• Defining bioregions in these islands III

    Ed Tyler has written an interesting response to the previous posts in this series (I, II) on his bioregioning site. He makes a number of interesting points that are worth reflecting on, but here I’ll limit myself to his reference to the Watsonian Vice County map. I first came across the Watsonian Vice County map…

  • Defining bioregions in these islands II

    ‘The necessity for scores of bioregional Johnny Appleseeds’ – Kirkpatrick Sale, ‘The Birth of Dartia’, Schumacher College journal #3, (Summer 1992) It was good to see my last post on this topic receive attention on social media, it was shared widely and garnered some useful comments – this follows on from that and is best…

  • Defining bioregions in these islands

    In a recent post, I mentioned how ‘I’m still struggling to articulate a suitable spatial scale for bioregional praxis in the Atlantic Archipelago’ and part of this struggle will be identifying particular bioregions within the Archipelago. Today I received a message from Kate Swatridge who had attended Ed Tyler and I’s session on bioregions at the…

  • Super Blood Wolf Moon

      I had a dream last night: I was tasked with capturing a wild black beast that was inside a suburban home. I stood outside the porch of the house with a small dog – as it had been determined that the dog’s presence would calm the beast. I opened the porch door and

  • Landscape Scale Land Management

    At the Oxford Real Farming Conference I attended the session ‘Shaping our future together’ organised by CTRLShift and facilitated by Andy Goldring. Rather than a presentation from the front, this session was designed to create a space for collaboration and planning between organisations, practitioners and networks building on the process started in Wigan, March 2018…

  • High (Tide) and Dry

    It’s now ten days since I wrote to my District Councillors (Peter Elliott and Ron Pratt) asking why Maldon District Council has no current Environment and Climate Change Strategy despite the Climate Emergency and I’m still waiting for a reply. I recognise that they may be busy, that it’s not a salaried role and their…

  • Bioregional Economy

    Yesterday I attended the Oxford Real Farming Conference, primarily to attend the session on bioregions which featured a panel chaired by Isabel Carlisle of the Bioregional Learning Centre and included Green Party MEP Molly Scott Cato,  the writer John Thackara, and my friend Andy Goldring – the Permaculture Association CEO. I’ll try and capture more of…

  • Community Wealth Building

    This morning I’ve been thinking about the ‘Preston Model’ and how this model of ‘new municipalism’ might inform bioregional praxis – with special attention to how it might work out here on the Dengie. In my workshop on bioregionalism at the UK Permaculture Convergence in September  I briefly mentioned the Preston Model as a possible…

  • Climate Emergency

    On 8th December I posted on social media about trying to find a point of agency in the face of the wicked problem of climate change – partly re-energised by the Extinction Rebellion actions: ‘I’ve never been a member of a political party, I’ve always been against it on the basis that joining a political…

  • Essex as a Place of Sanctuary

    Yesterday I attended the ‘Essex as a Place of Sanctuary’ event at the Beecroft Gallery in Southend-on-Sea, put on by Focal Point Gallery as part of their ongoing Radical Essex project. The event was described thus: