Participating
attending ONline Worlds for Offline Ideas
RSA Education: How can we empower young people as climate changemakers?
Coordinated and hosted by the RSA Education network team the session included talks from Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project; Robson Augusta from Teach the Future; Rachel Tomlinson as primary school head using the Ashoka School changemakers model; and Maya Lingam, founder of Eco Spot.
Excellent presentations from everyone involved with diverse suggestions for empowering young people. The need for ecological, climate and media literacy across education systems, use of inspiring materials and current case studies for more hopeful orientation of our possible future landscapes. Using climate justice (ecological, social and economic relationships) to underpin learning across multiple platforms and how to ensure climate learning and activism is inclusive and diverse for meaningful present to future change.
Introducing the Morcombe Bay Curriculum
A fantastic introduction to the ‘Morcombe Bay Curriculum’ being implemented by Lancaster University, Eden Project North and the local community across schools, businesses and community settings. The MBC is being designed as a place-based regenerative futures interconnected learning programme that integrates ecological, social and wellbeing economics for intergenerational learning - life-long and life-wide approaches for the biosphere of the Morcombe Bay Area.
Feminist Fusion / Memoria 2020 - TRUTH, RECONCILIATION and THE NEW PARADIGM
The event included presentations from:
Angela Sherlock - Irish writer, feminist and member of the Mayflower Mavericks campaign, that tells the whole story of the Mayflower's arrival to the American shores in 1620.
Stephanie Pratt - Dakota and Anglo-American Historian/Scholar, Consultant, Curator and Author. She is also a Cultural Ambassador for her Tribal Council (at the Crow Creek Dakota Sioux Reservation)
Melinda Schwakhofer - USA artist and citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation with Austrian-American ancestry, based in the UK. Melinda's practice includes painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture and photography. She's an internationally exhibited artist, who believes that deep healing can be achieved through art making.
Sandy Laframboise - Elder from the traditional Canadian territory of the Odawa people and an Algonquin/Cree-Métis Two Spirit person. They're a spiritual leader, an activist for LGBTQ+ indigenous people and was active with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Marie Dallas - Second generation African Caribbean, whose parents travelled over in the 1950s. Marie trained and worked as a teacher for over 25 years. She has also worked with HOPE and collaborates with Plymouth & Devon Racial Equality Council.
The presentations, shared stories and presence of previously silenced history about the impact and affect of colinisation and settler imperialism was exceptionally powerful. Once again it placed the inadequacy of current UK history education into stark reality - challenging the stereotypes of indigenous culture and knowledges and black British history, and especially the inability of many people’s unable to trace their heritage due to being stolen or displaced from their culture, heritage and lands. To close the event we convened in circles to explore what emotions and thoughts had emerged for us all and to co-design a piece of social art. In the group I facilitated what emerged was a circle image that held elements of all our identities, symbols and ancestral connections, poignantly revealing our need to have belonging with one another but also to a ‘real’ history and origin of ourselves.
Speedwell “No. New. Worlds” Mayflower 400 Art Installation - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series
Artists Leonie and Laura from Still/Moving shared they own journey of self and colonial history discovery as they charted the projects origins, discussions and influences. Through an honest and open presentation both of them said they encountered their own realisations about the importance of language and meaning, alongside the grief of knowing the violence and damage from coloniser and settler actions. Acknowledging there is a huge void in our understanding of the British past and how so many stories are silenced or voices now protesting and resisting are denied space to share in healing history and having equitable access to learn together about our past.
Watching the installation was profoundly moving! Just the shifting between singular words and phrases from “No. New. Worlds”. Not only encapsulating the loss of so many communities, cultures, languages and ways of being through colonisation but also how colonial history and extractivism is entangled in our current climate crisis today. Earth is our only home. Indigenous communities learnt across generations how to care for Earth through custodianship of land, and these are the knowledge and spiritual senses of interconnectedness we need now for future generations.
As part of the presentation and then wider group discussion the artists posed a wonderful question:
How can I repair the world inside of me, so that I might be better equipped to repair the world outside?
