Finding slowness, ammonites and connections – Reflections on the Cobra Collective 2025 Annual Retreat

A version of this blog post has also been posted on the FEELed Lab’s website.

On a surprisingly warm spring day this April, the Cobra Collective went for a beach walk. We had gathered in Lyme Regis from 23-26 April 2025 for our annual Cobra Collective Retreat and were on the lookout for fossils!

This beach, unknown to some of us and bringing up childhood memories for others, is famous for its ammonite fossils. We skipped across the rocks, each engaging with the beach in our own ways: looking for new fossils, checking out the seaweed and honeycomb worm burrows or in my case – trying to trace ammonite fossils using pen and paper. The fossils around us are about 199 million years old and the beach had a slightly mystical atmosphere of bringing together old and new. New fossils being unearthed with every slide of the collapsing cliff, families with children around us and well-worn fossils on large stone slates that have seen many people come and go.

On this and our subsequent ocean walks and days, while trying to trace fossils, in our conversations I was also tracing and reflecting. Wondering about my changing relationship with different research groups and the Collective and tracing connections between people, projects and ideas.

It’s been 5 years since I first joined the Cobra Collective as an Erasmus+ intern. I’ve been grateful to have been able to join a series of projects and to even embark on my own research project with the support of the Collective. Throughout those years, the Collective had become my intellectual, creative and academic home especially as I was moving between different places. Last year however, I drew back from my work in the Collective as I moved to Canada and started my PhD at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. This move seemed more permanent, and I had felt the urge to pull back from my other connections to make sure there was enough space in my life for new things to emerge.

Soon, however, I realized how many traces and connections there were between my new community and our work in the Collective! One of the most meaningful experiences in the Collective has been the development of our ethical principles. In my new lab, we also decided to start a project to develop our lab values, for which I was able to draw on our process in the Collective.

Over the course of the retreat, it felt like slowness and gentleness were what guided us. Taking our time with the ammonites on the beach and connecting with the place around us. During our walks, we came across this beautiful statue of Mary Anning (1799- 1847). She a pioneer paleontologist and the so-called “unsung hero of fossil discovery”.

Thinking about time in Lyme Regis was confusing. There are 199-million-year-old fossils on the beach, the thought of Mary Anning walking these beaches about 200 years ago and now, her new statue. We learned that the statue was only unveiled in 2022 on what would have been Mary’s 222nd birthday. The statue came out of the project “Mary Anning Rocks”, started by 11-year-old Evie Swire and her mother, Anya Pearson. Given that Mary Anning was sidelined by her male scientific peers during her lifetime, they had been shocked that there was no statue of her already in Lyme Regis that acknowledges and celebrated her work and discoveries. What do we want to stay connected to, celebrate and remember?

These questions stayed with me across the days. During our discussions, I shared and reflected more on my recent work with the FEELed Lab and how those insights and practices might support our work in the Collective. We use zines a lot in the FEELed lab and on our last evening of the retreat, we also created some zines. Each zine had a unique vibe and style including drawing, collage, gelliprints and focusing on its own theme. The themes that have stuck with me the most are ways of joyful resistance, going with the flow and respect.

There is one page that keeps echoing in my mind, which is the final page of Jay’s zine titled “Joyful resistance is … making time.”

The little argonaut on it reminds me of the ammonite fossils on the beach and all the ways in which my experience of time in Lyme Regis has felt warped. Beyond just submitting to the ‘flow’ of time, it is something we can shape by how we choose to engage with it. Making time for connections, slowing down and trusting connections will remain and can be traced across the distance of space and time.