From Extractive to Relational Ways of Creating

This week’s post is an audio recording and I’m posting a written version below →

I've been working in an extractive way most of my life, without even knowing it. I think most of us have been and still are.

After years in the fashion industry - burning out, feeling isolated and alone - I started noticing how extractive this way of working was. So one-way, so one-dimensional.

Extraction is commonly defined as using effort or force to remove something - I'd add, without reciprocity.

I interned at Vivienne Westwood in my younger years, where we as interns were treated as disposable labour by some of the people in management. When I was managing a renowned showroom for emerging designers in Paris, everything revolved around designers at the pinnacle, at the top of the hierarchy, where everyone else that contributed to their creations was rarely, if at all, acknowledged.

Story after story of profit-driven brands where entire ecosystems - humans, more-than-humans, the Earth - are invisible contributors.

Because we can't ‘sustainability’ our way out of extraction with technical fixes. We need to go way beyond that.

No matter how many “eco-friendly” materials we use, if we're still operating from the same extractive logic, we'll keep creating the same problems.

Through my doctoral research focused on pluriversal creative practices, I discovered this wasn't just evident through my personal experiences - these issues are systemic and paradigmatic. The western approach to creating and designing treats everything as a resource to extract from, rather than relationships to honour and become intimate with.

In reconnecting with my own indigeneity and the places that have held me, as well as spending a lot of time in process-driven making during my research with no outcomes in mind, I've learned that this isn’t anything new, and that all cultures pre-modernity have always known this and lived this way, as some still do. This is about remembering what colonialism has made us forget.

Step by step, micro-shift by micro-shift, we can rewire these patterns. And this requires a holistic approach, a key part of my methodology, that has to encompass all four of our wisdom centres - spirit, heart, mind and body.So I’d like to introduce to you some different practical ways that I’ve been playing with, to move from extractive to relational ways of creating:

CONNECTING TO PLACEWhere are you located and where are you creating? What are the local flora and fauna that exist there? The local human and more-than-human ecosystems?I love to set up a little elemental altar everywhere I go, as a way to locate myself in place, within the four directions and elements. Our work is always being held by place - how are we in relationship to it?CO-CREATIONI stopped seeing projects as things I completely control. Now they're collaborators. What wants to emerge?What is this work asking of me?How can I listen with more than my ears?How do I open myself up to not-knowing, sitting in liminal spaces, allowing space for contemplation and emergence to occur?This requires slowing down and listening more, and releasing control, thinking you always know best. A practical way of doing this is sitting with your creation, beginning to say hello, and developing a relationship with it asking it questions and being in dialogue.RECIPROCITYEvery creative act has to include: What am I giving back?Robin Wall Kimmerer asks: "What can I give back to the Earth for all of her gifts?" How can my work be of service to others, to the community, to the Earth? Interweaving an element of giving back into your work can look like volunteering at your local community garden, organising community making events irl or online, even a simple ‘thank you’ and acknowledgement to your materials and tools that you use each day.COMMUNITYCreating through the worldview that i am seperate from all else and others, kept me in an isolated and extractive mode of working. It is in community that we remember that we're part of something larger.How can my work bring people together? A mending circle in the park? Online gathering? Potluck dinner?How can my work bring community together? How can we support one another and create alongside one another in this time?

Through my one-on-one client mentoring sessions, I see this extractive pattern emerging a lot from a place of separation and thinking we have to go at it all alone. What I’ve seen is that once we begin to connect into relational approaches, which are very practical, their worldviews begins to shift, as entire new communities of support become available to them through their own inherent wisdoms, their materials, processes, ecosystems and more.

This shift of course will not occur overnight. This is an ongoing practice of remembering relationship over extraction. In this process of de-conditioning from so many years of being this way, we will get it wrong and we need to be gentle with ourselves in this process, whilst still holding a level of responsibility.

When creatives begin to create in this way, something magical occurs. We start creating different possibilities.This is what we explore together through Weaving Worlds.What would change in your creative work if you approached it through relationship rather than extraction?

Are there any practices or methods that you’re working with that move you away from extractive toward relational was of creating? I’d love to hear from you below.

So much Love,

Ania xx