LEEF Event

WHAT DO WE WANT OUR CHILDREN TO GROW UP TO BE

Event type:

Residential

Event dates:

26/04/2010 to 28/02/2010

Location:

Paddington Farm Trust

Price:

£120 LEEF members, £160 others

How are we going to help our children to have fulfilling and meaningful lives, characterised by generosity, intelligence, community spirit, stable levels of self-esteem and maturity? Join us at Paddington Farm for a weekend of relaxed and informal discussions on what learning and education for sustainability can actually include and go away with fresh activities, ideas and inspiration for your groups and classes. Paddington Farm is a beautiful 43 acre organic small holding in Glastonbury, Somerset with a mission to improve the quality of life and well-being for community groups and families from urban areas by enabling access to the countryside.
Course Trainers: Dr. Morgan Phillips writer of blog “Becoming Green” and co-ordinator of “Global Footsteps” and Paddington Farm Trust for “Forest Survival” and “Farm tours”.

Programme:
Friday after work – Londoners: meet at Paddington Station for brief activity. Take train to Somerset.
Dinner – Followed by introduction to the course and Paddington Farm.
Evening – Discussion of the Cambridge report.
Saturday morning – Workshop: School, The Media, Friends and Family – Where children learn from and what it means.
Lunch – Followed by ‘Forest Survival’ workshop.
Afternoon – Workshop: Ways to Wellbeing – ‘Books for Children’ and ‘The Happiness Wall’.
Dinner – Followed by conversations round the fire.
Sunday morning – What would we like to be?
Mid day – Departure to be back in London by 3:00pm

Course suitable for: environmental educators, play workers, parents, teachers, people who are interested in young people and the environment.
Please bring: Outdoor clothing, towels, pajamas, toiletries, and your own favourite treats to share. (e.g. a bottle of wine or some chocolates)

Contact Details

Contact name: Anna Portch
Contact telephone: 07891 837 120
Contact email: aportch@wildlondon.org.uk

Event Registration

Note: LEEF members are entitled to a discounted price of £120 for this event. If you are a LEEF member you'll need to login to take advantage of this discount. If not, the price will be £160.

Sell the Sizzle

I've just read Futerra's 'Sell the Sizzle' guide, it is required reading for whoever thought the Please help the world - COP15 opening film was a good idea! The advice in Sell the Sizzle took me back to one of the '10 minute lectures' I did for Hackney Environmental Education Network back in June. So here it is:

10 Minute Lecture: I have a dream

I began the 10 minuter by playing an excerpt from Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech. Below are my notes for the lecture:

That speech in total is around 15 minutes long, during it he highlighted the oppression black people in America had and were suffering. But, it is one of the most famous speeches ever because of four little words and how those words made people feel. ‘I have a dream’

In 1963, when that speech was made, America was on the cusp of great change. ‘I have a dream’ provided a persuasive impetus. The speech is memorable because it is so full of HOPE and EXCITEMENT.

Messages of hope are far to infrequent in Environmental Education. This is especially true in the mainstream media.

Most messages are ones of fear, controversy and blame. Sensationalism sells.

Climate change, for example, is often described as awesome, terrible, immense and beyond human control. It has been dubbed by some as ‘Climate Porn’ (Ereaut and Signit, 2006)

The problem with sensationalism is that the scale of the problem is presented as so big that people become paralysed into inaction by feelings of insignificance. This is compounded by environmentalists telling people to give things up and to engage in mundane solutions: Changing lightbulbs, recycling, public transport, insulation, renewable energy, composting, campaigning etc etc... to a lot of people they sound like a series of chores.

All of those things are not THE answer, they are a small part of the answer. We need people to change their whole way of life, we need people to enjoy themselves without compromising the ability of others to enjoy themselves. As environmental educators we need to start showing the way and not just in terms of practical solutions. We need to create hope and excitement and not spread blame and depression. We don’t create waste and pollution because we hate the environment, we create it as a by product of doing the things that we hope will bring us wellbeing.