Feminist Fusion / Memoria 2020 - Slavery, Kubler-Ross and The Journey to Liberation
A fantastic presentation from Marie Dallas, exploring the mental health implications for the descendants of slaves alongside a call for a new path in psychology and mental health support. Marie discussed recent new psychology approaches to healing and coming to terms with the historical violence perpetrated on enslaved people through colonialism and imperialism, sharing inspirational stories of new methods that are decolonising mental health and truly acknowledging the 500 years of generational trauma caused. As part of Feminist Fusion’s work we also collaborated in small groups to share our reflections from the presentation and using social art co-created a symbolic image of black women denied their voice - the centuries of oppression, violence, abuses and silencing that has never enabled their stories to be shared nor real reconciliation to be met.
PLURAL FUTURES: STORYTELLING WITH SEORAS MACPHERSON AND ANDREW BLACK
A very moving and inspirational gathering with Seoras Macpherson leading us on a journey of Skye and the Highlands history through Storytelling. He layered the role of storytelling itself, the vital role of the ‘big stories’ for healing, knowledge sharing and resilience building for communities across time. These ‘big stories’ are an honour to carry and re-tell through the tradition of storytelling. Seoras said “storytelling is nature” and they interconnect our sense of belonging, solidarity and relationship to places and people very profoundly. It was wonderful to hear of historical resistances to land ownership and the collaborative resilience of communities to overcome great hardships. To know of the courage and strengths of different characters and groups across time and of the global connections that Skye had through history in the sea faring era. The Spanish cabbages and saved ship wrecked sailors. The knowledge and culture sharing and especially the defiance against colonial land clearances.
Resurgence Trust & EcoResolution - Leadership: how can we be effective changemakers?
The event opened with great hope, potential and warmth with guest speakers Layla June, Salvador Gómez-Colón, KMT Freedom Teacher and Noga Levy-Rapoport sharing their thoughts, reflections and advice on ‘leadership’ and becoming-changmaker. The key themes that emerged across all their presentations were 1) Hold your passion, love and ethic as your authenticity with the world - across all your connections, communications, projects and life; 2) Give your idea a try - let go of apprehension and fears and trust that you can enter a learning journey to bring ideas to fruition; 3) Find others - with two or three friends anything is possible and it can be carried without so much stress and exhaustion; 4) Self-Care and Joy - allow things to take time and don’t push yourself beyond your own needs. Enter into projects, relations and moments with joy to build the culture of changemaking you want to embody; 5) Be present with your place and community - meet everyone as local knowledge custodians and changemakers and include intergenerational voices. Young people especially want to share their wisdom and visions; lastly 6) Take time with and as nature - recharge, reflect, play and be renewed as everyone is working within systems that don’t work and exhaust us.
The Winchester Advanced P4C Seminar
Exploring the life and works of Ann Margaret Sharp as one of the core team establishing ‘Community of Inquiry’ and ‘Philosophy for Children’ in the USA and across the world. It was exceptionally inspirational to hear of her commitment to ‘community’, enabling inclusivity of philosophical inquiry and how her practice emerged over time towards involving children in the conversations of humanity. The seminar used extracts from the recently published In community of Inquiry with Ann Margaret Sharp edited by Megan Laverty and Maughn Gregory, which is a biographical journey alongside a collection of her published works throughout her practice and community of inquiry process.
The World of Orcadian Runecarvers - Andrea Freun, hosted by the University of Highlands and Islands for Northern Studies
Andrea introduced details about recent archeological finds on Orkney, exploring their Nordic origins and how they can be used to exemplify different time periods, eras of occupation and the influence of Christianity through Nordic and Celtic history. I especially enjoyed her work on ‘mental geographies’ as a way of re/orientating ourselves from other points of reference, which was linked to directions and places mentioned in runes with Norway as the central point of reference. I thought this was a useful tool to use when not only examining objects and artefacts but also ideas and beliefs - philosophical geographies or conceptual geographies?
