What if we learnt to slow down together?
The Convivial is excited to bring the work of The Slow Work Garden down to Cornwall with facilitators Sophie Craven and Evelyn Hull through a three-month action inquiry, beginning October 2026. Now taking expressions of interest until September 1st 2026.
Register your interest here: https://forms.gle/M6Uk3w6YjhR53NkQA
In the systems we live within, we’ve grown up learning damaging narratives of overwork, control and human centrality. They are tightly knotted stories of who and what matters, and what it means to be a productive, valuable member of society. These stories ask us to get on with it, to stop wasting time, to disregard our own and each other’s limits. They are narratives of oppression, erasure and distraction.
Stories like this do everything to us and nothing for us, and nothing for the more-than-human world around us. The fast pace of modernity and its relentless pursuit of ‘more’, keeps us distracted and exhausted. The world around us suffers as we make choices out of convenience, profit and efficiency rather than choices aligned with our own values. It’s increasingly difficult for even highly purpose-driven people and organisations to separate from the idea that productivity and speed = worth and success.
But these stories are singular and rigid, and like all rigid things, they eventually form cracks. In those cracks, new stories can take root and sprout, when we give them soil and water…
Building on the work of elders, practitioners, and poets, such as Tricia Hersey, Bayo Akomolafe, adrienne maree brown, Miki Kashtan, Vanessa Andreotti, Sophy Banks, Joanna Macy, Andrea Gibson, Mary Oliver and many others, we believe, instead, that slowing down is a big part of the work to be done in these times. Slowing down (in all its expansiveness) enables us to shift perspective, to draw on all our senses, and see new and different possibilities. It opens up space in our minds, hearts and souls to dream, sense, listen, imagine and grieve.
“Slowing down seems to be a hacking of the machine. It’s like we’re taking on other forms of body, of embodiment, that allows us to penetrate into different kinds of realities. Other worlds, if you will.” – Bayo Akomolafe
Sophie and Evelyn invite you to ‘grow ivy into the cracks’ with us in this hopeful and rebellious action inquiry. We’ll come together in the practice of slowing down as a form of radical resistance and transformational work. Together, we’ll have space to be fallow, existential and messy, sit with both the ease and resistance we feel in doing this, and play with the possibilities and questions that dwell in the cracks. We offer a space for slowing down enough to feel, for dancing between learning, unlearning, reflection and practice, and for opening up enough to imagine alternatives. Our hope is for you to leave with a sense of what’s needed and what’s possible, and to bring fresh ways of thinking, being and doing into the way that you live and work.
The details
This action inquiry is a hybrid experience, with in-person gatherings at the beginning, middle and end, and online sessions in between. Over the course of 10 sessions, we’ll explore the expansiveness of slowing down and cyclicality, the potential of slowing down as an enabler of creativity and collective imagination, and be invited to practise together and play with ideas in creative, experimental and thought/feel-provoking ways. We’re aiming to run this journey from October through to December 2026. We’ll be finalising details as we gather participants, and will be asking about needs and preferences along with your expression of interest.
In-person sessions:
We’ll meet three times in person, on Saturdays 10.30AM-4.30PM – first at the beginning of October, again in at the end of October and to finish in early December. All sessions will be held in the cosy and soulful venue of The Convivial in Penryn, and we’ll provide a delicious veggie/vegan lunch, as well as tea/coffee and snacks on each of the days.
Online sessions:
Interspersed with the in-person sessions, we’ll meet seven times online for 2 hours on weekday evenings, likely to be 6-8PM on Monday or Tuesday evenings (exact times/dates TBC)
These sessions will be on Zoom and will be recorded, and we’ll use other methods of capture to document our journey, such as Google Docs and/or Mural.
The journey flow
Our approach to action inquiry is not about crystallising answers, but rather to help us hold questions as guides for living, moving and feeling in the world. Each week will be guided by a question or questions, and the invitation is to live these questions with us and to explore what arises as a response to the various activities, images, metaphors, frameworks and provocations we offer throughout.
Session 1 (in-person) – Saturday 3rd Oct 10.30am-4.30pm
Introduction, context and connecting
What do we mean by slowing down, and why do we need to?
Session 2 (online) – weekday evening w/c 5th Oct 6-8pm
How might we notice where speed and linearity are showing up in our lives and work?
Session 3 (online) – weekday evening w/c 12th Oct 6-8pm
What is speed and linearity doing to our bodies, our dynamics, and our ideas of self, work and success?
Session 4 (online) – weekday evening w/c 19th Oct 6-8pm
What does our creativity need? What does it mean to slow down together?
Session 5 (in-person) – Saturday 31st Oct 10.30am-4.30pm
How might we recalibrate time and develop pause? What can the world around us teach us about slowing down?
w/c 2nd Nov - Fallow Week (no meetings)
Session 6 (online) – weekday evening w/c 9th Nov 6-8pm
How might we radically honour our creativity, capacity and limits?
Session 7 (online) – weekday evening w/c 16th Nov 6-8pm
How can we live / work with slowness? What shows up when we do?
