A dance workshop and performance in London

Dear reader,

Welcome to our newsletter! There are lots of things to tell you about.

We are beginning with a brief tribute to our very dear friend and member of our group, Heather Daniel, who we lost just over a year ago.

Further down, we’re keen to tell you of two great events this autumn. One is a dance workshop this November in London with Kirstie Simson who brought so much to the April retreat! She’ll be accompanied by Charlie Brittain and together they’ll also be giving a performance.

In October we’re also doing a second ‘Alone Together’ walk after the first one in July was such a success.

You can read more about both and how to take part below.

Before those, we’re very pleased to highlight Sonum Sumaria and her amazing filmmaking work. Sonum took part in our April retreat and a group of us from the retreat recently went to see her current film ‘Under the Open Sky’. Please read on to learn more about her and the film, and why, spoiler alert, it is so special.

A couple of other items to mention are:

• Our 2027 Retreat will be from 28-31 May. We’ll be informing you soon of further details.
• Our group meditation is the first Sunday of every month at 10am. Everyone’s invited and you can find the link under ‘Save the Dates’ at the end of the newsletter.

And finally, do drop us a line if you have any comments about the newsletter or suggestions for future editions.

Very best wishes,
Caprice Jackson
Editor; on behalf of EF (Emergence Foundation)

Remembering Heather

Heather atop the mountains of Madeira, February 2025

It is just over a year since we lost our much loved friend, Heather Daniel. At our recent meeting we made time to express our memories of her and what she meant to us. She was and is so dear to us and so much missed.

An Urge to Act

Sonum Sumaria shares what inspires her film-making

“I don’t like othering people. I want to portray indigenous/nomadic/marginalised people in their full complexity.”

In light of seeing her film, meeting Sonum to learn more of the backstory to her film-making felt like a precious opportunity.

Sonum graduated from Cambridge in 2008 after studying Spanish and Russian. Even when she joined the university, she already had a passion for film; inspired by the fact her older sister, Sheena, had just made a documentary in Latin America.

Her university course included a year-long placement in Cuba and a sensitive tutor, aware of Sonum’s interest beyond languages, suggested she find a place at the Cuban Film School. The school is at the fore in the Tercer Cine (Third Cinema) movement, which champions a Global South perspective through film. Sonum said that, for a year, she “lived and breathed cinema”. The time there also helped prepare her in all aspects of filmmaking.

Sonum was developing a very strong sense of the power of film to give voice particularly to those who often get overlooked or unrepresented. As she describes it:

“When I’m moved by something… an injustice usually… (I feel) the urge to act, to do something that can hopefully make a difference…”

Following a flirtation with teaching, including time spent in Russia, where she also made a film, she joined the MetFilm School in London to hone her filmic skills. From there, as cinematographer, she joined her sister who was shooting a film in Gujarat, their family heritage being Gujarati. The film highlights the long-term battle of a fishing community against big business*. It was while there Sonum had her first, chance encounter with the Maldhari, nomadic, camel herding community.

Who these people were, and their unusual lifestyle intrigued her. She went on to research them and this led her to learn about the precariousness of their existence, a lifestyle going back at least 500 years. It was the intense cultural erasure the Maldhari people faced that motivated Sonum to commit to the project. The result was, ‘Under the Open Sky’.

As the film’s website (https://undertheopensky.org/) attests to, the film has been widely screened and won festival awards. You can watch a trailer there. For a film-maker exposure of their work is, of course, highly important. Sonum welcomes offers to set up future screenings. You can write to her at [email protected].

For a future project her eyes are firmly directed towards Colombia. She has already spent several days there among the Aruhuaco people, staying with a shaman and his wife. “There are,” she says, “so many threads to explore there.”

Indeed, these people have, since the 1980s, sought to bring their ancient understanding of the inseparableness of ourselves and all of nature — including the Earth itself — to a far wider awareness of the need to combat climate change. Without a doubt, another remarkable film and one of considerable relevance to us all is in the offing!

*Sheena Sumaria’s film is entitled ‘The Fisherman and the Banker’.

Under the Open Sky

A review

We are transported to a world, a lifestyle very different from our own. This is the world of a nomadic, camel herding family in the far reaches of western India.

