these changes on our mental and physical wellbeing.

In response to these challenges, award-winning filmmaker Dónal Ó Céilleachair has developed this new workshop format to deliver an evidence-based* creative and interactive experience that engages people in ways that are accessible and relevant for everyday life.

This approach is based on the Active Hope methodology* of ecophilosopher Joanna Macy and draws from Dónal’s 30 years of documentary storytelling experience and over 10 years of ecological awareness work.

These workshops provide participants with effective tools to cultivate insight, creativity, and resilience. And in Macy’s words, they ‘help us re-imagine our relationships with the world, ourselves, and each other‘.

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There are two formats currently available:
Option A. 2 hour / Introductory workshop.
Option B. 4 hour / Half-day workshop.

This workshop can be adapted to cultural, creative, educational and business settings.
It can bring insight, creativity and imagination to any sustainability journey.

These workshops have been described as ‘rewarding’, ‘emotional’ and ‘inspiring’ by previous participants.
No creative experience is necessary, only the willingness to show up and be fully present.

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* Recent University of Galway research has found that Active Hope:
1. Fosters new perspectives
2. Promotes communal coping
3. Increases hope and motivation in acting towards a common goal

For full workshop specs and further information get in contact.
You can download a 1-page overview here.

OVERVIEW
Storytelling is the most fundamental form of human communication; it is central to how we engage with the world. And this ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING project is a creative approach to cultivating creativity, insight and resilience for engaging with a world in a time of ecological crisis.

ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING draws on creative, interactive and experiential approaches to tell a New Story based on a regenerative ecological worldview.

Plus it offers critical creativity and storytelling tools for engaging with the central narratives of what cultural historian Thomas Berry described as the Old Story; based on a degenerative, anthropocentric (human-centric) mindset.

3 PARALLEL STRANDS
This project is developing through 3 parallel and interdependent strands including:

    • ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING Workshops
    • Engagement in Communities of Practice
    • New Film Projects

 

3 PARALLEL STRANDS
This ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING project is developed by filmmaker Dónal Ó Céilleachair to:
– formalise over 10 years of indepenent research
– consolidate an evolving ecological focus in his filmmaking creative practice
and, just as importantly
– to support others in their own individual and collective engagements with the ecological crisis.

This ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING project is developing through 3 parallel and interdependent strands outlined below:

1 – ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING WORKSHOPS
Talks and workshops have taken place at a wide diversity of settings, festivals and conferences including for example:
WEALL (The Wellbeing Economy) – Bearing Witness to Ecological Signs of The Times Webinar, 2025
The First All Ireland Active Hope Retreat, Dublin, 2025
Trailblazery’s Scoil Scairte/Online Hedge School, 2025
Féile na Bealtaine/Dingle Arts Festival, 2025
The Rethinking Growth Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, 2024
IMMA’s Earth Rising Festival, Dublin, 2024
WEALL’s The Art of the Wellbeing Economy Conference, 2023
WEALL’s Cultural Creatives Deep Dives, Derry & Cloughjordan Ecovillage, 2023
First Cut Film Festival

Click on the Workshops tab above for further info.

2 – COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE
The ongoing development of this project is grounded in ‘real-world’ initiatives through Dónal’s ongoing involvement with three key Communities of Practice in:
– Active Hope/The Work That Reconnects
– The Ecological Interbeing Practice of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Earth Holder Community Tradition & the Ecodharma of David Loy
– WEALL (The Wellbeing Economy Alliance)

In addition this research is underpinned by a Creative Practice-based Masters undertaken with LSAD/Limerick School of Art & Design through TUS (Technological University of the Shannon).

3 – FILM PROJECTS
SEEDING THE FUTURE is the first Anú Pictures project being developed with this ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING approach. Below you can view a 9 min. proof-of-concept preview for a feature length film currently in development.

This film is inspired by the work of WEALL Ireland’s Cultural Creatives Community of Practice; a community of over 40 artists, academics and activists working towards a wellbeing economy for all.

