Sophie Macklin is an anarchist teacher, facilitator and writer with 25 years experience in exploring and sharing alternative lifeways, currently living back in her homelands of south east England after 15 years in coastal California.
My work is about imagining and making more caring worlds, taking inspiration from deep time and living folkways of care through the ages. How did things get like this? How could they be different? I often look at current social issues and possibilities through the lenses of deep time, ecological entanglement, folk knowledges and histories of resistance, and the sacred.
I’m currently particularly enamoured with pilgrimage and sacred landscapes, being with frailty, disability and affliction, multispecies justice, remaking the commons and commoning, prehistoric and medieval healing practices and cosmologies, relating to the holy, the mysterious and the miraculous, building communities of care in conditions of systemic trauma and scarcity, and what it is to be non-coercively present with the living intricacies and complexities of the human and more than human world.
My past classes include
Beyond the Blood, engaging in european ancestral practice from an anti-fascist perspective
Ungovernable Bodies, mad and crip experience through the lens of anticapitalism, ecology and mysticism
Radical Well Tending in a Time of Drought, living folkways of care
Fragments of Root and Bone, world Making and unmaking with deep time ancestral inheritances.
About 250 students have participated in these classes and feedback has generally been very positive
Work History
Teaching and facilitating classes online - 2018 - 2023
Consulting, speaking, academic thought partnering - intermittent 2015-2023
Care work and death work for friends and family - intermittent 1996 -2026
Group coaching - 2017-2018
Holistic life coaching and anti-capitalist money coaching - 2012-2018
Conflict support work - 2011-2015
Activism and Organizing - since I was a child
Ritual and circle facilitation - 2009 - ongoing
Elder Care - 2004-2006
Non profit Fundraising - 2001-2004
Training
Anarchist, Feminist, Queer, Anti-racist and land defense organizing and facilitating - 2005 - now
Experimenting with alternative economics/commoning, radical trust and community building 2005 - now
Abundant time spent outside in ecosystems where humans are decentered, including living outside in the woods 2007 - now
Long term independent study as both an autodidact and peer learning participant, but also 2 and a half years of an anthropology degree at Sussex University and UCSC 2006-2009
Ritual practice, social permaculture and facilitation - Reclaiming Collective and Starhawk extensive study and practice 2009-2018
Non Violent communication - extensive training and practice - 2007-2015
The Work that Reconnects training with Joanna Macy and Rebecca Sang - 2010-2012
Restorative Circles - extensive training and practice - 2010-14
Meisner Technique Foundation level - Rachael Adler 2013
Improv intensives - BATS Improv 2013
Transformational Coaching Method Certification (NLP) - HCI, Stacey Morganstern 2014
Drama Therapy Foundations - Armand Volkas 2015
Hakomi weekend workshops - Hakomi Institute 2015-16
Convergent Facilitation Trainings with Miki Kashtan 2016
Radical Relating with Jenn Mccabe - 2019
Grief Workshops with both Sobonfu Some and Malidoma Patrice Some 2013-2015
Herbalism study with Stascha Stahl and many other friends (Including the plants) 2007-now
Spiritual exploration and practice, especially in animism, mysticism and folk christianity - 2005 - now
Selected past interviews:
Before capitalism (from a european perspective) on the Numinous Podcast https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-iqvvw-14beba2
Webs of Connectivity on the On Belonging Podcast https://groundedfutures.com/on-belonging-sophie-macklin/
Animist World, Anarchist Mysticism with Hannah June Althea https://freight.cargo.site/m/V1907371018671944139145994002194/VisionsofCommunityCare_Final-2.pdf
(Human) Influences on my work:
David Graeber, Simone Weil, Ursula Le Guin, Fred Moten, Caitlin Davis, Rebecca Tidewalker, Starhawk, Rebecca Sutton, Carl Rogers, Jack Halberstam, Donna Harraway, Sylvia Federici, Rowan Williams, Bhanu Kapil, Kathleen Stewart, Peter Linebaugh, Mariam Gafforio, Sophie Strand, Rachel Blodgett, Sylvia Linsteadt, Christopher Hill, Alexis P. Morgan, Augusto Boal, Marina Abramovic, Hildegard of Bingen, James Baldwin, Anne Boyer, Eric Hobsbawm, Corrina Gould, James C. Scott, Bayo Akomolafe, T. Thorn Coyle, bell hooks, Meg Wheatley, Peter Block, Adrienne Rich, Lana del Rey, Octavia Butler, Dorothy Day, The Icarus Project, Francis Weller, Karl Marx, Marion Rosen, Anna Tsing, Ronald Hutton, Gigi Coyle, Gord Hill, Tim Ingold, Emma Goldman, Anna Halprin, David Abram, Michel Foucault, Lucy Wright, Martin Shaw, Joanna, Brück, Christina Sharpe, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Cassie Thornton, Paulo Freire, Casey Wait, Dori Midnight, Sarita Doe, Peter Gelderloos, Walter Benjamin, Alice Wong, Judith Butler, Marija Gimbutas, Alexander Berkman, carla bergman, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Johanna Hedva, The many people throughout time who’ve fought for life and beauty and against domination and control, including those I’ve had the honor of working with, and the many that came before or arose elsewhere. Particular inspirations include the Paris commune, Spanish anarchist struggle in the 1930’s, The Diggers, The Peasants revolt of 1381, movements against the poor law (etc) in 1830’s England, Kurdish struggle, the Zapatisitas, the Black Panthers, Palestinian resistance, Maroon communities, the Mad Pride movement, road protest movement in the 1990’s in Britain and other land defense struggles.