Session 8 (online) – weekday evening w/c 23rd Nov 6-8pm
What might be possible if we slowed down our lives and work?
Session 9 (online) – weekday evening w/c 30th Nov 6-8pm
How might we bring slowness and cyclicality into our year ahead?
Session 10 (in-person) – Saturday 12th Dec 10.30am-4.30pm
What new stories are emerging that tell us about how we can be / do / feel / gather / organise differently?
Register your interest here: https://forms.gle/M6Uk3w6YjhR53NkQA
Is this action inquiry for you?
You might:
Be itching to challenge the current imaginaries around work, productivity, success, progress, etc. and keen to explore others (slow work, cyclical working)
Be involved (formally or informally) in work that seeks to create social, cultural or ecolgoical change, and feel friction between urgency and sustainability / regeneration
Understand intuitively that doing the inner work of noticing the ways in which we are tangled up in systems of oppression is crucial to purpose-driven outer work, but sometimes struggle to practise both at the same time
Describe your work as deeply purpose-driven but feel the tensions between what you believe in and what feels possible day-to-day while living/working inside current systems – and want to get curious about this
Be going into or just coming out of a period of slow or transition for whatever reason, and would like to explore the opportunities this might bring for change
Be seeking ways to live/work that better honour your capacity, creativity and ways of experiencing the world, and would like to explore this in relationship with others
Be drawn to cyclicality (cycles of life, death and renewal) as a response / resistance to living and working in systems of linearity, extraction and growth
Please note: you don’t need to already practice slowness, have a spiritual language, or feel resourced and spacious. Curioisty and willingness to listen - to yourself, others and the more than human world - are more than enough.
If you’re curious but still unsure, please do pop us an expression of interest anyway, and we’d be very happy to have a chat.
Pricing
This journey is priced between £250-£800 per person joining, with the following suggested pricing structure:
£250 – low income / reduced price
£375 – medium income / standard price
£550 – high income / abundance price
£800 – place paid for by organisation or other institution
We will also have the following two options available, with priority going toward participants from underrepresented and/or marginalised communities:
1 x £75 – volunteer placement (helping to set up and pack down the space for each in-person session)
2 x £125 – bursary placement
We ask you to self-select a payment that honours your capacity and doesn’t leave you feeling resentful. Higher payments will go towards providing a bursary place/places. You can read more about The Convivial’s pricing structure and considerations here.
The bursary placements are available to two participants from marginalised or underrepresented communities. The deadline for applying for these places is Saturday 5th September.
The volunteer placement is first come, first served and includes 2 hours of help in set up and pack down on the dates of the gatherings, arriving 1 hour beforehand and staying 1 hour afterwards. Duties may include but are not limited to: helping to gather groceries, cook, care for the space throughout the day, and wash up / pack down.
Please get in touch if none of these options suit; we do not want to turn anyone away for lack of funds, and gift exchange or skills exchange options are always available.
This action inquiry will be capped at 12 places to ensure that there is enough intimacy and spaciousness for it to be meaningful.
Register your interest here: https://forms.gle/M6Uk3w6YjhR53NkQA
Facilitators
Sophie Craven is one of the co-founders of The Slow Work Garden and is the founder of The Convivial. She is an interdisciplinary facilitator, host, teacher, researcher and artist. Her work revolves around developing and strengthening a sense of deep curiosity and rich community in spaces of learning and inquiry. For Sophie, learning together is one of the most beautiful, imaginative and critical practices for our times.
Sophie creates accessible and imaginative environments in which we might enter into shared curiosity, wonder/wander together, and engage in tender risk-taking as a community. She draws from a range of modalities, disciplines and praxis in her work, all geared towards the surfacing and holding of paradox and co-existing truths. She does not believe in easy answers to the complex questions of our times, but rather in capacity-building for doubt and uncertainty. We can learn to romance mystery in a way that opens up new possibilities. Sophie’s central approach is to hold inquiry — essentially, a damn good and/or outrageously niggling question — at the heart of everything. She believes that if we can live the question well, then doubt, mystery and uncertainty can in fact become a deep and regenerative well of opportunity.
Evelyn Hull is a facilitator and systems practitioner working at the intersections of ecology, inner development and social change. Her work centres on creating spaces that help people reconnect — with themselves, with one another, and with the living world — as a foundation for more just, imaginative and sustainable ways of organising our lives and work.
Alongside her facilitation with groups and communities, Evelyn works within a purpose-driven environmental organisation, exploring how culture, leadership and ways of working can better sustain people and purpose over time. She is currently completing an MSc in Systems Thinking and Leadership, and is particularly interested in how organisations can move beyond urgency, extraction and burnout toward cultures rooted in trust, care and collective intelligence.
Her facilitation is shaped by a background in yoga, coaching and nature-based practice, and by ongoing training in systems change, deep ecology and regenerative leadership. Evelyn is especially drawn to how slowing down, listening deeply and working with cycles of rest, creativity and renewal can support both personal resilience and collective transformation — particularly for those engaged in purpose-driven or activist work.
Register your interest here: https://forms.gle/M6Uk3w6YjhR53NkQA