NEF has identified 5 ways to wellbeing: 1. Connect, 2. Be Active, 3. Keep learning, 4. Take notice, 5. Give...

Consumer culture conditions us to try and meet these needs in material heavy, energy dependent ways; we are sold pseudo-satisfiers that promise much but only provide short term satisfaction therefore driving us to discard one product as we buy a shiny new one.

‘Sustainability’ is about doing these five things in socially and environmentally responsible ways.

For this we need two things:

1. Understanding of how we can and why we need to live sustainably.
2. Opportunities and inspiration to lead a fulfilling and varied life.

We need more of the first and a hell of a lot more of the second, we need to start showing the way. We can meet all five things in low impact ways, but a lot of people have forgotten, or in the case of my generation, never really learned.

****

I'm really impressed with the Futerra guide. As it says at the end what we need now are lots of positive visions of the future. It is what we're trying to do with Global Footsteps.

Communicating Climate Change with Camera

Had a lovely night out with staff, volunteers and session workers from ecoACTIVE last night. I'd spent the afternoon working on a little project on how to talk about climate change with 'normal' people in social situations without boring the pants off them or antagonising them massively. Normally if I'm out socially I specifically avoid the subjects sustainability, environment, climate change and so on for fear of being shot down in barrage of yawns..... but it was really nice to hang out with people who understand the issues and are not afraid to talk about them, or dare I say it, enjoy talking about them! I had a good chat with Andy Bodycombe, a photojournalist, about how to communicate climate change issues in ways that make it personal and tangible to people, like us, who are temporally and/or geographically so removed from the impacts. Andy and I talked about the danger of falling into the cliches when it comes to telling stories and raising awareness. From a photography point of view, we luckily seem to be veering away from the Polar bears hugging ice cubes and cracks on desert floors cliches. It is still, however, really very difficult to find ways to educate people for sustainability when there are so many images surrounding us that add up to education against sustainability.

My opinion is that you don't necessarily have to mention the environment or climate change at all to provide some education for the environment. Photojournalism wise, if you can show stories of people simply getting on with living sustainably and enjoying it, you can provide inspiring examples. Especially if you can explain what is bringing them wellbeing (community, learning, fulfilment, activity, sharing, empowerment, pride etc) rather than just showing happy faces. After all it is the oldest marketing trick in the book to show a photo of a happy family... in their car, on their sofa, on a sun lounger, in a fast food restaurant... to sell something. The promise of happiness is a strong and powerful one and one that people routinely buy into whether it is an idealised illusion or not. Somehow we need to get the population of Britain and the rest of the World to buy into sustainability to create a low impact but vibrant, healthy and enjoyable society. Acting sustainability is not about just opting out of the consumer economy hunkering down in a log cabin with a good book and an acoustic guitar defiantly humming 'I might not have any friends but at least my carbon emissions are below 1 ton a year la la la', that is a cop out; a bitter and lonely one. Acting sustainably is about being part of an ecologically sustainable economy and contributing to that economy through ones purchasing decisions, work and leisure activities and enjoying it. That economy does not have to be at a national or global scale to begin with, it starts at grass roots and grows. This growth creates signposts to other people, governments and entrepreneurs, signposts that bring more people in. These things are happening and we need to tell those stories.

What we don't need (again in my opinion - good old blogosphere!) are stark warnings about the end of the world and how we must 'reduce our consumption', 'give things up' and 'buy green'. These messages translate in people's minds to 'have less fun', 'do some chores' and 'be a responsible adult'. They are all counter intuitive to our present culture. At the moment most environmentalists persist with trying (and mostly failing) to get people, governments and businesses to buy into things that, to them, look like mundane chores, vote losers, restrictions on fun and short term profit losses. Environmentalists are trying to persuade people to give up goods and services that are environmentally unsustainable; right intent wrong strategy. Many of these goods and services are, at best, only 'pseudo satisfiers' of our basic non-material needs. But, trying to persuade people to give them up without sufficiently advising on and offering alternative, genuine, satisfiers of those needs; things like love, respect, fulfilment, meaning, joy, creativity, diversity, stimulating conversation and community, is a hugely inefficient process. Businesses know that people need all these things in their lives and have for decades been making people feel anxious and insecure about their lack of status, friendships, creativity and so on while at the same time positioning their products as solutions or satisfiers of their needs. The solutions are largely only 'pseudo-satisfiers' because as The Beatles put it: 'you can't buy me love' and a material consumption based economy would not work if these goods and services really did keep their promises of happiness, love, respect etc etc. To get people to consume less without advising on, inspiring, offering and, in fact, selling opportunities for them to satisfy their basic non-material needs in genuine non-material ways is shortsighted. Few people will do it for the sake of preventing some distant environmental disaster, they will only do it if it benefits them, now.

