The Regenesis Collective project has been established by the Greater Blue Mountains Creative Arts Network as a home for creatives of the Seven Valleys (Lithgow) and  Blue Mountains community to explore and celebrate the connection between the magical beauty of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and our creative energies and social engagement as we join the new zeitgeist of regenerative thinking across all aspects of society—agriculture, food production, economy, urban planning, laws, community and cultural production. Part of this new zeitgeist is the growing interest in re-wilding, both of the natural environment’s ecology of plants, insects and animals, and in terms of human re-wilding.  The reconnection with the ‘inner-wild’ that part of our psyche that yearns to be free of packaged, monetised, consumerism. That seeks to be free of the limitations of rational materialism—that dances to the tune of more liminal vibrations, of poetry rather than prose.

This is challenging the old story of extractivism that has shaped Australian since white settlement, bringing with it the interlinked problems now facing our society—climate change through global warming from fossil fuel emissions, environmental degradation of soils and waterways, extinction of many plants, animals, birds and insects, negative impact on coral reefs and wild fishing resources, rising levels of wealth inequality and insecurity associated with homelessness, poverty and social conflict. And with this a rising tide of ‘mental illness’, experienced as anxiety, depression, and profound loneliness that no amount of material wealth can assuage.

Through our projects, blog posts, events and publishing, we are inspired by the way in which the songlines of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures have kept their culture alive through the arts—through storytelling, song, dance, performance and painting—across millennia for more than 65,000 years. As we embrace this new zeitgeist of regenesis, based on a relationist logic we wish to see how we can contribute to this new story through the arts, creating a new songline of regenesis reshaping our society and our sense of who we are and what we stand for.

Through the creative arts we can all experience the idea of ‘co-becoming’ which the Women Elders of North East Arnhem Land tell us is the correct way of understanding life.  As Gundungurra Elder, Aunty Sharyn Hall explains, this idea of ‘co-becoming’ is intrinsic to the way we understand County (Ngurra).

Ngurra takes in everything within the physical, cultural, and spiritual landscape – landforms, waters, air, trees, rocks, plants, animals, foods, medicines, minerals, stories, and special places. It includes cultural practice, kinship, knowledge, songs, stories, and art, as well as spiritual beings, and people: past, present, and future.