Rooted We Rise: A Weekend Gathering for Activists, Creatives & Changemakers

The revolution is regulated and it begins with belonging

- in our bodies, to the earth, and to each other.

Rooted We Rise is for activists, change-makers, and community builders who are challenging systems of colonial oppression, and can feel those same patterns showing up in their own lives and work - burnout instead of reciprocity, isolation instead of support, and disconnection from the living earth.

If you're standing up for life and need a more grounded, connected, and life-giving way to sustain the work, this space is for you.

In this three-day gathering, you’ll be guided by practitioners and activists in practices that help you move from a place of connection with your body, the earth and the beings around you - shared music, movement, breathwork, deep listening with the more-than-human world, and more.

We also invite you to help us co-create the future of this movement, exploring the question, ‘How do we decolonise our relationship to activism: not only resisting harmful systems, but resourcing ourselves and each other to create the conditions, communities, and viable alternatives that can truly replace them?’

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As Audre Lorde put it back in 1979, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

The world we're building has to be created from a different place than the one we're resisting - and if we're going to be in it for the long run, we need to root deep and build capacity from the ground up.

Tending to our nervous systems is not a luxury. It is vital movement-building work.

Across cultures and eras, humans have turned to the same practices in times of crisis, grief, and struggle: moving and breathing together, singing and drumming, caring for the body, cultivating an intimate relationship with the living world, and creating rituals spacious enough to hold what is heavy.

Anthropology places these practices at the heart of the most cohesive and enduring egalitarian societies. They are not spiritual cosplay, but the root system of resilient, creative, humane collective life.

Today, we are living through the long afterlife of colonial systems that taught us to extract rather than relate, to override rather than listen, and to separate ourselves from land, body, and community.

Without conscious effort, these patterns show up not just in the systems we’re resisting, but also in the way we organise, in our bodies, and in our relationships with each other.

These ancient practices and rituals matter because they help restore the physiological conditions for healthy relationships and resilient organising.

A nervous system held in chronic urgency narrows perception, reduces empathy, breeds reactivity and controlling patterns, and leads to burnout.

By returning to these practices, we foster solidarity, trust, relational intelligence, creative response, and sustained commitment - qualities that enduring social movements typically have at their heart.

In a world that doesn’t systemically value these ways of being, it’s not easy to stay rooted. Rooted We Rise offers space to ask: how do I stay genuinely in this work - present, connected, and whole - without being consumed by it? And what becomes possible when I do?

This is an experimental gathering, sowing the seeds of a long-term project exploring how we can move from survival-driven resistance to grounded, collective, resilient movements.

We've been sitting with this question for some time - it's a complex challenge, which is why we're holding this space, inviting you to come and join us to sit with it together.

Held in the ancient temperate rainforest of Domnu Valley, near the Valley of Rocks, North Devon - we welcome you to the sacred lands that are home to the living regenerative community project we've been cultivating for the past two years.

Weekend schedule

We’ve curated a weekend programme that moves between rooting and branching - practices that bring us back into our bodies, the land, and each other, alongside collective enquiry into what becomes possible when we act from that ground. What emerges here seeds what comes next.

Friday - Rooting

We step out of urgency and into relationship with the land, with the body, and with each other.

Harvesting Herbal Resilience - Foraging & Medicine Making with Zena Winterbottom

We begin with the earth. Knowing the medicine that grows around you is one of the oldest forms of belonging to a place - it shifts our relationship with the living world from the abstract to the intimate, and from extraction to reciprocity. Zena's workshop invites us into direct encounter with our more-than-human allies, discovering together the nourishment, wisdom, and healing available when we remember how to receive what the land is already offering.

Sauna - Heat, Rest & Root

Found in various forms across the world, communal sauna is one of humanity's most reliable practices for nervous system down-regulation, dropping into the body, and cultivating intimacy through shared space for our minds to unwind, and our hearts to arrive in a quiet, collective presence.

