Managing the Crash

Pearce Institute, Govan, Glasgow, 10am to 4.30pm, Thursday 11th November 2021.

“How do we bring together a grassroots-led response, the likes of which we have never seen, to a threat the likes of which we have never faced?”

This workshop is free, and if you’re able to join us then you are welcome to book.

A small group of us will spend the day focusing on how to enable a leap in our collective imagination so that we can envisage, and then bring about, a transformation to our economy, so that the way we live enables all others to live well, rather than causes untold suffering.

We see this workshop as a crucial first step, to help us free up our imaginations ahead of a second workshop (in December/ January) that will embark on the transition design process ('Managing the crash') that we had originally envisaged we would be doing at this workshop.

The basis for the workshop is:

  • the need for radical action - for turning the world upside down, or rather right way up - because of the dominant system’s destruction of societies and ecosystems: this system cannot save us from itself;


  • the need to suspend our disbelief that we could do this: we can only move forward together if we have some kind of plan - and we can only plan if we believe we can move forward;


  • being grounded in Scotland and taking action here, but also opening up internationally (acknowledging climate justice issues globally);


  • building on the ‘Plan, Pause, Reset’ idea - a plan to create a ‘minimum necessary economy’;


  • working with our deeper knowing - our imaginations, our bodies (our need to stay in calm regulation - and know what to do when we’re not); and


  • our need to create spaces to allow new ways of thinking and processing to emerge - as current ways aren’t working for us.


The form of the workshop is:

  • Participatory/ experiential, rather than presentational/ analytical.

  • To create a more embodied, relaxed space for people to explore ‘What would a period of meeting only our most fundamental needs look and feel like?’

  • Using the COVID first lockdown as a doorway towards a longer term scenario, we’ll be exploring:

  • ‘Which of our needs were met - and not met - during lockdown? What did we see happening for other people’s needs?’

  • ‘What if we hadn’t hung on to Business As Usual, and instead enabled the changes that were asking to happen?’

  • ‘In a world where we had decided to pause everything except what’s essential in our economy - what would I really, really need? What would I be able to do without? What would bring me joy?’

  • By noticing when our neural pathways (our habits of thought and feeling) are activating us into pulling back towards what we’re used to, we hope to give ourselves space to think/ feel/ act/ connect differently, and so help enable alternative neural pathways and explore what is truly possible.

The workshop will draw on Active Inquiry’s forum theatre approach, ProcessWork’s awareness of how the world systems impact on us, and Grassroots2Global’s exploration of how to reclaim politics from colonisation/ domination/ trauma, through enabling well facilitated, locally-grounded, internationally-connected direct democracy.

We really hope you'll be able to join us. 

Please share this invite with whoever you feel would be able to contribute to, and benefit from, this workshop. For more info, and to book, see:

https://www.che.ac.uk/education/workshops/managing-the-crash-plan-pause-reset/