I’ve been invited by Pontio Innovation to make a return visit to North West Wales and continue our exploration of Innovation In Small Nation. On Tuesday 6 June I’m doing a public talk, too: here is the announcement.
Pic Bruce Adams
BACK TO THE LAND 2.0
Tuesday 6 June, 18:30h Main Lecture Theatre, Level 5, Pontio, Bangor, Gwynedd.
Are innovations in adventure sport a signal of transformation in the global health and wellness industry? If the health of people, and the places where we live, are connected, what kinds of business can help them thrive together?
With its own unique assets, North West Wales has the potential to lead the world as a living laboratory for innovation where adventure sport, tourism, and wellness meet. To realise this potential, and turn ideas into new livelihoods and enterprise, the region’s assets need to be combined and connected in new ways.
But how? For John Thackara, hybrid approaches to innovation are needed that are centred on people and place, tech enabled, and design-led. Opportunities include include food system platforms; fibersheds and grainsheds; biodiversity and river recovery; social and High Nature Value farming; land-based learning and ecomuseums; code clubs and the maker movement; ecological restoration; civic ecology; biorefining.
![book01[3]](http://wp.doorsofperception.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/book013.jpg)
Back To The Land 2.0 – A Design Agenda For Bioregions
‘Post-truth’ politics are in fact pre-truth: Populists pick up on our anxiety about the world, but divert our attention from root causes. It’s easier to blame a Muslim, than entropy. Abstract words don’t make much difference. What’s needed is a new story in which care for the places where we live is a practical focus for solidarity instead of conflict.In that spirit, a series of xskool workshops called Back To The Land 2.0 brought local actors together, in diverse locations, to flesh out this new story of place with live examples. The text below (it’s about 4,000 words, a 20 minute read) is about the lessons we have learned so far. It builds on the course we helped run at Schumacher College a year ago; we are running a similar course in June and will develop the theme in future xskools. (Illustration above: Terre de Liens)
1. Why we need a new story
We are cognitively impaired by a metabolic rift between our culture and the earth. Paved surfaces, and pervasive media, shield us from direct experience of the damage our actions inflict on soils, oceans, air, and forests. A unique epoch of energy and resource abundance added zest to a story of growth, and progress and development, that put the interests of ‘the economy’ above all other concerns
The comforting narrative of perpetual growth has now hit biophysical and financial constraints – and we all feel it. Only 15% of the global population feel that the system is working and ecoanxiety—the feeling of impending environmental doom—afflicts populations on a global scale.
This is why post-truth’ politics should be described as pre-truth politics. In this time between stories, populists have picked up on our justified anxiety – but divert our attention from the root but invisible causes of our predicament. It’s easier to blame a Muslim, than entropy.
But a new picture is now emerging in myriad projects around the world. Read More »