Place to B

We’re three coworkers at Place To B. And it’s been amazing to meet so many involved and inspiring people in one place. But what’s more enthralling is: How did all of you get to act in the first place? What was the “click”?

It seems to us that there’s a middle point between the moment we said “I am conscious of climate change” and “I am acting to fight it.” And that is: a meta-story. Something we try to embed ourselves into, because it gives us two things. Tools to recast our worldview. Words to express it.

The tools of storytelling may help us transition from awareness to action. It’s interesting to explore the lever of rites of passage, symbols, orality, myths, and immersive experiences.

Because, somehow, myths and the like help us reach and perceive a level of complexity that the rational discourse can’t convey.

The exciting endeavor ahead of us, and the purpose of this workshop, is to explore what we have in common in our stories, and is there some patterns?

The workshop will take us through a 3-hour conversation about what made the difference for us, what made it clicked. Drawing from our very personal experiences, we’ll try to imagine rites of passage for a larger audience.


Three moments

1. First hour: TELLING
What is your story? What was your entry point into ecology?

2. Second hour: FRAMING
Here are some ideas to start identifying the components of a meta-story. Other ideas welcome!
    •    Investing the Future. From an anxious present to forecasting a desirable future.
    •    Looking at Mythology. What can rituals of initiation and stories like the hero’s journey teach us about transformation?
    •    I and We. How do we convert a transcendantal narrative into a story that binds together my own interior transformation and the rest of the community?

3. Third hour: MAKING
Here, we’re hopeful to apply Place to B maker’s ethos.
    •    Drafting creative narratives. Forming small groups to co-write mottos, call-to-actions, targeted messages with a symbolic magnitude.
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Who we are - three COPilots who met here!

Eloi Saint Bris is a writer & artist with an expertise in narratives of collective transformation and the place of the self in these moments. He wrote a thesis on “The I and the We” and has since then developed immersive art experiences.

Eve Demange is a French novelist and web copywriter specialized in storytelling for the web. She’s writing a series for Place to B blog on "storytelling and ecology," trying to understand how we can talk about the future in a desirable way. Her latest work is an anticipation novel taking place in 2050.

Yvan Rytz is a specialist of immersions in nature & an organizer of rites of passage camps for youth and other people in a changing moment of their lives.