The Center for Regenerative Culture Innovation & Regenerative Music Institute

A new eco retreat centre (probably in mid-Wales) supporting singers, musicians, paradigm shift and all of life.

Vision and Orientation

The Center for Regenerative Cultural Innovation - the CRCI - is to be a retreat centre and farm which will hopefully carry the name of the place where it finds home.

Its quest ultimately is to seek and support the emergence of a culture which is healthy, flourishing, non-oppressive, and in which human life works in balance with all other life forms, near and far.

I, Briony Greenhill, am its founder. I am a musician, teacher and innovator, with a degree in Political Science, a background in environmentalism, and a lot of experience with community and healing endeavours.

The retreat centre will have a main event space, smaller practice rooms, comfortable indoor sleeping for 20, camping facilities, a kitchen dining-room and hearth, and hopefully, an eco-spa. The surrounding land will be partly for growing food, part wildlife areas.

Here are Pinterest boards for the Studio and Retreat Center.

The venue intends to be home to four endeavours:

1. My Music School

I run a small business teaching improvised singing. It’s a new (and old) thing. Last year, for example, I taught 200 people, used retreat centres for 10 weeks and 15 weekends, turned over £105k (that mostly goes to other people) and spent £35k on renting retreat centres. I wish to create a home for my work.

Here is a film about my teaching.

2. The Regenerative Music Institute

I dream of it becoming a Regenerative Music Institute, regenerating our cultural capacity to be musical. 

Supporting students, teachers and practitioners - from amateur to top professional - of ear-based and improvised music

By offering space, facilities, methods, materials and events 

for teaching, learning, collaborating, jamming, practicing, performance, live room recording, retreats, camps and perhaps,

Public conversations about music, culture, education, industry, wellbeing, excellence, economy, joy, ritual, spirituality, dance, environmentalism, health, participation, inclusion, place, and ear-based and improvised musicianship, both vocal and instrumental. 

I would be one of the teachers, one of the practitioners, one of the students, among others. 

This is presently a dream. My work is emergent, which means that it develops one step at a time, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself. For now, it is simply that the CRCI facilities would be fit for this purpose.

3. The Center for Regenerative Cultural Innovation

The rest of the time, the retreat centre would be available for hire by people running events in the field of Regenerative Cultural Innovation. By “regeneration” I mean enhancing aliveness in ways that create cascade enhancements for the whole web of life. Repair, renewal; picking up what may be broken and carefully breathing in new life. Transformation, in partnership with a bigger aliveness we’re in a web with; listening for what Life wants (which is how I improvise).

So this is work for healing and flourishing in eight inter-related realms: 

Self, spirit, ecology, the body, belonging, community, hands and system.

(Graphic: Wheel / directions. 8 pebbles?  NE Self, E spirit, SE ecology, S the body, SW belonging, W community, NW hands and N system.)

Self

Heart · Soul · Rites of Passage · Mindfulness & the quality of consciousness · Healing · Purpose, Realisation · Growth · Creative expression · Tending the inner life · Cultivating wisdom.

Spirit

Earth-based Spirituality · Prayer, Directions · Aho Mitakue Oyasin / In the web of all my relations · Relating with my relations: trees, rocks, plants, creatures, waters, soil, humans, me, my body, the moon and sun…  Ceremony and Ritual · Sweat lodge, Vision Quest, Initiation · Gratitude and offerings · Solstice, Equinox, Beltane etc · Stone circles, sacred enclosures · Sacred music · Direct divinity: energy, consciousness · Clarity, emptiness, order · Space for the Dao, space for Spirit.

Ecology

Regenerative agro-ecology · Environmentalism · Ecological consciousness · Limits · Local resilience and regeneration in the face of ecological crisis · Practicality, empowerment · Making merry · Nature as sentient and sacred.

The Body

Embodiment · Somatic trauma healing · Dance · Food, gut, soil, nutrition and health ·

Deep health · goodbye wheat, sugar, alcohol, cigarettes. Hello organic veggies, fermentation, sprouting…  substance in-dependence · Let’s feel good in here. Then cuddle. · Eros · Erotic freedom and flourishing, healing and exploration · de-shaming Eros · holding Eros and the body as sacred; a personal and collective exploration.

Belonging

Knowing our place, people, plants and ecology · Language · Poetry · Humility · Gentleness · Lineage · Belonging · Complexity: Scatterlings seeking to become indigenous · Home · Our ancient indigenous ways and music · evolving.

Community 

Connection & Relating · Communication skills · Culture, place, creativity · Ritual and Ceremony · Disrupt privilege · Include the excluded · Connect the divided · Positivity, appreciation, celebration · Generosity · Loving on each other. You’re so great in these ways. Go for it! · Interpersonal skills, wisdom and ways · Heart · Creative expression. Sing! Dance! · Tribe. Elders, ancestors, children, future generations · Contention widsom: “unk” · Truth, transparency, mutual support · Holding shadow with compassion: healing consciousness · Tribal co-operation and flourishing · Tribal solutions to personal and social themes: love, family, ageing, purpose, local resilience and regeneration in the face of ecological crisis · The we - social consciousness · Lineage and ancestry · Loyalty, commitment, honour · Conscious culture.

Hands

Making · Building · Weaving · Hunting · Fishing · Foraging · Growing · Burying · Tending.

Care and the beauty way · Wood, glass, sunlight · Manifestation, doing, effectiveness  · Excellence, quality · Play, creativity, wildness.

System

Paradigm Shift · Spiral Dynamics · Innovation · Progressive Business · Turquoise Politics · Ecological-human systems · Financial sensibleness · Decency, ethical rigour · Logos, intellectual vitality.

I fuse these values from the cultures I have lived among and experienced: Welsh, British progressive middle class, Native American, British folk / pagan, San Francisco Bay Area, Eastern (yoga / meditation), New Culture (Network for a New Culture, Tamera, Zegg), environmentalists, academics, innovators, progressive business and social enterprise; politics and policy innovators; the sex-positive community; the conscious dance community; the Rites of Passage community; the somatic trauma healing crowd, the Nature Connection community, musicians. These have been all my human worlds and the weave of the gifts of each culture fuse into the pebbles of welcome around each theme. 

If you live, lead, study or seek any one of the aforementioned threads and feel open minded to many or most of the others, then the doors, my friends, are open. 

4. The Regenerative Village Project

In future, I hope that the CRCI paves the way for some people to make their homes here and create a Regenerative Village, in which new potentials will become realisable.