Hosting
A Tiny Creative Refuge
The Tiny Creative Refuge is a fully self-contained tiny home for creatives and researchers, available for short stays at an affordable price.
Perfect for time away in nature to contemplate, come create a new body of work, write the final chapter of a thesis, or simply watch the cloud parade out the window.
The details:
• Fully self contained kitchen, with gas cooktop and oven and small fridge
• Double bed in loft above lounge
• Indoor bathroom with shower and composting loo
• Indoor fireplace and split system for heating & cooling
• Outdoor bath with hot water
• Entirely off-grid
• Book in for a 2 night minimum stay
Where:
Yapeen, 10kms outside of Castlemaine
I live next door, in a house which is newly built. The property is just over 2 acres, with lovely views of the surrounding valley.
Hosting / Conversation / Cooking:
If you want to talk about your work or think through a particular impasse you’re navigating, I’d be delighted to learn more about your work and world.
It would also be my pleasure to cook for you. (This stems from my own experience of finishing a PhD and being generously cooked for in the final months…what a saving grace)
Cost:
$100 a night, 2-night minimum stay
If you’d like to have one meal cooked for you each day, get in touch and we can organise it for a small additional fee.
The tiny home was designed and built by the amazing team at Made By Bare
Hosting Conversation
Good group conversation has to be one of my great loves. I find it so energising to be a part of a collective that is exploring multiple perspectives and generatively exploring ideas through lived experience. Poetry and music provide levity and space to gatherings, but allowing people to feel as ease in their bodies is central to enabling a really good conversation. This requires vulnerability as a host and creating a space in which others can feel free to express their emotions and thoughts. As one keen observer once said, ‘honesty is like the ice-axe to the frozen sea with us’ – meaning honesty not only awakens what has been frozen over through patriarchal ways of being but also awakens the possibility of a temporary and momentary ‘us’ as the conversation unfolds.
The Weekly Service
What does it take for genuine conversation to unfold in a group of strangers? What makes it possible for a collective to explore different perspectives with an open-mindset? How might a gathering place be created through sharing stories on a weekly basis? What culture(s) might grow from such a space?
These questions were at the heart of a social experiment that was called a The Weekly Service, a contemplative communal space that existed for 7 years in Melbourne from 2015.
As a co-director of The Weekly Service I hosted weekly Services, facilitated coaching and training of other hosts, and helped to design tools and infrastructures of belonging. As a collective we used collaborative design as a practice to empower participation and a sense of belonging.
Through this practice we were re-learning how to create a gathering place where the ‘whole’ of us is welcome. This gathering place is not simply a space to belong, rather it’s aims are three-fold: 1) to embrace whole humanness, 2) to negotiate together the ‘transitional times’ we find ourselves in, and 3) to collaboratively practice new ways of living and being together that are reciprocal and regenerative.
Learning to Yarn
Over the last two years I’ve been involved with Yarn Australia, an organisation run by Warren Roberts that is focused on creating relationships and intentional connections through storytelling between Original Sovereign Nations of Australia and all peoples of Mother Earth with a vision of unity for this continent of Australia.
Through Yarn, I’ve reflected on my own personal story, participated in relational ways of being and learnt about collaboration across cultures. It’s been amazing to witness the degree of honesty that Warren can hold in a conversational space.