Main Contributors
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Refugia Church*
*will be joining us over Zoom
Bio
Debra Rienstra’s most recent book is Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth (Fortress 2022), a book that combines theology, nature writing, and biological principles to consider how Christians must adapt our faith and practice for a climate-altered planet. She is professor of English at Calvin University, where she has taught since 1996, specializing in early British literature and creative writing.
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The Restless Earth: The worker and spiritualities of resistance
This paper discusses how embodied spiritualities of resistance manifest in how the worker is distanced from their land, and how this has, intergenerationally shaped the worker’s identity as a worker but also in terms of race, gender, and faith. The land, carried with you and longed for. The paper draws from empirical research conducted in Dominican Republic, Burundi and Malawi.
Bio
Anupama Ranawana is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Durham. Anu is a theologian and political economist with over eight years of experience working in academia, international development and think tanks. Her research and teaching expertise and interests are focussed on gender and justice, decolonial thought, diversifying research methodological practice, religious thought in the Global, faith and international development and the intersections between racial and climate justice. She holds advanced degrees in Theology and International Politics. She currently works as a research advisor for Christian Aid and teaches Asian Theology for Catherine of Siena college, University of Roehampton. Her most recent publication has been on the importance of women’s religious thought to global politics. She is currently working on her first book: A Liberation for the Earth: Reflections on Race, Climate and Cross.
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Talk Title: Living out a theology of land
Bio
Rev. John White is the founder of Hazelnut Community Bristol and the Hazelnut Community Network. Hazelnut works toward supporting churches in creating eco communities on their land in order to deepen worship, welcome their community, and combat climate breakdown. Passionate about getting hands in the soil and bringing people together, John combines faith, ecology, and action to make a difference. John lives in Bristol with his wife and two children and his new puppy.
Workshop Contributors
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Workshop: Footprints through sacred land: the art of pilgrimage
Drawing on a theology of making, this session explores ways in which the beauty and natural offerings of the land enliven pilgrim steps and inspire soulful creativity. Gill will share her experience as artist in residence at Lindisfarne, Holy Island, and creative collaborations along Cuthbert's Way.
Bio
Gill is a Pioneer Priest in the Diocese of Bath & Wells with a background in art, modern foreign languages and education. She has MA degrees in Christianity & the Arts and in Theology, Mission & Ministry. Gill is an exhibiting painter whose work incorporates textile design and she is currently exploring sustainable practices with natural dyeing methods. Gill’s art installations have been seen and engaged within Winchester Cathedral. She has taught regular summer schools at the Grunewald Guild, an art community in Washington State and at Carey Theological College in Vancouver. She works collaboratively in community arts and faith and teaches in Somerset and beyond.
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Workshop: Seeds & Inclusive Foodscape
How to create an inclusive church space by facilitating community seed exchange, cross-cultural dialogue and reflection on our relationships with nature
Bio
Angus was born and grew up in Hong Kong. He is passionate about growing food and community seed systems. He joined the Hazelnut Community Farm and has helped the gardening group since early 2022. The experience helped him to take root in a new society, and connect to the land and community in Bristol. He worked in various agroecological farms and community-based NGOs across Asia for more than 25 years. He joined Sims Hill Shared Harvest in April 2022. He is now the Programme staff of GRAIN, a small international organisation supporting the food sovereignty movement through research and alliance building.
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Workshop: Churches in Search of the Commons
A workshop exploring a) the relationship of the church and the western imagination to land in modern history b) a theology of land as a prayerful entity, and c) practices by which faith communities are reconnecting
Bio
David Benjamin Blower is a writer, podcaster and musician from Birmingham, UK. He is the author of The Messianic Commons and Sympathy for Jonah.
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Workshop: Seeing Differently - Helping young people to See
A practical conversation in a time where we live more indoor, online and outsourced, HOW can we help young people get closer to the land? The session will focus on activities that will allow us to see differently by getting our hands dirty, thinking deeply about what we cherish and value, and then how we might try practicing living well & closer to all things.
Bio
Tim loves the outdoors, bringing generations together and igniting curiosity. He helps run the 'closer to the land' project here at Ashburnham Place. Whatever our relationship with the land is, we all can get closer.
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Workshop: Doing theology on the compost heap
In a world that is falling apart (ecologically, socio-politically?), in churches that are falling apart (numerically, theologically?), as people who are falling apart (relationally, emotionally?)... what kind of theology might usefully be done on the compost heap? What is decomposing? What needs to decompose? This is an invitation to an open conversation, to bring your decomposing scraps (of embodied experience, earthed theology, ensoiled practice, and tentative sensing), and together see what emerges.
Bio
Al Barrett has been Church of England priest in Hodge Hill, east Birmingham, since 2010, where he has been on a long-term, intergenerational community-building journey with neighbours. He is passionate about listening, learning, wondering, and helping people to do theology that 'stays with the trouble', decomposes mastery, and makes kin. His publications include (with Ruth Harley) 'Being Interrupted: Reimagining the Church's Mission from the Outside, In' (SCM, 2020).
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Workshop: Common Hope
This session will report on a series of meetings with leading Christian environmental thinkers and practitioners where we've discussed the role of hope in environmental theology. While hope is a complex subject and there are few straightforward answers, we suggest that hope remains a crucial contribution that Christians can make to the current environmental crisis. A particular focus of our thinking has been on the 'edgelands' and 'ecotones' between ecosystems and communities, which constitute particularly productive places for doing environmental theology.