So, lets tell the stories of people who are fulfilled, secure, respected, loved, emotionally stable and fun. These are the people who can see through 'pseudo-satisfiers' and therefore don't buy them, they are people who don't see the 'green' behaviour as a major ball ache, they see it as common sensical and aligned with their everyday existence. They are not overly antagonised by environmentalists and are happy to add a bit of green nous to their life because it won't be a big chore. They also probably don't make a big song and dance about being sustainable either, its just what they do.

Governments and businesses in the end take their lead from people; they need to please them. It will be much easier for a government to impose taxes and regulations on environmentally damaging products in an attempt to phase them out if people are not buying into them anymore. Governments, at the moment, are finding it very difficult to make radical policy decisions for the sake of the environment because they know that there will be a public backlash. Environmentalists need to help people see through the pseudo-satisfers while providing and promoting opportunities for less stressful, less anxious, less materialistic, more fulfilling, more enjoyable and (with added green nous) therefore ultimately more sustainable lives. It is starting to happen, get your camera out and spread the word!

Schumacher on Wisdom

I've just been re-reading EF Schumacher's Small is beautiful (1973). Came across one of my favourite passages in the Education chapter (p. 66):

At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in moral danger, not because we are short of scientific and technical knowledge, but because we tend to use it destructively, without wisdom. More education can help us only if it produces more wisdom.

Round Ireland with a Fridge

‘The media likes to hype up what an awful place the world is, but a hitch-hiker will tell you otherwise.’ In the summer of 1997 Tony Hawks (comedian, travel writer, philanthropist, broadcaster) was a hitch-hiker, in Ireland, with a fridge. The book he wrote about his adventure ‘Round Ireland with a Fridge’ was a bestseller and it is soon to released as a film, more about that in a bit, I want to talk about ‘The Fridgehikers guide to life’. Fridgehiker is an abridged version of the story dotted with the lessons Tony learned on his journey. What’s all this got to do with education for sustainability? Well, here are a few of Tony’s bits of advice along with my interpretations of them:

We need less than we think we do
Anyone who has spent anytime on the road know the value of a lighter load, but this is equally true in our everyday life. When we are less materialistic, we have less stuff to buy, look after, clean, insure, worry about losing, use, justify owning and so on. We think we need lots of things, but we have been conditioned to think this by the world around us.

Slow down and create some moments of peace
Life is all bit fast these days and I’m as guilty as most, trying to fit as much in as possible all the time, I enjoy the wide experience of life that this gives me. But, I try to make sure I don’t rush too much between things so I can enjoy the journey. I also try to catch at least ten minutes ‘slow’ time (it often goes on for longer). No writing, no talking, no reading, no eating, no screen watching, just peace and quiet with open eyes and open mind.

You don’t need to show off
Bling is immature, eco-bling is a contradiction, status symbols are shallow, no one likes a show off. Sure we should celebrate and share our talents, but no one likes someone who over does this. Sustainability requires a bit of maturity and humbleness, well actually a lot more than is currently around.

