An Ocean Relationship | Dan Burgess

What a time to be alive.

I’m not going to start on the state of our oceans, wider planetary ecosystems, climate and biodiversity. You’d have to be a hermit to not be aware of the impacts the human species industrial growth society is having on the wider non-human world right now.

But amongst all this destruction, there’s an awakening going on, a growing surge of consciousness across our blue planet. More people are waking up to the interconnectedness of all life, the interdependence of it all, and nowhere more so right now than with our relationship to water and the ocean.

Over the last few years my work has taken me more deeply into exploring our connection with the ocean and water more broadly, our utter dependence on this great blue beating heart of the planet and how we are in an intimate relationship with it every day, wherever we are.

This manifested with a project called We Are Ocean, exploring how we might accelerate a more ocean literate culture in the UK. That led to the development of World Ocean Day for Schools, now in its second year, a day to celebrate and kickstart a conversation between kids, parents, teachers and communities around our relationship with the ocean. This year it will include a world class curated learning resource to help teachers and students access a diverse range of ongoing learning tools and content from amazing organisations and contributors about our impacts on the ocean and our connection to water.

We’ve even been experimenting with outdoor advertising, collaborating with a campaign - ‘The Sea is the Sky’ - that activated creative messaging on digital billboards in urban centres when it rained to remind us of our connection to the ocean through the weather itself.

We’ve collaborated with the UN's Global Goals, and Goal 14, Life Below Water, with Ocean Hack - an innovation hack in San Francisco which brought diverse talents together around some big ocean issues to see what potential solutions could be dreamed up in just 48 hrs.

One key take out from my journeying into environmental issues and challenges over the last decade is that there’s huge learnings and medicine for the soul to be had from really listening more deeply to wider perspectives, thoughts and ideas. This includes paying more attention to the non-human world for sure, but also when we become more attentive to each other.

When we create space for more voices to be heard, when we listen more deeply, when we suspend our judgement, our cynicism, when we open our hearts and minds to new stories and perspectives, when we widen our lens on the world, we grow as individuals and we build community and new possibilities with each other.

And so I’m really excited to bring the Ocean Mic Sessions with Finisterre to a store near you in June. Everyone of us has a water story within us, sea flavoured thoughts and salty tales. Come and take the Ocean mic for 3 minutes, share an idea, a thought, a project, a poem, a song, a rant, a fear, a dream - go improv or come rehearsed - everything is welcome.