Women of the Dark Skies
When was the last time you walked in nature at night? How about without a torch or phone light to guide you? Would you be nervous?
This is exactly what Becky Burchell, Creative Arts Producer, is inviting women to do in her unique event series. Women of the Dark Skies is a four mile nighttime pilgrimage across Cranborne Chase which explores the history of the ancient North Dorset land through immersive storytelling.
Becky, in character as the “Story Weaver”, welcomes participants at nightfall in her local Chettle village. In darkness she leads women on a night walk of the vast chalk landscape, transporting them back 2,000 years to late Iron Age Dorset through a tale set at a pivotal moment in British history and culture, when the tribal and land-based way of living was under Roman invasion and Boudica was rallying tribes together for an uprising. As Becky guides her group of women through the story and the night, she describes the surrounding landscape as it was then, showing what has changed and what has been lost.
Between the storytelling, the walk takes place in silence to allow full immersion in the surroundings.
In the dark of night, with no phones or lights, the women can see constellations, glow worms and encounter wildlife like deer and owls. The evening concludes in a Women’s Circle around a fire with hot drinks in a woodland glade, and the invitation to speak and connect with each other, after journeying through history and wilderness together.
When asked how Women of the Dark Skies came into being, Becky describes how in winter lockdown she started traversing her local Chettle paths at night and was particularly drawn to learning about the Chettle Longbarrow, a historic, community-built burial place. Becky found that connecting with the history of the ancient landscape offered an antidote to the unsettling times of the pandemic, and was inspired to invite women to join her in the darkness to learn and connect with the land and its past.
Becky created the story in collaboration with the land and landscape and with the support of her Chettle Women’s Circle. She walked the route with local experts - Cranborne Chase AONB Dark Skies Advisor Steve Tonkin, Chettle ecologist Pete Etheridge and local archaeologist Martin Green - each providing knowledge and perspectives of the landscape and night sky that inspired and fed into the story.
Although usually the background organiser of creative events, Becky found that the narrative she created led to her taking on a performance role for this project to best embody the character. To do so she had to learn 40 minutes of character dialogue. At four hours long, this immersive outdoor experience goes against current trends in performance
arts, which are now often limited to under an hour to accommodate our shortening attention spans. Yet, the passage of time is what makes Becky’s creation such a deeply connected and magical experience. Women who have joined Becky in her theatrical night walk have described the experience as “deeply restorative”, “unique and powerful” and that it leaves them feeling “less scared of the darkness”.
Fear of walking at night is increasingly common for women, with one in five women never walking alone at night, a proportion twice as high as it is for men. Of those women who do walk alone outdoors at night, nearly two thirds of them report “always” or “often” feeling unsafe. Many women are all too familiar with the uneasy experience of walking alone in the dark; keys grasped in fists, hands around phones in pockets, sharing live locations, music turned off, the adrenaline of high alert just to make it through an unlit park. This event has been designed specifically for women, and those identifying as women, to offer a safe, immersive way of facing fears of the dark. However, Becky does also have one event in the series for men only. She does not change the content of the story or the experience, so that male participants are invited to engage with the experience through the perspective of the women it was created for.
Although many participants arrive for the pilgrimage alone and often apprehensive, a spirit of kinship is kindled throughout the journey. Becky invites participants to lean into the story and allow themselves to be led. Women are often surprised to find they feel relaxed. For some it is meditative and for others it is challenging, but all feel safe within the support of the group. There is always a safety person bringing up the back, and participants look after each other by being aware of the person behind, slowing down if they do. This keeps the whole group together throughout the night and creates a strong sense of companionship and belonging, among women who mostly came on their own, and who started the journey as strangers.
As we head into winter and the darker season might tempt us to hide away indoors, Becky invites us to join her, to step back in history and head out into the wild dark night.