Bio
Adrian is an environmental historian at the University of Bristol and a self-supporting minister in the Church of England. He has been involved in the Hazelnut community in Bristol since its early days, and works to promote discussions of environmental themes at his churches in Cotham and St Paul's in association with the Hazelnut Network. Adrian’s academic work has focused mostly on histories of the polar regions, especially Antarctica and on National Parks around the world.
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Workshop: Primordial Connections: Recovering Ecotheology as a Founding Theological Vision
This workshop reimagines theological understanding by positioning ecological awareness as the original and essential theological framework, while integrating Kate Raworth's doughnut economics model as a practical manifestation of this holistic worldview. Participants will explore how contemporary environmental crises reveal the need to return to a fundamental theological perspective that understands divine presence as inherently interwoven with the natural world. We will examine how traditional theological narratives have often displaced ecological consciousness, and work to restore an understanding of creation as a sacred, interconnected system. Using the doughnut economics model as a practical economic lens, we'll investigate how this framework embodies theological principles of planetary boundaries, social foundations, and systemic interconnectedness. The workshop bridges spiritual insight with economic design, demonstrating how a regenerative economic approach can emerge from a deeply ecological theological understanding.
Bio
A theological educator and pioneer, Sarah leads an undergraduate programme exploring the intersections of art, theology, and ecological consciousness. With a PhD in Theological Aesthetics, she is passionate about renewing right-brain thinking and challenging traditional theological paradigms. Sarah’s work bridges aesthetic experience, spiritual insight, and environmental awareness, reimagining theology as a generative, embodied practice. She believes in expanding theological understanding through creative, intuitive modes of knowing that celebrate the power of beauty and our profound interconnectedness.
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Workshop: Screen time for green time
In this session we'll be exploring digital addiction, nature deficit disorder and the amazing life of 18th century ecologist Rev'd Gilbert White. We'll be walking and pausing, noticing and celebrating the beautiful intricacies of God's creation.
Bio
Chad Chadwick is the Children & Youth Mission Enabler for Peterborough Diocese. He's been working with children and young people for over 25 years. Having just spent two years without a mobile phone, Chad is particularly interested in helping young people to develop a healthy relationship with technology. Chad volunteers with his local Wildlife Trust and is also the East Midlands conservation advisor for A Rocha UK’s Partners in Action programme.
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Workshop: Landscapes Rhythm of Prayer
Experience a unique and spiritually enriching journey at Landscapes, where quiet spaces for prayer and reflection invite you to process and engage deeply with God amidst the conference's themes. Immerse yourself in interactive prayer stations inspired by the natural world, offering moments of creative and contemplative connection. Ground the day in short, earthy liturgies that resonate with the themes of creation and community, welcoming diverse church backgrounds.
Bio
Bryony is Hazelnut Community Bristol’s Associate Minister & Community Growing Enabler. Her past lives include being an occupational therapist, vicar and prison chaplain. She finds God in everyday life, creativity, nature, silence and community; has trained as a spiritual director; and feels her spiritual home is Greenbelt Festival. Otherwise, you may find her campaigning for climate justice or for the ending of indefinite immigration detention; rescuing supermarket surplus bread and doughnuts with her local community fridge; pottering about her garden; making mosaics, random clay objects and bad watercolour paintings, or reluctantly dragging herself to the gym.
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Workshop: Church land and the climate crisis
Many churches are blessed with land - whether that be churchyards, glebe land, or institutional land holdings. Especially the CofE, which is one of the biggest landowners in the country. As we face a climate and ecological crisis, churches must do all they can to restore biodiversity, create carbon sinks, and prevent carbon emissions on their land. This session will explore how we can engage with “the church” to better honour and praise God through the way it manages its land.
Bio
Clare Fussell is the Campaign Director of Operation Noah, a Christian charity working with the church to inspire action on the climate crisis, and a Trustee of Hazelnut Community. She brings almost 20 years experience of Christian climate campaigning, including leading The Climate Coalition, managing Christian Aid’s Campaign Team, and being Environmental Adviser for the Diocese of Bristol. She is passionate about linking Christian faith with environmental action.
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Workshop: Hazelnut for Schools: Wonderful World Sessions
Building on the capacity for wonder that children have, Hazelnut, in partnership with Schools Pioneers, Pippa White, have developed seasonal sessions that offer an opportunity for children to get outside, get growing, get wondering, listen to nature and have spaces to reflect and wonder together at our wonderful world. This session will look at the resources and practical tips to build relationships and run great sessions with your local school, or young people's groups.
Bio
Hi , I'm Pippa White, local vicar and Pioneer in Schools in East Bristol, and have been part of Hazelnut from its beginnings (I'm married to John White.) Loving our neighbour by loving and serving our local schools is a pretty cool thing to get to do. Sharing about the wonders of creation and skills to stop and notice what nature is saying to us is even cooler. Aswell as some classic pastimes - walking and reading, I enjoy making in lots of forms, from woolcrafts to writing and cooking. I wish there was time to read every book written.
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Workshop: Creating a Food Forest
Bio
Regina works for the Christian environmental charity A Rocha UK coordinating a programme called Partners in Action. Regina is passionate about helping communities become more regenerative, fostering biodiversity and nature connection in fun and adventurous ways. This might involve planting food forests, building a straw bale house, raising chickens or caring for cheeky goats.