Really rather brilliantly, film maker Sonum Sumaria’s intimate connection with these people enables us to live alongside them, as it were, witnessing their everyday experience. Equally importantly, her film opens us up to the precariousness of their way of life, in the face of an Indian government hellbent on modernisation and giving them no legal recognition nor protection. A way of life that is embedded in the natural biodiversity of the region, a way of life which these people have followed for centuries.

Sonum has knitted these parallel threads into an absorbing 100-minute film. An admirer of the best of Iranian cinema, she can be slow paced where it is called for, poetic at times and masterly in terms of the camera work, which is her own.

Her film captures both the realities of this nomadic people’s lives but also their quiet beauty. There is a scene where Ahmed, the father, due to the death of his camels, has been forced to work as a day labourer shovelling sand. Of his situation, he observes:

“There’s no bright future in this work. This is just a way to earn our daily bread. But it’s important to do all types of work with utmost interest and dignity.”

And you know he means it. It is who he is.

In the making of this film, Sonum visited the family five times over a period of several years. Thus we get to see their changing fortunes and the adaptions they make. The website https://undertheopensky.org/ continues to track the family’s progress. You can also see a trailer and find out future screening dates.

Dance Workshop

Dancing Practices that Promote Resilience and Healing in Challenging Times ~ a movement workshop with Kirstie Simson and Charlie Brittain

Photographer: Huiyun

Our work embraces the body’s natural ability and drive towards wholeness: our ‘embodied intelligence’.

This introductory session begins with a short meditation. It then offers gentle dancing practices within which we can explore the relevance of embodied intelligence and imagination for the collective challenges we face, at this time of planetary crisis.

We can discover, at the same time, our body’s leaning towards balance, creativity, quietness and healing. Listening to our body enables us to cultivate the resources required to support ourselves and others in the often frantic, sometimes chaotic, modern world.

The workshop poses the questions: How can we embody the adaptability and strength these improvisations reveal to us? How, too, can our diverse experience bring us together in mutual support?

We will close with a discussion about the relevance of embodied intelligence in current times, inviting participants to share their experiences.

A Little Pilgrimage

An account of our recent walk AND news of the next one!

Undoubtedly one of the pleasures of life in this country is a nice country walk, not too hurried and not too slow, and ideally, of course, with favourable weather. Even better to do it in good company!

And that’s exactly what our Alone Together walk on Saturday, July 18th was like.

Around 10am a group of 9 of us set off from Berkhamsted station; Steve Brett, Sukhin Tye and Caprice Jackson from EF as sherpas. In keeping with the Alone Together theme, we had some simple activities planned.

Once in open countryside, Sukhin guided us in forming a circle, gently introducing a few simple awareness activities: awareness of ourselves, one another and the Nature all around of which we are, of course, part.

At a wooded spot, Steve introduced a second activity: inviting us all to draw a card, sight unseen, each with a word or two on it; things like ‘Ancestors’, ‘Standing Alone’, ‘Earth/Sky’. He explained that if the words had meaning for us, we might reflect on them as we journeyed on. More about that shortly….

And then we arrived at the monastery! Just in time to have some of the delicious food donated by lay Buddhists.

Just before Amaravati, Caprice gave a short introduction, having been a student of Ajahn Chah, the renowned Thai monk behind its founding in the early 1980s. In our next edition, we’d like to tell you more about the monastery.

Before leaving, we found a quiet spot and sat in a circle, mirroring the inquiry groups of the retreat. Everyone was invited to say what they wished, perhaps their experience thus far. In fact, a lot that was shared was about the words on the cards, telling us this activity clearly had had a lot of resonance.

Following this, some members had to leave, sharing a taxi. For the rest of us, on the way back there was one more stop to make! Around half-way lies the Alford Arms! How not to enjoy such an inviting resting place before continuing?

On so many levels, our day’s walk was both enjoyable and enriching. We’re very pleased to let you know we will be holding another walk to Amaravati along similar lines on Sunday 11th October. You’re very much invited to join us! You can show your interest by joining a WhatsApp group specific for the walk at: https://chat.whatsapp.com/C0WnyBSJh6R6Klmg3pFmus. We’ll then be able to keep you updated with all the details.