Conviviality and ecology: the hospitable poetics of oikos
Sophie Craven
Tickets: https://ticketpass.org/event/EZTRCC/the-convivial-x-sophie-craven
What does it mean to live generously and with hospitality at the heart of everything? To be convivial with the world around us?
The world around us is teeming with the potential for love and care, but eons of social and cultural barriers separate us from our sense of home and community. The industrialisation and bureaucritisation of institutions and systems has created a world in which our access to community and support is mired within administrative entanglements, our ability to fill out forms accurately or in the right way, and our capacity for ‘working the system’ effectively. A tick box lettered wrongly can strip away access to life-supporting resources. How did we get here? Where is the conviviality, the hospitality, the ability to see a soul as a soul? And not just human souls – when the aliveness of the world around us is reduced to a bank of resources for human industry, we lose sight of just how hospitable, abundant and generous our home really is.
Ecology derives from the Greek words oikos and logy, meaning the study of home and kin. Conviviality derives from the Latin roots of con and viviere, meaning living or feasting with. How might we pull these notions together to help us sense into a more generative way of being? In this hopeful talk for The Convivial, host Sophie Craven will build on Ivan Illich’s notion of ‘tools for conviviality’ by exploring the hospitality, abundance and generosity of human and other-than-human souls. She will play with and intermingle the words and worlds of conviviality and ecology to explore what it means to live generously with the world. Together, we will explore ways in which we might live forwards in difficult times and build for ourselves pockets of interbeing full of communal, convivial and ecological connection, love and care.
Speaker
Sophie is a writer, artist and facilitator based in Cornwall, UK. She graduated from SOAS university in 2016 with a BA in Arabic and Social Anthropology, and a specialisation in memory, imagination and heritage sites (with fieldwork taking place in the West Bank of Palestine).
She worked in learning and facilitation for seven years before completing her MA in Poetics of Imagination at Schumacher College / Dartington School of Arts in 2024. She also holds a CPD qualification in Trauma-Informed Practice from University of Sussex (2021).
Sophie's current research interests include mythology, folklore, ancient sites, trauma theory and psychology. She is currently in the process of writing her first novel, Strange Places, which explores the boundaries and meeting places between the imaginal, the mythological and the psyche.
What to expect
6pm - arrive
6.30pm - talk begins
7.30pm - dinner (vegan) is served
8 - 9.30pm - Q&A/discussion, drinks, socialising
This event is BYOB - please bring along a drink to have yourself and/or to share! There is a SPAR shop just a few meters up the road. There will be a selection of soft drinks available at a low cost.
Tickets
Please refer to the following suggestions to choose your donation amount:
No income: £1
Low income: £5
Medium income: £10
High income: £15
Supporter ticket: £20
All tickets include a vegan meal.