Welcome to Foregather
We help women dreaming of hopeful futures make their ideas a reality
We help women dreaming of hopeful futures make their ideas a reality.
Through gatherings and practices that deepen our connection to community, earth and creative energy.
Combined with practical creative strategy and design support.
Foregather is the creation of three hopeful women: Laura Malan, Emily Bazalgette and Fran Cook. Currently, Foregather exists as in-person gatherings in the UK and this Substack newsletter exploring creative energy. And, in the future, perhaps much more. We have plans.
We’d love to host gatherings in South Africa (Laura’s other home) too. We hope
to create spaces for dreaming and creativity that bridge global South and global
North, and to explore regenerative, reparative resourcing.
Read more about us and the lineages Foregather draws from on our About page. Read our review of our first gathering in Hartland, Devon, UK, in September 2024 (review coming soon).
Foregather’s origins
Foregather is the offering that the three of us have all needed at different points in our own (sometimes fraught) relationships with creativity. We have struggled with feeling like we have ideas to put out into the world but not knowing what expression they could take. We’ve started things because they seemed to be logical next steps and then abandoned them when they felt empty, lacking in fire. We know we’re not alone in this experience, the women in our communities feel it too. An aching search for purpose, for their gifts and how to express them.
We have struggled with feeling like we have ideas to put out into the world,
but not knowing what expression they could take. We’ve started things
because they seemed to be logical next steps and then abandoned them
when they felt empty, lacking in fire.
Picture a high summer morning in Cape Town, late February 2024. The sun is already scorching at 8.30am. Laura and Emily are at the tidal pool for a swim before work in the freezing, kelp-forested ocean. The day before this particular swim, in a brave leap, we had both let go of significant projects with close colleagues. We had the sense that we needed more space in our lives, but for what?
As she swims the tidal pool, Laura sets an intention: “please, give me guidance on my life and my creative path. What should I do?”
We emerge from sea, picking kelp from places that kelp shouldn’t be.
Laura turns to Emily: “Well, we have all this space now, what should we do with it? We have all these skills to offer, what could we create together?”
Emily squints at Laura in the too-bright sun.
Laura, answering her own question: “We’re going to host a gathering”.
Emily, curious: “For whom?”
Laura, weirdly certain: “For women who want to connect with creative energy”.
Over the course of a mandatory post-swim coffee and the seven minute taxi ride back to Laura’s apartment, we sketched out the entire idea for Foregather, inviting Fran into the creation magic swiftly after.
A testament to the power of letting go (our previous work) and making space for the new, Foregather felt startingly fully-formed from the outset. The truth of it, the language, the kinds of ideas we want to help women bring to life, the centrality of earth and community in making this happen, and what the three of us could each bring.
We’ve come to trust in the energy and intrinsic pace of an idea. Foregather’s pace has been fast, from inception in February to launch in June. It has also been deliciously slow, the result of an entire summers worth of exploration last year as we collaborated on
, experimenting with radically slow and attuned ways of bringing an idea forth into the world (watch this video to get a sense of our process). And, truthfully, Foregather is an expression of whole worlds of enquiry into creativity, intuition, femininity, community and earth connection.We know that our most rooted, aligned expressions of creativity
come from attunement and regular practices that connect
us with ourselves, community and earth.
Making women’s ideas a reality
As we journey further into the polycrisis, and the world becomes more unsettling, louder and complex, we need an abundance of ideas, stories and creations that show us how more hopeful futures are possible. Creations like newsletters, podcasts, zines, books, films, courses, projects, networks, communities and organisations that make beautiful, life-affirming ideas tangible. Creations that heal us through the very act of making them.
In our gatherings, we’re bringing together women1 who have something to say about the moment we’re in and the hopeful futures we could build. Who long for deeper community and greater connection to the earth and their creative energy.
We work with women because we perceive an increasing desire for sisterhood and solidarity. We want to midwife women’s hopeful creative work and challenge the patriarchal scarcity narrative that there’s not enough room for us all.
Our gatherings will create a “temporary village”, a curated space, where we can remember and practise community, care and connection with each other and the earth. To help make ideas a reality, we also bring our collective skills in creative strategy, branding, writing and coaching.
From our communities, some hopeful ideas we love: Beyond Burnout, Black Food Fund, Bonded, The Decelerator, GriefSick, Moral Imaginations, , Palpable Publishing, LongCovid Lighthouse and Divergent Kin, .
What we know
From our own experiences, we know that creative self-expression comes from fostering creative energy. From embracing creativity as a way of being, deciding to live in gratitude, a commitment to enchantment, an enduring relationship with pleasure and beauty. It’s the meals you cook for sheer sensory enjoyment, the outfits you wear that conjure your most joyful, confident self, and the rocks and shells that jangle in your pockets as you leave the beach. Creative energy pours through the romance of a thousand moments.
We know that women’s creativity is collaborative and non-linear, ebbing and flowing in cycles. We know that our most rooted, aligned expressions of creativity come from regular practices that connect us with ourselves, community and earth.
We know that creativity is healing and innate to all of us
We know creative energy is fostered in our relationships with ourselves, each other and the earth. It’s borne of practices that encourage flow, rest, play, joy, magic, beauty and enchantment
We know that communion with other beings (animals, plants, fungi, water, minerals) enhances our connectedness to ourselves and to each other
We know that beauty, sensuality, joy and play are everyday pleasures, our birthrights, not “rewards” for productivity or achievement
We know that designing the right conditions and trusting in emergence results in deeper, more authentic work than linear processes or rigid workshop schedules
We know that we don’t have enough opportunities to rehearse living communally, and that intentional gatherings are important “temporary villages”, spaces where we can strengthen our atrophied muscles of collectivism
We know that people, and women especially, need space to dream into new initiatives and stories
The three of us have all struggled with integrating multi-faceted professional and personal identities. We know that holding plural identities and practices is enriching and necessary to create societies where all of our gifts are welcomed and recognised
We know that for ideas to find their truest expression, they need both dreaming spaces and practical creative support.
Conversations at our gatherings will focus on women’s experiences and how they relate to creativity, including references to female physicality. Whether you identify as a woman or as non-binary, we welcome you if this focus resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable participating. Please get in touch if you have any questions or concerns about inclusion. And, of course, we hope people of all genders will sign up to this newsletter!