heads and hearts on fire
An amazing, tricky, collective, challenging, collaborative, audacious day of beginning the process of understanding which direction we're facing in our current context of climate, economic and social crises.
It made for much scratching of heads as we fought with the best way of embracing this enormous level of complexity; and brought out some hair-raising facts...
And some heart-stormingly brilliant ideas for change ...
We talked about climate and change, about facts, and behaviour; about politics and community and fear , about loss and the past, about the future, and injustice and soil and communication and poverty and systems and planning; banking and carbon and schools and food; and watched and heard and spoke and listened and ate together in warmth and space of the Chy N Bobl Hall in Heartlands in Cornwall.
We gave ourselves an enormous, complex task: but we tackled it with gusto, started to make some amazing connections and were encouraged on by the awesome Kate Raworth, who received two huge rounds of applause without even being in the room...!
And feel free to download one of the things that came out of it: The first Cornwall Doughnut Economics Playbook - help yourself!
Then we heard from Ian Smith on poverty, exclusion and the need for change:
Tony Greenham offered the new model of a local bank that might let us reconfigure how we manage our money - with some jaw droppingly compelling arguments.
You can find out more at
www.southwestmutual.co.uk
@SouthWestMutual
@TonyGreenham
Tony's email is here.
Then Jay Tompt from the Reconomy Project talked about how they created a community wealth building programme in Totnes:
We looked at the Preston Model and what they're doing differently...
Pizzas and doughnuts: We looked at every point on the doughnut, by splitting into four groups and taking a quadrant each. We then used our own knowledge, networks and connections to identify at least one name and organisation that could be our "lead" to extract the data we need to take a 21 Century Cornwall Doughnut Selfie.
Only connect: to underline the three dimensional nature of the doughnut, we chose a point from the doughnut and walked through the room talking to other people with other "points" to identify the dynamic connectivity between them all.
Just a few of the endless connections found between "my social foundation" and "your planetary boundary" ....
And we acknowledged the overwhelming importance of climate in every one of these, and that each section of the doughnut and the work we need to do in it *has* to contribute to our response to the existential threat of climate breakdown. We lined up from one end of the hall to the other and invited everyone to occupy the place they felt they could contribute best, fully in the knowledge that - crucially - we need every sort of action, from formal, local authority, officer-shaped effort, to on the street, making a noise, activist effort - and that there is space for everyone to engage, in whatever way they think they can have most impact.
IMMEDIATE ACTIONS
Many of the people on the day are already involved in the Cafe Disruptif response to climate breakdown, and have set up the In Good Company group to create a space for all action on climate. You can find out more right here and if you wish to join our Whatsapp planning group, email me on wildly brilliant @ outlook dot com - you will be very welcome!
More information and images will appear here as we process it. In the meantime, a group has already set itself up in the 24 hours since the event to develop an alternative agr0-ecological agricultural strategy. You can find out more by contacting us on wildly brilliant @ outlook dot com and we can hook you up.
The Dancing Guy!! (back by popular demand... )
Why Facts Don't Convince People (and please excuse the rather outdated cartoon depictions...!)
