, Author at Seeding Our Future

Lifestyle sustainability: The New Green Frontier

Why are consumer attitudes to energy saving, and even those of policy makers, so preoccupied with home heating? I think it’s because this is a pretty easy, safe, non-controversial sector. Who could possible object to pensioners getting help with loft insulation, or young couples putting in a wood pellet boiler? Yet the harsh truth is … Read more

The 9 Dimensions of Super-Resilience: the key to enjoying your 2020s

Would you agree that for most people, life and work have become a lot more demanding and uncertain in recent years? And is that trend likely to grow in future? If so, what’s the positive response to the challenge? This is what I’m calling super-resilience. Currently, I see many individuals, communities and work teams struggling … Read more

Don’t let lockdown grind you away! Staying cheerful in covid year two

Despite my resilience skills, I’ve had to keep digging deep to sustain my mood, especially in these recent winter months. Whilst there’s hope for easing restrictions soon, lockdown has a cumulative grinding effect. So here are my tips for the next few months. Mindful exercise: enjoy your outdoor time to the max, with all five … Read more

NATURAL HAPPINESS:

Deepen your roots, nourish your fruits with the Gardener’s Way July 9-11 2021: at Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury With Alan Heeks, Jane Sanders and Marcos Frangos As restrictions ease, we’re facing new freedom and possibilities. How do we stay steady and make fruitful choices, serving ourselves and the bigger picture? This weekend is a … Read more

Covid vaccinations: a touching flavour of Dunkirk spirit – Plus tips to avoid side effects

Covid vaccinations: a touching flavour of Dunkirk spirit Plus tips to avoid side effects Having my first covid vaccination was a moving experience, which I hadn’t expected. I’m so proud of the NHS for organising on this scale and speed, and touched by all the volunteers who made it possible. As I cycled to our … Read more

Ruminating on the 2020s

Guest blog by Palden Jenkins Here are my thoughts on the next ten years and beyond. There’s a combination of a historian, futurologist, astrologer and seasoned observer coming through here, and long hours in bed have meant a lot of time to ruminate on these things. I think the 2020s are going to be both … Read more

Food security: how your community can take the initiative

There are many aspects of the Covid and climate crises where you may feel disempowered, dependent on government responses. However, food security is an issue where individuals and communities have scope for positive action now! Britain’s food self-sufficiency has declined from 80% to 60% in the past thirty years. We’re especially vulnerable on vegetables and … Read more

Your Resilience Toolkit

What is resilience, and why does it matter? Resilience is the ability to stay calm in high levels of change and challenge, to bounce back when something difficult happens, to face up to a problem and find a good solution. It’s a set of skills to help you maintain your wellbeing and happiness even when … Read more

The Diamond Process: drawing on both sides of the brain

As we try to handle ever more complexity and uncertainty in our lives, co-creative skills are essential. Co-creativity is about both-and, combining action and reflection, balancing your needs and aims with the realities of the situation and other people in it. One way of developing co-creativity is through the left and right sides of the … Read more

Adapting to climate change and covid – reflections on a retreat

From 6-8 November we held a virtual retreat to focus on different spiritual approaches to climatechange, Covid and other challenges we all are facing. It was a fascinating and welcome opportunityto get people together and explore ideas and feelings. As I think about this retreat I remember that in times of crisis for thousands of … Read more

Featured Blog

How can we raise community resilience?

