“Dougald is an artist of the liminal. His journey has led him to extraordinary places, people and perspectives. He will take you through mythic territory, drawing on stories and symbols from his life, to help you find your own.”
PHOEBE TICKELL
founder of moral imaginations
“Let Dougald Hine’s masterful storytelling mark you; let his song of loss and longing, his call to fugitivity, dispossess you of your steady gait and poise. Perhaps then we, collectively infected, might together witness the incomprehensible.”
BAYO AKOMOLAFE
founder of THE EMERGENCE NETWORK
“I have found Dougald’s book, and work generally, amongst the most medicinal things I have read in the last few years. It helped steady me for the path ahead of us.”
ELIZABETH OLDFIELD
PRESENTER OF THE SACRED &
AUTHOR OF FULLY ALIVE
This September, I’m making my first visit to North America in a long time. I’ll be taking part in talks and public conversations in a series of towns and cities around the northeast of the United States, but the heart of the tour will be this weekend retreat in Chicago.
This is a chance to go deep together and to make lasting connections. I’ll bring the stories and lines of thought that have run through my work since Paul Kingsnorth and I wrote Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto (2009), through my recent book At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Climate Crises & Other Emergencies (2023) and the conversations that book has led me into. And I’m looking forward to seeing how those get tangled up with your own stories, ideas and experiences.
The weekend begins with an open reception on the Friday night at Pilsen Community Books, a public event that will also be the launch for the paperback edition of At Work in the Ruins. Then we’ll gather over the next two days, hosted by Dr Ashley Colby of the podcast Doomer Optimism, in a spirit of co-creation where the shape of the event emerges from the gifts that everyone brings to the table.
In the course of this tour, I’ll be on the trail of Ivan Illich, whose vision of the virtues of hospitality and conviviality among the ruins of the institutions of modernity has animated my work for two decades. What I want to bring to this Chicago gathering is the spirit that I’ve encountered in the meetings of Illich’s friends and co-conspirators that I’ve taken part in, where there’s always a candle lit on the table and an extra place for the stranger who might arrive at the door.
How do we attune our eyes to notice the gifts to be found in the ruins? Where are the examples that help us find our bearings, when we run off the edge of the maps of the world as we thought we knew it?
— Dougald