We are a vibrant community of like-minded and differently-minded artists encountering one another and the divine through creativity. We champion art and artists of all kinds who explore spirituality through their work. We create spaces for diverse voices and perspectives, fostering authentic connections and meaningful dialogue.
We celebrate diverse and marginalised voices as we engage with our context and times. We acknowledge privilege and seek to learn from those outside
Safe Space
We aim to create safe places for people to meet, support and encourage one another. This means trying our best to contain difference, whilst working for justice
Creative Hubs
As well as collaborating across disciplines, we are developing ways for artists of the same discipline to support each other.
Today we hear from Talitha, and her walk through forest close to her home in Australia. Let her take you with her into different country – to mine at least. Imagine the tropical sounds of the birds and the feeling of morning heat as we pace out beside her. It’s the season of Luk (Eel)/Autumn in Naarm Melbourne. On my morning commute I try to make time to wander through an area of local native bush for some brief encounter with wilderness. No headphones… but rather listening to the birds and winds’ movement in the leaves and branches. No speed for my cardio as I’m passing through… but rather intentional, relational, slow presence. As the path curves and widens I am confronted by this tree. Is it bleeding? Do trees bleed?! …sit in contemplation of this image for a moment – what arises? A red sap seems to pour, not from a single place of piercing, but rather the tree is awash – bleeding from everywhere, all at once. Is it dying? …this is a natural process. This kino (resin sap) is a way the black wattle tree can flush or bind insects that are seeking to damage or burrow…
Today we have a song from Jonny Baker, referring back to an album made back in 1998 after a visit to Israel/Palestine. In the wake of recent history, they have remixed and re-released this (superb) album. We are grateful for Jonny not only for the album for for this unplugged version of one of the songs. It is now available on Bandcamp here. All proceeds will be going to the Amos Trust. I have just listened to the whole album, wondering again how we allowed this history to be erased in the overwhelming telling of the story of the war in Gaza. As Jonny asks below – who is the terrorist? What does this word even mean in an age in which terror is edited out by an AI interface, whilst simultaneously being used as a justification for genocide? There is another way, but it requires peaceful, determinded, creative confrontation with Empire. We are grateful that art provides a means for us to do this. Backbone was an album recorded by me (Jonny Baker) and Jon Birch after I had been on a trip to visit Israel/Palestine with Amos Trust in 1998. It was a protest album really with a…
This is Kenmore Street in Glasgow, just around the corner from where my son and his girlfriend Rachel live. It is a street on which a remarkable act of community activism and protest took place. Back in May 2021, a U.K. Home Office dawn raid triggered one of the most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory. In Scotland’s most diverse neighbourhood, hundreds of residents rushed out on to the streets to stop the detention and deportation of their neighbours. The morning in Glasgow, the first day of Eid, started as any other. However, when neighbours heard through community message networks that two local men were snatched up for deportation, hundreds of people left their breakfast tables, work Zoom calls, and daily lives to rush down to Kenmure Street to save them by putting their bodies on the line. It is a remarkable story, which has become a remarkable film, patched together from interviews and phone footage taken by those who participated. It started when a man (who has decided to remain anonymous) saw what was happening, and decided he was going to take action to show his objection to the actions of the home office snatch…
It is a commonly shared myth that the phrase ‘do not fear’ or similar appears in the Bible 365 times. Whilst this is not true – the actual figure being closer to 100 – there is no doubt that this is a common invocation ascribed to the divine throughout the sweep of the Christian canon. Think of Jesus calming his disciples in the stormy fishing boat, or those meetings after his death, during a time of persecution and state sponsored murder. Why so many times? After all, the number of verses so many accept as authority for condemnation of same sex relationships amounts to perhaps three? Could it be that fear is one of the most common ways that power uses to shape others to its bidding? This is true of both secular powers, with their secret police and their tanks, but also of religious powers, who set themselves up as arbiters of eternal damnation or salvation. If we are to live towards a New Kingdom, based on justice, love and peace, we must also do so with boldness. If love is to be active, not just passive, it will always face opposition from those people or powers who object…
Yesterdy, I (Chris) had a long discussion about communion with a group of friends. We were trying to reach a shared place once again of how we might make a refreshed collective ritual around the celebration of the Christian tradition of communion. Most of us arrived at this discussion with some difficulties of what the ritual of communion had become – so often within religious spaces it reeked of pateralism, male dominance and the use of fear and power to control. Then there is the constant shadow of substitutionary attonement and how we are conditioned to see communion as a transaction in which our sin is somehow replaced by the torture and death of Jesus. Our discussion started with a rejection of this inheritance but at the same time expressed a shared longing for discovering new meanings and new forms of shared ritual chains that might lead us forward. The room contained a wide variety of positions. Some still carried a strong sense of the tradition that they had inherited. They were able to seperate the shadow from the light- to see the ritual as a gift of mystery. To see the cross as a symbol of ultimate self giving…
Dipping in to this anthology of poems from 2018 is a deep pleasure for me (Chris) because I always find something fresh and lovely. This collection was a labour of love, a combing and gathering of poems from so many places and people. I now know some of the poets, but I do not know Pia, who wrote today’s poem. I love this poem because it is honest and human. It speaks of a relationship with the divine that is not manufactured, but arising from the messy reality of what our lives often become.
What we do
Community podcasts exploring art and spirituality
Connecting and supporting creatives
Artistic collaboration
Creative workshops and meetups
Digital spaces for collaboration and connection
Publishing
Tune Into Our Latest Podcast!
Chris Goan
Community Organiser and Podcast Host
Chris is a half-English, half-Irish man who lives in Scotland. He is the author of several books of poetry and, after a first career in social work and mental health services, now makes a living through making ceramic art. He also writes a long running eclectic blog called this fragile tent. Chris has a long history with Proost as a poet and the editor of a couple of poetry collections. Chris is married to Michaela and has two adult children and now a little grandchild. He also grows vegetables.
Rob Hewlett
Community Organiser and Podcast Host
Rob first came across Proost many years ago through the Labyrinth set. Sometime in 2023, he started making tentative enquiries as to whether Proost had any life left in it, and once he started chatting more earnestly with Chris, things started to develop.
He is married, lives in Jersey and has two grown-up sons. He works in a second-hand shop for a social enterprise providing work and training for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.
Cameron Preece
Community Organiser and Online Community Facilitator
Cameron is the Admissions and Recruitment Coordinator at Nazarene Theological College and a passionate poet based in Manchester. With a BA and MA in Theology, he has a keen interest in the intersection between poetry and prayer and the Hebrew poetry of the Bible. He loves playing piano, photography, anything to do with organising and tidying, and tinkering with computers. Cameron joined the Proost community after feeling seen by the podcast and has a deep curiosity about how poetry can inform and transform spiritual experience.
Looking for ways to explore creative spirituality?
Proost is a creative community that explores and expresses the divine through art—whether in words, visuals, music, or beyond. We embrace imagination as a way to encounter the sacred and the good, crafting spaces where faith, justice, and creativity meet.
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