Worrying is not a good use of our time
There is no point worrying about environmental problems, or making others worry about them. We just need to get on with living lives that ease or solve these problems; it is not (despite what we are led to believe) difficult to be green. As Tom Hodgkinson says the best thing we can do about environmental problems is nothing at all. By this he means literally do nothing, unplug, slow down, stop shopping and so on. A better use of our time is to assess exactly where we are now and then decide what is the best course of action to make the future as good as possible. Just get on with life that is simple in means and rich in ends. That is the main thrust of what the Fridgehiker can teach us!

So, the film… Tony Hawks needs extras for ‘Round Ireland with a Fridge’, here is the info:

'Hi there,

I thought you might like to know that Round ireland With A fridge is finally going to be made into a film, with the incredibly creative casting me playing me. I don't know how we thought of it. Anyway, there are a few scenes where we'll need some extras, and since it's an incredibly low budget film, we can't afford to pay anyone! We'll need some extras in the scenes we'll be shooting in pub interiors around the Wimbledon and Tooting areas in London. If you, or anyone you know might like to take part then do get in touch. It would most likely be a day's commitment though, so you'd best be aware of that. (The dates we're likely to need you will be 14th and 15th May.

If you can't help in this regard, please make sure you go and see the film when it comes out. Then you can say that you were asked to be in but that you turned it down.

Cheers

Tony'

(If you want to be in the film contact Tony via his website)

The Language of Sustainability

Sustainability is communicated through many different channels in many different ways for many different reasons. It is received by many different people in many different contexts and is interpreted according to the hat that that person is wearing.



Yesterday I attended a conference run by the Institute for Environmental science, it was well attended, the speakers were excellent and the topic very important. The first speaker, Arran Stibbe (a linguistics expert) asked 'where is the place that people are motivated from?' He answered his own question by pointing out that we can't answer it because people are different. When it comes to stimulating action and communicating sustainability it is very important to remember that one size does not fit all - that was the core message from the conference.

The discourse, or discourses that we choose, the language we use and the medium we communicate through are all very important. Five excellent speakers followed Arran, Erik Bichard, Joe Ravetz, David Fell, Will Ashley-Cantello and Mark Everard. Aswell as Arran, the two that stood out for me were Ravetz and Fell. Ravetz discussed the public reaction to sustainability. Using the case study of his family home he asked 'does anyone believe scientists anymore?' (a question that Everard later argued self-aware scientists were now wary of). The complexity of the science and the, often sensationalist, way in which findings and predictions are communicated created sceptism in his kitchen and I suspect a few others. The NEF 100 months to stop Climate change got a rightful bashing from Ravetz! We were then taken through a few excellent 'Polyp' cartoons, it is well worth a look at the consumerism ones. Fun, arts based communication is very valuable.



David Fell discussed Daniel Dennett's observation of 'The Self as a narrative gravity' and Elias Cannetti's idea of 'society as a coalition of shared myths.' Dennett's observation describes how we are the person that we tell ourselves that we are. Fell pointed out that we tell ourselves a lot of stories. The shared myths of society help us to define ourselves, often we are defined by them. Fell displayed a 'wordle' explaining how we need to move from a self narrative that is consumerist, individualist and so on to one which is enoughist, caring, mature and so on. I'll post them asap!

Much else was discussed as the day progressed through two excellent workshops we analysed different discourses to think about which styles are best for communicated these issues. My little group of four thought it was important to be realistic, positive and empathetic when we are communicating sustainability. We also discussed who controls the language of sustainability, whether the terms sustainable development and sustainability should be scrapped and which words and phrases we should be using to try and create action around sustainability issues.

On the surface sustainability seems a simple thing to communicate - tell people about the problems and they will change their behaviour - the reality is that, when the goal is behaviour change, the appropriate form of communication is very difficult to pin down. Human behaviour is an extremely complex thing, changing it, even our own, is very challenging. I'll end with a quote from Arran Stibbe's excellent workshop on Sustainability discourses:

'The most highly motivating discourses allow people to align their deepest personal goals with creating a more sustainable society.'

Global Footsteps

I am the director of the Global Footsteps education programme, we run International Youth Environment Conferences, Global Ventures and lots of events in Gloucestershire related to Sustainability and International development. I've just been updating the website, please have a good look aorund it and spread the word!

