Please watch the video below and read this page before you submit your application.
Course Content
The first Myth Mountain programme begins on 23 September 2023 and ends on 22 June 2024. You can apply to join the programme at any point during this period but please see the project delivery dates below.
The minimum period for a Myth Mountain project is three months. This means if you begin your project on 23 September 2023, the earliest delivery date possible will be 23 December 2023.
The latest delivery date for this first programme will be 8 June 2024, but if you want a longer period we will reconvene after the Autumn Equinox in September 2024. You can set a project delivery date for autumn / winter of 2024 if you wish.
How the programme will run
The main group activities on the programme will be held fortnightly, every other Saturday afternoon between 3pm and 5pm UK Time. The first of these will be 23 September 2023.
In each session, a few participants will be invited to introduce aspects of their project to the group. The sessions will also include discussion, peer mentoring, skills sharing, feedback and advice.
Sessions will be held on Zoom and recorded. These recordings will be available to all participants for the duration of the 2023/2024 programme.
The fortnightly session dates are:
2023: 23 September; 7 and 21 October; 4 and 18 November; 2 and 16 December.
2024: 6 and 20 January; 3 and 24 February (half term break on the 17th); 9 and 23 March; Easter Holidays; 13 and 27 April; 11 and 25 May; 8 and 22 June.
During this first programme there will also be three special sessions for the group to work with Lucy Morus-Baird. These sessions are open to all on the Myth Mountain programme, including those not working directly with Lucy:
11 November 2023; 27 January 2024; 20 April 2024.
The Journey
Myth Mountain is a symbolic journey with seven stages. On being accepted onto the programme, you will be invited to consider this journey as a framework for your own process. The different stages will be introduced in the live sessions during the autumn / winter term of 2023.
Three Feathers Award
All those who complete the journey up Myth Mountain and present a finished piece of work will be awarded the Three Feathers. This award is presented during a ceremony held online on 22 June 2024.
To receive this award the participant is expected to have met the following criteria:
- The participant has presented a finished piece of work in a format and on a date agreed beforehand with the programme facilitator.
- The participant has presented a project portfolio documenting the development of their work in a format and on a date agreed beforehand with the programme facilitator.
- The finished piece must be the participant’s own original work.
Self-Assessment
It’s not always easy to assess the standard of your own work, but it’s an essential skill to learn. Unless your chosen practice is Welsh folk ballads, my opinion probably won’t count for much anyway. But I do know what it is to develop your own standards, to refine your understanding of what a good piece of work is. This comes not only with exposure to the work of others in your chosen field, but also an intimate understanding of the craft itself.
One of the goals of the programme is to give you the tools necessary to continue in your chosen practice after completing your project. Developing a clear sense of what standards you expect of yourself means you will almost certainly be satisfying the standards of your potential audience. If not, you will learn soon enough!
And please do be open to learning. Being able to receive feedback and paying attention to how your audience responds is essential to any successful practice. But not all feedback is equal: many people just won’t like what you do, not because it’s of a low standard, but because it’s simply not their thing.
Being able to discern useful responses and feedback from simple matters of taste is part of maturing as a practitioner. This is only possible if you already have a sense of what good standards are for your type of work. There’s no point in me taking seriously the opinion of someone who just doesn’t like Welsh folk-music, regardless of how much they really want to tell me (long story).
As the programme facilitator, it’s my role to help you develop your own sense of what a finished piece of work should look like. The Three Feathers award is not given because I think a piece of work satisfies my standards, but because I see it at least partly satisfies yours. If you’ve presented a finished piece, have shown that you’ve striven to refine your practice, if there are clear signs of progress, I will not deny the award to anyone.
But you must be able to receive these Three Feathers fully. Is your work a worthy gift to Myth Mountain? Can you look Cadair Idris in the eye and say ‘I deserve this award’? Only you will be able to answer that question.
Compassionate Mountain
Myth Mountain is a program that’s available to anyone that’s a member of the Celtic Source website. But there is a second tier membership that you can opt into where you also get to work once a month with Lucy Morus-Baird, a Compassionate Inquiry practitioner.
Compassionate Inquiry is an approach designed by Dr Gabor Maté. It can shift old beliefs, release trauma held in the body and help you come back to a place of ease. If you feel stuck or restricted in some way, or if you simply want a clearer perspective on the story you want to tell or the feelings you want to share in your work, this second strand of the programme will help.
“The purpose of Compassionate Inquiry is to drill down to the core stories people tell themselves – to get them to see what story they are telling themselves unconsciously; what those beliefs are, where they came from; and guide them to the possibility of letting go of those stories, or letting go of the hold those stories have on them.” ~ Dr. Gabor Maté
This second tier membership costs £109 / $138 per month (exchange rate as of September 2023), and includes a one hour one-to-one session each month with Lucy, as well as the usual access to all of the materials, course videos and programmes available on the Celtic Source website.
You can book a free 15 minute consultation with Lucy to see if you would like to work with her one-to-one. Book your consultation here.
Application
If you want to work with Lucy Morus-Baird, please sign up for the second tier membership, Compassionate Mountain (cost £109 / $138 per month, exchange rate as of September 2023):
If you want to follow the regular strand of Myth Mountain, but aren’t yet a member of the Celtic Source website, please sign up for the regular membership (cost £59 / $75 per month, exchange rate as of September 2023):
Both of these membership levels give you full access to all courses and materials on the Celtic Source website.
You can cancel either of these memberships at any time, with no obligation to complete any course or programme you have begun.
Once you have the type of membership you want, please download and complete the application form below, then return it using the email address provided: