Therapeutic Landscapes: Ritual, Folklore, and Wellbeing

In this episode, Rebecca Burns speaks with Dr Su Fahy, artist and curator, whose work explores ritual, vision, dream, archives, legacy artists, and the dialogue between historical and contemporary creative practice. Together, they discuss Su’s current project, The String of Pearls, which is unfolding across the UK and seeks to reprise the reputation of women artists who have been written out of th...

In this episode, Rebecca speaks with Kaz and Fi from Seed Sistas, clinical herbalists and green witches whose work is rooted in reconnecting people with plants through science, story, sensory experience, and everyday herbal wisdom. Together, they explore how Seed Sistas began, why so many people have become disconnected from the medicinal plants growing around them, and how herbs can support physi...

In this episode, Rebecca speaks with artist and researcher Sarah Bellisario, who will be joining Therapeutic Landscapes II: Ritual, Folklore and Wellbeing as part of the Magical Material Practice panel. Sarah’s work explores how symbolic objects are used within magical, spiritual, faith-healing, and therapeutic practices, asking what these material encounters continue to offer us in relation to he...

Therapeutic Landscapes II is less than a month away, and in this episode, we take a look through the 2026 programme as the gathering begins to take shape. Want to join us, get all the details here: https://www.therapeutic-landscapes.org/events The conference brings together artists, academics, practitioners, makers, performers, folklorists, researchers, and community workers exploring how place, s...

In this second episode, Dr John Cussans and Desdemona McCannon look back at what made Year One so powerful: the keynotes, the workshops, the singers and storytellers, and the overwhelming sense from everyone who attended that they had finally found their people. They also look ahead. To a second year that's already shaping up to be bigger than the first, and to a longer vision of festivals, rural...

In this first episode, conference organisers Dr John Cussans and Desdemona McCannon share the story of how the Therapeutic Landscapes conference came to be. From an earlier symposium called Enchanted Environments, through their shared interests in folk culture, arts and health, and the healing power of place, to the moment the first call for papers went out, and the response was better than they c...