Drumming Circle / Fireside Jam

For millennia, drumming has been used across cultures as a medicine for healing, ceremony, and community building - creating rhythm, connection, and spaces where emotion can move and voices can rise together. This drumming circle and voice opening is an invitation to drop out of the thinking mind and into the shared pulse of the group, awakening expression, belonging, and collective energy.

Saturday - Seeding

We go deeper into the heart of the enquiry, exploring how colonial patterns live in the body, in activist culture, and in our relationship with the more-than-human world. Through reconnecting with our bodies, intimate encounters with the life around us, and collective ritual, we begin opening space for a different way of being in the work.

The Body as Archive - Decolonial Movement Workshop with Muti Musafiri

Decolonial Embodiment is an experiential movement workshop exploring the body as a living archive of ancestry, survival, resistance and possibility. Participants journey through breath, Qi Gong, somatic enquiry, rhythm, movement and collective practice to recognise how inherited histories and dominant systems can shape how we move, relate and inhabit our bodies. The session invites us to shift from patterns of urgency, disconnection and survival towards deeper presence, agency and embodied sovereignty. Through a consent-led and accessible practice, we ask: What are our bodies remembering, what are we ready to release, and what futures can we embody together?

Playing and Sharing Weight with the More-Than-Human World - Animism Workshop with Fern Raine

Our ancestors distributed the weight of uncertainty and crisis through wide webs of kinship across generations and species, rooted in place and community. When we forget to weave these webs, the weight of existence gets funnelled onto individual shoulders.

But in reaching to dissolve our separation from the living world, we can trade one problem for another: collapsing living world into an amorphous 'nature' we feel one with, rather than learning to actually meet the wondrous diversity of beings around us. Through movement, play, and deep listening, this session cultivates more intimate relationships with the life around us — and in turn the love and awe that helps us hold and be held by the more-than-human community.

Songs of Hope, Resistance, Vulnerability and Tenderness - Sound Ceremony with Josie Corke

Voice is the most intimate instrument we carry - and singing together has always been how humans move what is too large for words alone. Across cultures and throughout social justice movements, music has helped people transmute grief, fear, rage, courage, and longing into shared presence and collective action. Music activates the body, opens emotional pathways, and reaches the heart with a force that spoken language often cannot. We gather in voice, sound, and ceremony - creating space to feel, process, and move what is heavy, honour what is hopeful, and awaken what is ready to be carried forward.

Sunday - Blooming

We gather the insight and turn towards what comes next. Through collective enquiry, breathwork, and shared visioning, we ask how this can grow into movements that are more grounded, collective, and built to last.

Breathwork Ceremony with Pippa Downs

Ritual and ceremony have long held the important function of creating intentional spaces for emotional processing and connection to the unseen. The breath is the only autonomic function we can consciously regulate, making it one of the most powerful and direct routes into the nervous system and connection to the wisdom of the body.

This session uses conscious connected breathwork: a continuous, rhythmic breathing practice that bypasses the thinking mind and activates the body's own capacity for release, integration, and healing. Held with live musical accompaniment from Sonni Knight, whose sound weaves with the breath to support whatever wants to move.

Collective Enquiry: From Survival-Driven Resistance to Rooted Resilient Movements with Pippa & Fern

Here we come together in collective enquiry to explore what’s blocking us from making our service more grounded, collective, and sustainable, and gather insights revealed through the weekend’s practices on what’s needed to support you to integrate these approaches into the work itself. We’ll collect what emerges from this discussion and find stepping stones to help us across the river - sharing ideas, calls for and offers of support, and invitations for what wants to continue beyond the weekend.

This isn't just a wellness retreat weekend away - it's a chance to be part of building something the world desperately needs: a more connected, resourced, and sustainable way of doing activism.

The revolution is regulated. Come root into earth, body, and community, and help seed what comes next.