Earth Talks Series 2, Schumacher College: Layla June Johnston - Mindfulness, Healing and Racism
A wonderful exploration of heritage, modern indigeny, carrying wounds and trauma generationally and how to “feel” as ancestors the past and the present; to really find ways of acknowledging what once was and how new ways of being can materialise through “deep” healing, dialogue and awareness. Layle took us on a mindfulness RAIN meditation that enables a safe space to “feel” what is unhealed and to “let go” and “heal” these traumas and violence that White superiority has caused and perpetuated. Through the process Layla reminded us all that we are all The People; we are all relatives and ancestors to each other and to Earth.
RSA Bridges to the Future: Mary Beard and David Olusoga
A very compelling dialogue and discussion focusing on ‘what is our story’ and how recent events through BLM have highlighted the inadequacy of how ‘British’ and ‘Global’ history is taught and how all characteristics of the past need to be explored and considered; the bad bits can’t juts be ignored! Mary and David both suggested that a ‘vast’ conversation is required to meaningfully and significantly experience British history with a fully informed picture and identify how there have been trajectories towards different moralities and ethics that we can protect and uphold. We learn across time what is moral, ethical and just in our societies and communities based on those conversation from past to present. We decide today what morality we keep rebirthing each generation and what future we seed in our education system now - ethically responsible choices must be made to define our futures.
David Wood - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series Episode 6
David explored the dialogue of NBIC - nanotech, biotech, infotech and cognotech as the fourth industrial revolution and the potential these changes offer humankind in transforming towards future wellbeing for people and planet. Touching on features of technoprogression and transhumanism David speculated how these could ensure future flourishing when values, ethics and democratised transparent decision making occurs. Concluding that all possible ecological and socially just technological futures also must feature substantial ethical consideration and a sense of spiritual journeying as humankind and as part of the cosmos.
The Presencing Institute: Global Forum 2020 - Moving from ‘Ego to Eco’
A very profound series of ‘blocks’ that engaged across themes of ‘soil’, ‘economy’, ‘democracy’ and ‘consciousness’ through a diverse range of workshops, activities, break-out spaces and mindful grounding practices. The ‘blocks’ used the GAIA Process: Global Activation of Intention and Action to enable an ‘embodied’ experience of intention, action and spiritual interconnectedness as a community in fellowship committed to an eco-socially just future. In block 4 the ‘Social Body Mirroring’ process was hugely inspirational in embodied experience as ‘seeds’ and ‘soil’ for future potentiality - seed as anchor/idea/beginnings and soil as nurturer/ecosystem/relationships. Human and Gaia as simultaneously ‘soil’ and ‘seed’ for our unique singular lives always in relationship with the interconnected and collective existence of Gaia and cosmos. Block 5 examples and qualities of ‘social sculpting’ were introduced - Brazi,l Fazenda da Toca: Scalable Organic Farming that can feed and heal the world, regenerative farming. Zimbabwe, The Ubuntu Lab: Think, Feel, Become - connecting communities across the continent of Africa and around the world through ‘U School Africa’.
Embercombe: Modern Indigeny Pt. 3
Pat McCabe, ceremonialist, activist, studies in the Science of Right Relations. A beautiful talk and presentation poignantly influenced by the immediacy of the pandemic, BLM and environmental activist movements. Pat powerfully asserted that we are living in a time of choice - the paradigm of choice and that we can all inhabit different ways of being and collaborate differently. She additionally reiterated the importance of how ‘re-telling’ our old story can change our future trajectories, the “stories we live by affect our future potential”. Pat emphasised the necessity for ‘protocols’, ‘ceremony’ and ‘consent’ as vital features of manifesting, materialising and embodying ‘modern indigeny’ for nations and peoples who have lost their connection to land, place and the ancestors. The protocols and ceremony must be created through the consent of all beings as sovereign in the web of life and that through ceremony the ‘Right Relations’ will communicate whilst healing corruptions. Ceremony protocols must serve life, light and love.
