Welcome to the Collective Canvas!

This October I’m going to begin a project I call the Collective Canvas- a walk around the world multimedia storytelling project that pursues the question “What is our relationship with the natural world?”

Yes, I will be walking. 5 continents, 45 countries, and around 56,000 km. But bear with me.

“Why the walk?” - I’ve done a number of these extra-long-distance backpacking trips in my life, including the Pacific Crest and Appalachian trails in the US, and the Camino de Santiago, and they’ve opened up a world to me of something that’s not quite possible to experience in other contexts. Walking for months at a time is a fundamental way I stay in resonance with the world, and with myself- a concept I use to mean a deep, embodied awareness and reciprocal balance. A way of connecting.

I have grown to notice a certain out-of-balance relationship most of us have in the day to day of consumerism. I think it may be safe to say many people don’t feel or understand nature as themselves- a living and interconnected process that they are a part of- so much as something separate from them. And this psychological separation allows us to justify the continued extraction, consumption, and reap-the-repercussions cycles we’ve been suffering. We don’t understand how the hurt we cause is to ourselves.

But I know this isn’t the only type of relationship we can have, it’s just the most visible. But what if we can make a different option more visible? What if we can understand and visualize relationships of resonance with the natural world?

My goal on this walk is to document these human-land relationships, systems of knowledge, and ways of understanding that might not be seen- on a global scale. I will explore the lived experiences of global change, the rich diversity of human-land kinships, and narratives that resonate planetary flourishing.

These stories will be woven together on the course of the walk with a practice of slow-journalism- based on moving slowly to understand places an people, and building relationships with the story-sharers . Using multidisciplinary storytelling methods (art, photography, writing, and short videos) the Collective Canvas will move knowledge across socio-political boundaries and make it more accessible. It will help give voice to underrepresented groups and share the connective narratives of humanity that are often overlooked.

I am currently gathering collaborators, reaching out to communities that might want to connect, building my creative portfolio for art-driven storytelling, finding potential funding sources, and training my body to embark on this journey. If you’re interesting in supporting this project, sharing some knowledge, or collaborating in some way, it would mean the world to me. Please feel free to get in touch or support me by following along

I’m so excited to share this bit of my soul with the world. Thank you for being a part of it.

With much love,

Ramona