The 3rd Seed Festival took place near Stroud this weekend at the inspirational Centre for Future Thinking; Hawkwood College thanks to changemaker Victoria Whelan.

The sun shone,the skies were blue,the people were beautiful, the setting was to die for and the focus truly inspirational.

Cutting edge speakers Mac MacCartney, Caroline Lucas, Rob Hopkins, Molly Scott Cato, Sir Tim Smit, & Satish Kumar, shared the stage with wondrous musicians including the groovy Ganda Boys and the sublime Rising Appalcahia whilst workshops galore invited participants to step into their power and realise their dreams for a brighter future.

Highlights for me were hearing Caroline Lucas speak from the heart, practising heart dialogue with Joanna Watters, Chris Paradox’ punchy poems, Marion McCartney’s indomitable spirit, dancing walking stick in hand, seeing my good friend Cliona O’Conaill realise her dream of taking her conscious dance practice Earth Beats to a new level and have us all dancing on the grass,  and the touching responses to my workshop “A Journey to the Heart” where we explored people’s responses to the relational challenges that stand between us and the changes we want to see from the vantage point of my new book- in- the- making’s setting: “The Utopia of 2050″and expressed the acts we would have done by then to bring about a positive future…

Here are a few:

I will see children playing in a garden I have created for their connection

I composed a story called “The Awakening” which has connected them

I will be supporting people in community

We’ll belong to the land and who we truly are

I will have opened people to their heart awareness and to their purpose

I will have worked with yoga and mindfulness with kids

I will have provided opportunities for young people to live sustainably 

I am going to be less judgemental towards others

I will help birth a culture which recognises and supports the role that our inner emotions and feelings play in allowing us to understand each other

I am trying to reduce the separation between the masculine and the feminine sexually and emotionally,allowing people to BE and therefore actually be together.

I will bring healing sounds and nature connection

We will  be connecting sex and heart and spirituality, revealing our magnificence

We will be living in harmony with nature

No wonder I came home so energised and ready with my plan to use my MA dissertation research to spend the next 2 summers travelling around collecting these intentions and visions to help describe Utopia in my book!

I was  also touched to bring my Transition Tales to a new audience and find new folk, north of the border, to be inspired by Transition, and to birth a new event – along with good friend Herewood Gabriel, who had launched his exciting new community game The Village Green the night before the festival, and new friend Nicola from Montrose who has been working on a game where we put ourselves in others’ shoes to really understand different perspectives and find common ground. Together we’ll be sharing our inspirational games up in Scotland – looking for feedback, and hopefully, inspiring change as we go! The many of you who have played  my game The Quest to 2050 may be excited to hear that it now has inner challenges too and is looking for new groups to try it out!

I felt honoured and humbled to see my name on the big green chair along with giants of our time and really take in that we, all of us who care, are making history;we are the gate keepers to a New Age…and what a privilege that is.

Joy welled up as tears so many times as I experienced a weekend of what for me is paradise on earth; long hot summer days and nights, a fire pit, loving caring people,live music, spectacular big horizons (geographically  and metaphorically), bright flamboyant clothing, bare feet, children running and playing on hay bales,old and young dancing and singing together, seeing so many familiar faces, many offering their gifts as workshops and or performances and all amidst a huge bio-dynamic garden full of living food!

I was thrilled to discover, as my research, and that of Mac McCartney, points to the  druids and our indigenous people’s wisdom in understanding our place besides nature and cosmology, and all our myths show the way to rediscovering those truths, that Hawkwood College was first know as The Grove…

A final thought, from Mac MacCartney’s inspirational talk; there are many spirits just waiting to incarnate;to feel the soft green grass beneath their feet, to know the tenderness of holding hands, to taste the foods and drink the waters, to gaze into a beloved’s eyes,to dance upon this earth – who are we to waste this opportunity,to love,to be happy, to make a difference for the generations waiting to come….