How about this for a Christmas present?!

I bought The Independent today because its front page sub-heading was:

'President-elect signals determination to fight recession with unprecendented eco-revolution'

Obama is putting together an administration that is overtly green. Amongst others he will make John Holdren his Energy Secretary and Jane Lubchenco his administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Professor Holdren is a nobel prize winning physicist and forceful advocate of carbon-free energy, while Professor Lubchenco is an oceanographer who specialises in the impact of global warming on the oceans. Is the USA becoming green?! It looks like there will be some action on Climate Change, only time will tell us what this action is, how deep Obama plans to go, how quickly a green-collar employment sector grows, what it will look like and how it will be funded.

From a British perspective, it would be interesting, right now, to ask Gordon Brown.... 'so Gordie what do you think about this new green administration of Obama's, are you going to follow suit, are you going to swap the purple tie for a green one?' I don't think the PM is a regular reader of this blog, but if I bump into him when I'm last minute Christmas shopping tomorrow I'll ask him and give him a copy of NEF's Green New Deal!

Since going out into the big bad real world, I have been amazed at the lack of funding available to help companies, schools, charities and so on develop environmental and sustainability policies. Schools, Charities and struggling businesses just can't afford an 'expert' to help them become green. Being 'green' is not as simple as it seems, it takes time, careful (and not always intuitive) planning, commitment, and a willingness to make sustainability a key principle underlying a companies operations and aspirations. The responsibility for doing something about 'the environment' usually falls to someone who shows an interest in it (someone who has watched An Inconvinient Truth and read a bit of George Monbiot). Given the low levels of Sustainability literacy that exist within the current workforce, it is not often that the someone has had an education that allows them to develop a well-thought out and approproiate response to the challenges. Often that someone has a passion (much needed) but no clear idea of what to do and how to do it! The result: poorly planned, marginal, low impact, conspicuosly green actions that might look the part but don't really cut the organic mustard. Every organisation is unique and must design and develop its response to sustainability based around this sort of question: what can we do to limit our environmental impact, and what can we do to help others limit thiers? Well informed, well intentioned and sustainably literate people need to brought in to help organisations, the problem is it is difficult to expect high calibre people to do this for free, they need to be funded. Either the government can fund this work, or the organisation can recognise the long term need for them to plan effectively now to ensure that their organisation actually has a future and invest appropriately.

It will be very interesting to see the reaction around the world to Obama's environmental intentions, and, in the longer term, his actions. Will people start thinking 'Well if the President of the USA thinks this is important, it must be bloody important!' and get on board? In Britain we have been pretty good at following America's lead over the last few years, the results have been pretty catastrophic. When I went to the launch of The Green New Deal, the Guardian journalist and green new deal contributor, Larry Elliot, said that the current economic crisis is a huge opportunity to instigate a progression to a greener society. Given the political and corporate will many jobs in the green sector can be created, the need is clear!

Book review - Crap at the Environment

It is painfully obvious that it is difficult to be ‘Good at the Environment’ when you are a stand-up comedian in the English speaking world. Poor old Mark Watson is crap at the environment because he has to fly back and forth from the UK to Australia to make people laugh. I am struggling to find anything positive to say about this book as a piece of education for sustainability. The one thing I can say that his self pitying honesty does at least highlight something that needs to be better understood by environmentalists. His story basically explains that he has plural rationalities. This is what is meant by plural rationalities: From an environmental perspective, Mark recognises that it is not rational for him to fly to Australia. However, from a career perspective, it is completely rational for Mark to fly to Australia. Mark therefore has two competing rationalities. He then has to make a decision, should he stay at home and not be crap at the environment, or fly, further his career and be crap? On a smaller scale, he faces these sorts of competing rationalities in many other areas of his life, take a one mile taxi ride or walk through the rain, use the lift or walk to the 20th floor of his hotel, eat delicious red meat or eat vegetables.