BACKGROUND

The unfolding ecological crisis, according to professor of science Thomas Lovejoy, is ‘the greatest challenge of our species’. (1)

And for writer Naomi Klein ‘A crisis this big, this encompassing, changes everything!’ (2)

For author and Jungian analyst Andrew Fellows, this crisis has resulted from our ‘dysfunctional relationship’ with ‘both inner and outer Nature’. (3)

And for cultural historian Thomas Berry this dysfunctional relationship is exemplified in a crisis of storytelling:

We are in trouble now because … we are in between stories.
The Old Story is (no longer functioning) properly and we have (yet to fully articulate) the New Story. (4)

The Old Story narrative – characterised by a Western anthropocentric (human-centric) mindset – is based on a philosophy of separation built on linear thinking. This Old Story narrative has come to dominate international affairs over the past two hundred years with disastrous planet-wide consequences.

And as we witness what writer and Zen teacher David Loy describes as ‘the ominous consequences of what we have been doing to the earth and to ourselves’ it is clear that the Old Story narrative has become perilously dysfunctional. (5)

For many the development of a new regenerative paradigm can only be facilitated by the emergence of a New Story/ecological worldview. This is a mindset based on ‘a philosophy of interdependence’ built on interdisciplinary systems thinking and exemplified by ecophilosophical ideas and indigenous peoples’ worldviews the world over. (6)

This evolving New Story is embodied by both new, and very ancient, movements from right across the spectrum of human experience as a rallying call to a new ecological consciousness. (7)

These movements are actively challenging the core narratives of the Old Story by radically re-imagining – what ecophilosopher Joanna Macy describes as – our whole ‘relationship to our world, to ourselves, and to each other’. (8)

The approach adopted in this ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING project draws from three main frameworks including:
– The Active Hope/Work That Reconnects methodology of ecophilosopher Joanna Macy
– The Ecological Interbeing practices of the Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Zen tradition
– And the Old Story/New Story framework of cultural historian Thomas Berry

ECOLOGICAL STORYTELLING & WELLBEING brings these perspectives seamlessly together in creative, interactive and experiential ways, to inspire and empower people in all fields in their engagement with the challenges of our times.

The approach adopted in this project also aligns with the 6 ACEs (Actions for Climate Empowerment) adopted in Article 6 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Reference
1. Lovejoy, Thomas, The Greatest Challenge of Our Species. New York Times Op-Ed, April 2012
2. Klein, Naomi, A Crisis This Big Changes Everything. Resurgence Magazine, Jan 2015
3. Fellows, Andrew, Gaia, Psyche and Deep Ecology – Navigating Climate Change in the Anthropocene. Routledge; 1st edition, 2019 (p. 1)
4. Berry, Thomas, The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988; reprint Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015 (p. 123)
5. Loy, David, Ecodharma – Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis. Wisdom Publications, 2018 (p. 1)
6. The term ‘Philosophy of Interdependence‘ is borrowed from the title of a course run by Dr. Kevin Power in UCC.
7. A Basic Call to Consciousness, The Hau de no sau nee Address to the Western World, Geneva, Switzerland, Autumn 1977. Copyright © 1978 by Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation
8. Macy, Joanna, The Great Turning. Wild Duck Review, Vol. IV, No. 1, Winter 1998 (p. 14)
9. Frick, Ania, The Perceived Benefits of Active Hope in Coping With Climate Change Distress: A Qualitative Study. University of Galway, August, 2024 (p. 2)

      View more on the work of ecophilosopher Joanna Macy on:
      https://www.joannamacy.net/
      https://www.activehope.info/
      https://workthatreconnects.org/

      Listen to Joanna Macy on Plum Village’s The Way Out is In Podcast (2022):
      Episode 12 & Episode 25

      Find an Active Hope Facilitator or Community in Ireland here.

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      View more on the Ecological Interbeing Practice of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Tradition on:
      Interbeing
      Plum Village Earth Holder Community
      Plum Village

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      View more on Ecodharma and the work of writer and Zen teacher David Loy on:
      https://www.davidloy.org/
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWdIpNJ37nw

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      View more on the work of cultural historian Thomas Berry on:
      https://thomasberry.org/

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      View the UNFCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) 6 ACE’s (Actions for Climate Empowerment) on: https://unfccc.int/topics/education-and-youth/big-picture/ACE

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      View more on Dónal’s involvement in ‘All Things Ecological’ & related work on:
      https://www.anupictures.com/blog/