What's Included

• All workshops and sessions across the weekend
• All meals from Friday dinner through to Sunday lunch (plant-based meals)
• Glamping on the land (shared accommodation in one of our bell tents - 2 single beds per tent)

What to Bring

• Warm layers, waterproofs (we'll be outdoors a lot)
• Hot water bottle, ear plugs, eye mask for a restful night sleep
• Headtorch
• Comfortable clothes for movement
• Extra snacks / personal items
• Extra towel for the sauna ~ swimming costume optional
• Any musical instruments you may want to play
• Water bottle
• Journal & pen
• An open heart

Who This Is For

• Those doing the work of change who are tired of reproducing urgency, burnout, and disconnection in the very spaces meant to create liberation
• Creatives, organisers, and storytellers who want to reclaim voice, imagination, and collaboration from a more grounded and liberatory place
• People longing to root their politics in belonging and reciprocity - with their bodies, the land, and each other

Accessibility

• The land has uneven terrain and some slopes. Please contact us before booking if you have mobility considerations so we can talk through options.
• All sessions are optional — you're encouraged to listen to your body.
• Some sessions involve movement and touch; all invitations are optional and consent-based.
• Quiet space available throughout.

FAQ

• Can I come on my own? _Yes, for sure - this weekend is designed to connect you with other likeminded souls, you're most welcome to come alone! _
• I've never done something like this, is that OK? Absolutely. All sessions are beginner-friendly, and every invitation is optional.
• Do I need to be an "activist"? No. If you care about the world and are taking action - or wanting to - and you're carrying the weight of that, you're who this is for.
• What if I can't afford it? We have some concession tickets available - please leave these available for those who really need them. If that's you, claim your spot and we'll see you here! Any further challenges, just get in touch.
• How do I get there? _To get here via public transport, Barnstaple is the nearest train station. From there you can catch the 310 bus to Caffyns Cross, it's then a half hour walk to our location. We will be creating a WhatsApp group ahead of time to coordinate lifts and ride shares. _
• Can I bring my dog? We have other animals living on site. Well-behaved friendly dogs are allowed.

Cancellation Policy

• More than 4 weeks before: full refund minus £15 admin fee
• 2–4 weeks before: 50% refund
• Less than 2 weeks before: no refund (transferable to another participant)

If you have any other questions that haven't already been answered, please get in touch!

About the Facilitators

Pippa Downs is a breathworker, bodyworker, and nervous system educator. After diving deep into activism for many years, supporting homeless people and asylum seekers in northern France & the UK, she burned out. Her healing journey lead her on a 4 year deep dive into the worlds of somatics and spirituality, becoming an international somatics educator of the Triple Vagal Method™, and practitioner of Conscious Connected Breathwork and kundalini yoga. Rooted We Rise is her return to the world of activism, now bringing these valuable tools of nervous system regulation to those doing the work of change.

Fern Raine is a former academic, environmental journalist, NGO founder, and system change activist turned artivist. His work has led him further and further up the present moment’s causal stream, to the hidden myths and ontologies that shape our experience of the world. His documentaries, music, songleading, and nature connection workshops help us see the water in which we swim, re-enchant the living world, and move from enlightenment to enlivenment.

Muti Musafiri is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural innovator, psycho-somatic practitioner and changemaker working at the intersection of artistic activism, embodied transformation and cultural memory. He is the founder of Ubuntu Village, a platform for decolonial wellbeing, ancestral remembrance and collective healing; Village101, a cultural innovation studio using art and community as tools for social change; and co-founder of Sons of Zion, exploring positive masculinity, brotherhood and men's wellbeing.

Zena Winterbottom is a herbalist, forager & community curator that's poured her energy into building projects such as Hempen Co-operative, co-founding both Lovejam community and Domnu Valley coliving & events space. She cares deeply about rekindling a culture that thrives with nature that can support us to live more soulful, purposeful & creative lives. She believes that relearning our ancient relationship with the living land can resource us to meet the ecological and social challenges of our time with resilience, wisdom, and joy.

Josie Corke shares music and voice activation work focused around liberation, recognising the power of sound and song as tools for revolution. She is part of a movement of artists, Roots to Repair, who are using art and culture as tools for Planet Repairs and internationalist indigenous solidarity.