Abstract

This study consists of hosting conversations at the Hermit Lab, an emerging research centre for socially engaged imagination, as well as participating in conversations of everyday community life in a rural Ontario village. The study is grounded in the values and practices of participatory research, ecological learning, and relational epistemologies. The study was conducted in the context of living in the present turbulent world, characterized by rapid socio-ecological change and high uncertainty. The goal of the study was to explore participatory encounter: what happens when people experience themselves as co-participants in the world? The assumption behind this inquiry being that part of today’s challenge is to tell the stories of our lives so that we can understand what is happening around us and begin to organize ways forward. Through the conversations that arose out of this study, the experience of participatory encounter was documented through four overlapping themes: conversation, mutual aid, affection for place, and the poetics of space. Each of these themes, written from my perspective and those of Hermit Lab participants, explores the phenomena of participatory encounter through the experience of people making and belonging.