Sculpting Empathy and Social Tissue

“I think empathy is a creative act. It’s imaginal, it’s an art-making practice, where even just listening is creating a picture and a lifeworld of the other inside yourself in order to get closer to each other.” - Dylan McGarry

Empathy is a magical thing.  It lets us do more than just step into another's shoes, it opens the doors for us to step into their heart and soul with the vast generosity of spirit we'd like others to bring to us, wide as the sky, deep as the oceans, so that we can see through their eyes as the best of who they are. Obviously, we can do this with other people, but we can do it too, with whales, with elephants, with horses, and red kites and moles and spiders - and mountains and trees and landscapes… empathy is the spark that connects us to the More than Human world.  There are not many people who truly understand this and fewer still who make it their life's work to open the doors in our souls with such subtlety that we only know afterwards that we've stepped beyond the boundaries of who we think we are.

Our guest this week, Dr Dylan McGarry, is one of these people. Dyl works across the fields of Education, Sociology, Ecology, and the Arts. An Educational Sociologist, Cultural Ecologist, multimedia artist, artivist, curator, theatre and filmmaker, Dyl's work spans disciplines with many tentacles touching the world. Dyl holds a PhD in Environmental Education and Art, as well as degrees in Marine Science, Environmental Science, and Sustainable Rural Development.

As co-founder of Empatheatre, their praxis draws from the power of public storytelling, theatre, film, and animation, as a tool for regenerative community building, proactive justice, active empathy and meaning making.  Their artwork and creative practice are particularly focused on empathy, working with imagination, listening and empathy as actual sculptural materials. They are developing pedagogies for empathy, in the context of ecological citizenship, and exploring the sculptural potential of empathy, attentiveness, intuition and learning.

Dyl is an astonishingly prolific, and inspiring pracademic, with a host of published papers in topics that I could easily dive into for years - like hydro-feminism... but it's the work of Empatheatre that we're really looking at today.  This is a theatre-based approach to transgressive social learning, and an extra-legal alternative to democratising policy change. This in itself is mind-blowing - the plays are developed over months or years in collaboration with the communities affected by the concepts - and then when the play tours, the cast and crew facilitate conversations after each event that turn into tribunals or citizen's assemblies and the mere fact of having experienced the deep emotions of the play, had a sense of how things land with other people, can open doors that were previously closed.  I've been searching for longer than this podcast has been live for people who are crafting paradigm shift in ways that are sticky, that will land and last - and this is it. 

Dylan says that empathy has three components: Imagination, attentiveness, and intuition. And just hearing this opens whole new ways of being for me, and I hope for you.  This was such a heart-filling, generative conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. People of the podcast, please welcome Dylan McGarry from Empatheatre, and so much more.

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"His sensitivity and integrity regarding valuing the knowledge, perspectives and values of others is amazing – a role model for others." 
    Professor Charlie Shackleton, Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University

LINKS
https://www.dylanmcgarry.org/
https://www.empatheatre.com/

Empatheatre on YouTube
https://youtu.be/p_W3QBz9cPY?si=mFH4W2V7_AnObM61  Lalela uLwandle (illustrated short film)
https://youtu.be/DnuZa7r0vPc?si=RX3Is2k4eN0ROO9e  CWF24 TA1 Empatheatre Dylan McGarry
https://youtu.be/sfAGXCiki8U?si=fXaqm66WlKCqO2j6 FORGE x MOTH Festival of Ideas 2025 | Dylan McGarry & Elisa Morgera
https://youtu.be/lNm-Yf8Dt10?si=CkJW0aqePYEQAX3h  Indlela Yokuphila: The Soul's Journey (ZULU)

https://youtu.be/e3tUrfUXgsw?si=tQRxPTSLHgkDwckG Isitha Sabantu Teaser
https://youtu.be/4UBubIpCWuk?si=CyVzPA7suMnmbrrr The Blue Blanket

South African Puppet Company: The Herds

The play: Isitha Sabantu - review

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