We all face these decisions; they are basically choices between taking the easy or more desirable option, or taking the harder or chore-like one. We all have plural rationalities. The result of this is that we are willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the environment when it does not feel like too much like a sacrifice or chore. Environmental education can make us more motivated to take the environment into consideration when we make decisions. For Mark, the main sources of his environmental education were Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’, George Monbiot’s ‘Heat’ and Mark Lynas’ ‘Six Degrees’. These three sources are pretty sensational in their findings and delivery, with a real ‘act now’ message. The pleas to the ordinary citizen are framed as sacrifices for the sake of the planet. The questions of why we travel, why we shop, why we eat red meat are not really asked. The reaction is to carry on doing the 'crap' things but in a slightly less environmentally damaging way. I wish Mark Watson had been a little less self-pitying and a bit more analytical about why he and his followers are crap at the environment. The book wasn’t very funny anyway, so he may as well have gone a bit deeper. If you haven’t read this book read Tom Hodgkinson’s ‘How to be Free’ first.

Tom Hodgkinson - Love your neighbour

I am not normally prone to getting out of bed at 8am on a Sunday morning to catch the 55 bus to central London, but today was an exception. I have been to a Sermon at the Old horse hospital (behind Russell Sq tube station) put on by The School of Life and starring the author, journalist and champion Idler, Tom Hodgkinson. I've been holding back on writing about Tom for a while, I read his second book 'How to be free' a while back and thoroughly enjoyed it and have always enjoyed his monthly column in The Ecologist.

Today he was talking about the importance of loving your neighbours, which he suggests is something that we, thanks to our cultural and political upbringing, are not doing enough of. As a resident of a block of flats on Hackney Road, I know only too well how having estranged neighbours fuels our individualism, breeds discontent and does little to deter careless door banging. In his talk, Tom began by explaining the formerly sinful activity of usury. I remember reading about this at length in his book. Up to about 500 years ago lending money and expecting repayment with interest was frowned upon heavily, it was seen as a callous, lazy (perhaps idle) way of profiteering from the financial misfortune of others. Given recent events in the mystical world of finance, the modern position of lenders as heroes who let us fulfil our material dreams has been slightly lost. But in general, usury is no longer portrayed as a sin, just a tiresome and tolerated fact of life. It is also probably true that many people would howl with cries of unfair play if all of a sudden this practice was to end.

The idea of having these secular sermons on a Sunday morning does not need to be spelled out. What I found interesting is that Hodgkinson returned often to the morals of Christianity, pointing out how many of the values sorely lacking in modern society, were prevalent in more Christian times; loving your neighbours being just one of these. There are things in the Bible that are a bit hard to swallow in modern times, but a lot of the values taught by it are sound ones and ones we could probably very much do with reminding ourselves of now. There may be no scientific evidence for God and a Heaven and Hell, but should we really throw the baby out with the bath water?

In my thesis I wrote this about Tom Hodgkinson:

Hodgkinson regularly points out the anxieties and stresses created by modern consumer culture and goes as far as saying that the environmental movement, with its emphasis on technological development creates even more stress and should therefore be handled with caution. His articles also point out the importance of finding meaning in one’s life and living in the present and not worrying too much about money. His philosophy can be summed up by the following quote: ‘When you stop working and stop spending you start living’ (Hodgkinson, 2008).

Simms and Smith (2007), in the 'Do Good Lives Have to cost the Earth' book that they edited, introduce Hodgkinson’s chapter and sum up his recommendations as follows:

His main advice for us is that to tackle climate change, possibly the best thing we could do is nothing at all. But he means it literally, not in the sense of just keep on doing what you are doing. He wants us all to stop and take it easy. No more shopping, no more upgrading consumer durables. The answer he says is to ‘decommodify our fun.’

Maybe environmentalists are trying too hard and just complicating things. Tom Hodgkinson is an excellent environmental educator, whether he likes it or not (I’ve not asked him if he considers himself one). He understands that rather than trying to lessen the environmental impact of our current consumer obsessed culture we actually need to shift that culture out of way and let a new one in. As an environmental educator, he is in a minority.

Email me for references....