Join us for a two-day retreat with Dougald Hine, author of At Work in the Ruins and co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. Bring your own ideas, stories and questions into dialogue with a thinker who has been one of the most influential voices in the environmental debate over the past two decades.

“The end of the world as we know it not the end of the world, full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths that lead into the unknown world ahead of us.” – Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Manifesto

In 2009, Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth published the Dark Mountain manifesto: a call to face the depth of the trouble in which we find ourselves, to recognise the deep cultural roots of that trouble, to abandon the doomed project of sustaining “the world as we know it” and to go looking for the tasks that make sense on the journey into the unknown.

Dougald’s new book, At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Climate Crises and Other Emergencies, is a report from that journey, inspired by the conversations and collaborations that Dark Mountain led him to, and the unexpected shifts in perspective along the way. What if the way we talk about the trouble we’re in has ended up making everything worse? How do we slip the traps of panic and polarisation in which our public debate seems to be trapped?

To mark the book’s paperback release, Dougald is making a US tour that will include public events with Dr Bayo Akomolafe, Lewis Hyde (author of The Gift and Trickster Makes This World).

At the heart of the tour is this two-day retreat, hosted by Dr Ashley Colby of Doomer Optimism on the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus.

This will be an intimate gathering with a chance to go deep around the kind of questions that have been central to Dougald’s work over the past two decades:

- How do we make sense of the layered crises of our time? How do we find our bearings, when the future no longer works as a source of hope, but has become a source of anxiety?
- How do we tell the story of what is worth doing now? What kind of maps are worth making to help each other find paths through an uncertain landscape?
- How do we release resources from the structures of a world that is ending to contribute to the possibility of worlds worth living for in the times to come?
- How might we move together in the space between the crumbling familiar and the worlds we won’t live to see?
- What are the practices that help us leave good ruins and become good ancestors?

This is Dougald’s first North American tour since he and Paul Kingsnorth founded the Dark Mountain Project, more than fifteen years ago, so this weekend retreat will be a rare opportunity to spend time in an in-depth, in-person gathering with an author whose thinking has influenced many of us deeply.

The weekend will kickoff with an optional reception and book event at Pilsen Community Books on Chicago's south side, which will be open to the public. This will include a talk, book signing, and reception.

The official private retreat will launch Saturday morning on the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park. On Saturday, we will begin with a conversation with Dougald, laying out the lines of thought he traces in the book. We will then enjoy a series of talks, workshops, and conversations proposed by you, the participants in this retreat.

Saturday evening there will be an optional dinner for attendees. At the end of the day Sunday we will reflect with Dougald on the insights emerging from the weekend.
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General admission is $300 per adult and grants you access to the retreat. This includes talks, workshops and panels on Saturday and Sunday, as well as the potential to participate as a speaker. Coffee, tea and refreshments provided. Accommodation and meals are not provided. Tickets are limited to 40.

Admission is per adult. Children 17 and under can attend for free. Please let us know via email if you will be attending with children [email protected]. We have also reserved limited tickets for low income attendees. You only need to get in contact to inquire about low income or children's tickets. Otherwise you can go directly to buy tickets through this site. Refunds will be issued up until August 20. 

Hosted by: Ashley Fitzgerald of Doomer Optimism