5 Design Principles for the New World from the work of Donella Meadows
Facilitated and hosted by We Are Co Creative & The Donella Meadows Project with Russ Gaskin, Melissa Darnell and Marta Ceroni. The webinar beautifully brought us into presence with silences, visioning, mindfulness and inspirational Donella Meadows quotes poignantly focusing on 5 her design principles. One: Name and Act on the Goal - what are you designing, centring and working towards? Two: Visioning - using values as the flow of focus into possible future worlds that we can inhabit through a sensory journey. Three: Dance with the system - we can’t control the system and we can never know how to fix everything, therefore be humble and dance and with it. Four: Transcend Paradigms - be ‘aware agents’ and always enter ‘deep inquiry’ in awareness of one’s own paradigms. Five: No Separate System - “There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of a discussion.” Working with the ‘paradox’ of openness and intent.
Embercombe: MODERN INDIGENY PT. 2
Embercombe have hosted two ‘Modern Indigeny’ webinars and I managed to catch the second episode with Loretta Afraid to Bear Cook, Linda Delormier and Mac Macartney. Together they shared medicine and healing about how communities and societies that no longer have access to indigenous knowledge or ‘medicine’ and ‘ceremony’ for having presence with Earth can embody new ways of re/turning or re/learning. Sharing words that we are all indigenous to our place, kin and we are connected to our ancestors and we live as ancestors ourselves. Loretta and Linda really emphasised the learning of relating to Earth and her cycles as sacred and that we can learn to know what it feels like to make tracks on Earth.
‘Out of the Ruins’ documentary by All Hands On
An Alternative UK Watch Party featuring All Hands On’s production of ‘Out of the Ruins’ that explores ‘democracy’ and how it is being reborn through grassroots activism and alternative landscapes of participating democracy emerging in Greece. To explore the themes of the film and the vital question posed through Patrick Chalmers ‘citizen journalism’ you can watch HERE.
States of Change Learning Festival: Culture Change - Public imagination vs. bureaucratic creativity with Charles Landry, Panthea Lee and Grabriells Gomez-Monte.
Really interesting conversation around what is culture - belonging, participating, curating public spaces, yearning for connections, creating togetherness, activism or patronage, storytelling. Culture is ‘trying to bring us together’. But what are the controls? Where is the wealth and power that decides ‘culture’? Exploring 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 culture - the gatekeepers that sanction access to funding and public spaces still dominated by discrimination? Grassroots activism and community arts align with community based social justice yet lack access to public spaces or patronage. How do activist cultures transition and embed? How do alternative cultures sustain? Is there a way of engaging across the cultural platforms? Who participates? Who pays? Who is represented? Who decides the layers of public culture?
States of Change Learning Festival Opening Presentation: Tyson Yunkaporta opens the festival introducing his recent publication, ‘Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World’.
Really important discussion around ontologically, epistemology, axiology and methodology and how awareness of interconnectedness and our affect of agency and energies across the web of relations. Angie also added some vital ideas about working with Local Government and how to bridge closed system thinking with indigenous knowledge and community systems thinking.
‘Respect, Connect, Reflect, Direct’ - Create relationships first, network, explore place, learn the stories and culture. Respect the ancestors and community, recognise power and be reciprocal. Enter systems as agents of sustainability if you are needed?
SABRA WILLIAMS - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series Episode 5
Sabra gave a very powerful and compassionate overview of her work as an ‘artivist’ working in Californian prisons, highlighting the ‘prison industrial complex’ and it’s relationship to 400 years of oppression, violence and exploitation of people of colour in the United States. The conversation explored the power of art as transformation and how white people need to ‘Do the Work’ in examining ‘white privilege’ personally, systemic, structural and institutional across nations and globally. Art plays a vital role in exploring power, racism, other forms of discrimination, prejudices and stereotypes. Art is not to learn practice to become an artist, but to be in a learning process as art. Commit to the journey of decolonising oneself and understanding the historical contexts of ‘power’, ‘violence’, ‘exploration’ and get to the root of social justice.
Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain Webinar/Workshop - Studying in the age of proclaimed hopelessness:Towards a Neo-Copernican Turn in Education
Joris Vliegh explored the relationship of education and hope through Freire’s ‘ontology of hope’, popular dystopian culture, Eagleton’s ‘Hope without Optimism’ and Stengers arguments of hope as possibility. Latour and Arendt were discussed, with Latour’s criticism of modernity considered for how we might change perspectives on the purpose or intention of education. Arendt’s arguments of education as being the possibility of newness brought through the vital role education has in potential futures. Is there a new way of seeing education? One that embodies ‘hope’?
Katherine Trebeck - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series Episode 4
Katherine presented her Wellbeing Economy and the work of WeAll Network collaborations that support economic alternatives and actively work towards shifting priorities away from GDP and towards wellbeing. The work of WeAll was explained as being agents ‘amplifying’ communication through and across existing systems and layers to illustrate economy as socially constructed and therefore changeable. Katherine terms wellbeing economies as “social justice on a healthy planet”. There was also a very interesting discussion around how nations and the global community could encourage systems change for a post-COVID world - trust people, supporting grassroots wellbeing local economies and networks of people power.
ASCD Webinar: The Power of Place
This webinar explored how schools can approach PBE as practitioners, institutions and as educational projects. The co-authors discussed PBE and the key features of their new publication to support educators in developing PBE practice.
“place based education is anywhere, anytime learning that leverages the power of place to personalize learning.” (Vander Ark et al, 2020)
Key themes: Community as Classroom, Local to Global, Inquiry, Design-Thinking, Learner-Centred, Interdisciplinary. Concluding that PBE is vital for agency, community and equity building.
AWAKIN CALLS: RE-imagining Higher Education Webinar with Otto Scharmer, Sanjay Sarma & Dacher Keltner
Key proposals focus on the need for transformation, praxis, co-presence. To learn with ‘head, heart and hands’, learning as bodies and minds together through doing, practicing and experiencing. HE needs deeper learning with critical thinking, applied skills, real-world practice to lead, activate and hold space for transformation - Otto suggests ‘transformation-literacy and ‘vertical development’ - changing the operating system of HE institutions and not teach Apps of ‘horizontal development’’. Teach all subjects as ‘liberal arts’ and explore history, philosophy and developments in the subjects and fields of knowledge.
The Feminist Green New Deal
The WEN panel and discussion focused on three key actions that are necessary for a ‘Green New Deal’ informed through feminist analysis. Firstly, intersectional analysis to ensure a fully inclusive planning process that considers all groups in society - all voices need to be at the table! Secondly, a new social contract would be necessary between citizen and state. Thirdly, the shift towards communities with an “ethics of care” value system and how to support that transition as it will be challenging, troubling and cause dissonance of identity, roles/employment and sense of purpose or self-actualisation.
Karen Downs - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series Episode 3
Karen pragmatically and compassionately explored her themes of power, patriarchy, oppression and exploded entrenched ideas about ‘care’, ‘business’, and ones ‘congruence’ with value, beliefs and actions. Through her feminine intelligence work not only is she shifting power dynamics of institutions but she is enabling authenticity, ‘floursihing’ of whole personalities and building cycles of nature into how businesses can thrive.
Global Green New Deal
Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein in conversation for the launch of the Global Green New Deal project, at “Into the Portal, Leave No One Behind”. A fantastic discussion, raising key features around co-creation, building in the green agenda to all post-COVID planning. Intentional new economic systems needed. Social Justice and Ecological Justice feeding into Global scale movements and changes to political systems.
Jay Tompt - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series Episode 2
Jay is the co-founder of Totnes REconomy Centre and lectures in economics. He has supported and facilitated a range of local economy projects focusing on Community Wealth Building. I have worked with Jay in the past and it was create to reconnect and re/learn about his projects, especially as his tried and tested approaches could be adapted for my new locality.
Adah Paris - The Alternative UK: The Elephant Series Episode 1
Adah, a cyborg-shaman introduced us to her collaborations, projects and exploration of tech as tools and the ancient relationship humankind has with creating our communities through ‘tools’. It was a comforting episode to illustrate we are experimenting still with our new ‘tools’ and finding ways to build communities and identities rather than these tools dictate and define our lives in a limited way.