The Facing the 2020s report As the pressures on all of us keep rising, we can see mounting discord about best priorities and solutions. One of the few topics on which almost everyone agrees is that increasing the resilience of local communities is getting ever more vital. This has been a focus of my work since 2012, so I’m offering an overview of some of my insights. As part of a project called Facing the 2020s, in 2012 I commissioned a substantial piece of action research on UK community resilience by Reos Partners, which included over thirty diagnostic interviews, extensive desk research, and exploratory workshops in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff with potential stakeholders, including national and local government, NGOs and community organisations. This blog is a summary of the insights I gained from this research. The terms community and resilience are so heavily used that a short explanation of what I mean by community resilience may be wise: the collective capacity of a group of people to handle and grow through crises and challenges. I’ve set out below some of the main aspects of resilience in this context: part of this capacity could come from organisations, including local authority, public services and non-profit groups. Material: some capacity to respond locally to interruptions in food, energy supplies, especially for elderly and vulnerable people. Environmental: response to ecosystem damage, eg habitat loss, pollution and to extreme weather, eg floods, droughts.Wellbeing: for everyone’s emotional needs, especially those who have mental health or isolation issues.Inspirational: maintaining and renewing a sense of vision, cohesion and purpose in the community in the face of a crisis.Connective: good communication within the group, including the skills of hearing, voicing, reconciling strong differences in opinions and values. The main insights from the Facing the 2020s research are these: Reproducibility: On most aspects of community resilience, there are successful exemplar projects somewhere in the UK. For a concise, inspiring range of examples, see the book The New Road, by Alf and Ewan Young. Why have these not been widely reproduced? One reason is that many good community resilience initiatives have depended on a few superhuman people, who just kept going against impossible difficulties. How can such interventions be systematised so that regular humans could implement them in a bigger number of communities? Recording what was done in an accessible toolkit form would help a lot. Sustainable funding: Many good initiatives have also depended on funding that was not reproducible, e.g. a slab of one-off grant funding as part of a pilot programme by an NGO. Sustainable funding sources could include raising capital from local communities themselves, (eg crowdfunding), or a social enterprise model, or a couple of larger foundations offering a grant scheme plus support to use it. Professional services: Many community initiatives struggle to find professional support geared to their particular needs, in finance, legal, property, HR and other areas. The emergence of specialists for this sector would greatly assist reproductivity. Systemic catalysts: In my dream of raising UK community resilience, a focal role would be played by trained advocate-facilitators, who would go into a community to understand its needs and dynamics, help gather support and a project team and could provide access to reproducible role models, sustainable funding, professional services and more. Working with minority groups and communities of identity: Some communities will be more vulnerable to shocks than others, and history tells us that unresolved social tensions bubble up at times of stress. Resilient societies and communities rely heavily on social cohesion. The benefits of working on community resilience now include the opportunity to pre-empt more severe ruptures to social cohesion which are likely to arise from the major stresses ahead. It is important to involve minority communities in the resilience journey, and communities of identity such as LGBT, instead of focussing solely on geographic communities. Wider participation: Many places don’t have a strong sense of community, and in most of those that do, only a tiny percentage of people participate actively in community matters. How could larger numbers of communities, and larger numbers of people, have a motivation to participate in community resilience, including ethnic and low-income communities? This is a crucial issue, which will become more acute amid the pressures ahead: it would be great to see a couple of enlightened large NGOs fund pilot projects and gathering of best practice to move this forward. Engaging local authorities: As funding for services has moved from central government to local authorities, many local authorities have worked to further devolve decision-making and budgetary decisions to local communities. This means that in some parts of the country, local communities are strongly engaged with the local authority, and structures exist to support these partnerships. This move towards greater local control highlights the exciting potential to tackle many priorities (environmental, public service reform, etc.) by adopting a resilience approach and involving local people in community action and resilience building. In recent years, some local authorities have become real innovators in new forms of service delivery, partnership working and more. The replication issue applies here too. Is there currently an easy way to access best practice and role models in this area? Building national resilience: Most approaches towards community resilience take place at a geographic community level. However, examples from UK history and from other countries indicate real benefits in national-level approaches towards resilience. Some of the countries that are considered the most resilient, such as Japan, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, have a strong national resilience policy. If the UK had this too, it would make local initiatives more effective. Online resilience services: A massive opportunity for innovation! If I continue to dream, I imagine social entrepreneurs and progressive NGOs helping to create new apps and web services, alongside businesses.