Looby Macnamara's Blog

in 2022 I enrolled for Heather Houston’s 6 month online song leader training. At the same time I was leading the CEED – Cultural Emergence Effective Design course, so I choose to do this as my design. And it was successful – I can now lead songs confidently.

One of my learnings about doing the voice over for this design is that it is then much harder to go and add anything. And I realised that I had forgotten to write about the ethics in the design – so here they are

Ethics in this design

Peoplecare – Singing is a great tool for self-care and nourishment. Singing together has extra benefits of connection and release of oxcytocin – the feel good hormone. Singing also brings empowerment and can be a great tool for finding our metaphorical and literal voices in the world

Earthcare – The choice of songs has relevance here. There are many beautiful songs with lyrics that bring us into connection with the elements, Earth, natural rhythms, plants, trees, animals, birds etc.

Fair shares – Singing for ourselves and with others helps us move away from being passive consumers into active producers.

For more info on Heather Houston’s song leader training and her music see https://heatherhoustonmusic.com/song-leader-training/

To see the Design Web https://cultural-emergence.com/the-design-web/
For the next CEED – Cultural Emergence Effective Design and other Cultural Emergence courses see
https://cultural-emergence.com/current-courses/

For Looby’s song circles https://applewoodcourses.com/full-moon-womens-circles/

For the Mother Nature podcast with me and Heather see here

As I am slowly transitioning from 2 to 1 to no crutches, I am finding it interesting to dwell on the metaphor of crutches in life. I am totally grateful for having the crutches over the last 4 months, without them life would have been way more difficult and painful. There are times now in the house when I can move about the room without any at all which feels liberating. Outside on uneven, sloppy ground (which is most of Applewood to be honest) I prefer to use 2 still. And getting up the stairs it’s useful to use 1. I see that it isn’t always wise to try and abandon crutches too quickly. There are times when I am using them out of habit perhaps rather than the real need.

This sparked me to thinking – what are the other things I use as crutches in my life? – chocolate, social media, internet can serve as crutches sometimes and drinking and smoking have been crutches in times gone past. It seems addictions become crutches, and crutches can become addictions. The term seems to have negative connotations and implies something that props us up unnecessarily, but crutches are useful supports.  I also have positive ‘crutches’ or supports in my life – women’s red tent circle, yoga nidra, sit spots, gardening, creativity, friendships are amongst them. The internet can be positive or negative, just as crutches are useful supports for us, but we can become over reliant on them. Sometimes it depends on how often we ‘need’ or use them or how dependant we are on them as to whether they are enhancing or inhibiting.

Now as I am transitioning, I am noticingthe edge, and the feelings that are associated with this. There is a mix offeeling unsteady, empowered, aligned, limping, excited and tiring to do too much.  I can feel off balance and coming intobalance almost simultaneously.

Using crutches has invited me to be more resourceful and energy efficient about getting around; I’ve even found a way to move my cat around (OK she does move around herself, but there are times I want to take her upstairs and she misinterprets. She is the only one of my cats that is happy in the bag, and she will stay in there for ages). Not so much letting the cat out of the bag, as putting her in it.

So some questions for you and I to ponder – what are the crutches or supports in your life? Are they enhancing or inhibiting supports? Are there times when we are acting more out of habit than necessity? Are there patterns that need disrupting? How can we transition from crutches we no longer feel we need in a gentle but stretching kind of way?

(For more reflections and insights on creating positive patterns for well-being in our lives see People & Permaculture )

I’m in bed with a broken leg – a period of embodied and enforced pause and pattern disruption. Kinda annoying it has to be said, as it is right at the beginning of my scheduled 3 month window for slowing down, pausing, reflecting and writing, so I don’t really feel like I needed a broken leg to get on with pausing. Although, of course that version of pause was still high speed and highly productive in comparison to my current reality.

I am now balancing the tension between making use of my quiet time, being creative, and all the things I can still ‘do’ while immobile, and just allowing myself to be, daydream and do nothing. Doing enough to keep mind and spirit engaged with life and out of the grip of frustration and boredom, while honouring and cherishing my body’s invitation into nothingness, stillness, quiet, surrender and release.

I could almost carry on as normal with emails, phone calls, writing, planning, organising, filing, responding etc. etc. Except, I can’t. (At least most of the time.) My brain knows something different is called for, it refuses to engage, push through, focus. It knows this is a time of no agenda – apart from healing.

I can still catch the moments of creativity and insight when they come with no attachment to how long they last or the quality of ‘work’ produced or the contribution to larger projects. Just being with the process simply to enjoy it. I have made myself a reminder of ways I can enjoy pausing every day. Ways I can nourish myself, but shifting the parameters of what art, music, nature connection and stretching might usually mean to me. My first lesson in this came from my friend Kym Chi in hospital. The day of the accident we had been creating mandalas together, works of beauty, detail and symmetry. The next day she brings me a colouring book explaining, “I thought you might still like to do some art, but this is more where you are at right now.” So my art for the day might be 10 minutes of colouring in, my music 5 minutes allowing my fingers to mindlessly meander around the guitar. My nature connection experience might be watching the clouds through the window, a cuddle with my cat, or admiring the colour on the leaves. My stretching is not the full body yoga workout I would dearly love, just a conscious, arms above my head stretch for a minute. Everything is recalibrated.

I hesitated to add writing on to my visual reminder of ways to enjoy pausing, in fact it wasn’t there until this moment of writing in my journal. Thinking of writing as my work, my livelihood, my ‘to do’ list, I had decided not to include it. As I write this at 3 am when pain and discomfort has ruptured yet another night’s sleep and my body can’t toss and turn, and so I decide I might as well move a pen, I feel the release of words onto page. I see this as an opportunity to reclaim writing as something for myself, a way of releasing, reflecting, allowing my imagination to roam, expressing, processing, questioning and answering my own being. I can reclaim writing as one of my gifts, and something I can gift to others, to support, guide, nourish, connect, perhaps even amuse. The space is there on the page, right in the middle, and all it takes is a moment for writing to be part of my pause routines. I have reclaimed writing as an emergent process that emerges insights, healing, opportunities, understandings, ideas and connections. What has happened here is a perfect example of emergence through writing. I began writing about surrendering and colouring books and I finish with reclaiming writing for myself.

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With special thanks to Lucy H. Pearce for her books Medicine Woman and the Rainbow Way

 

#WorkingTowardsZero #safetyculture

Any statistic above zero for sexual violence is too much. Can we imagine a world where the statistic is zero? Can we proactively work towards zero?

After a week of feeling challenged and awakened by the many voices calling #metoo, there is a feeling in the air, a question lurking of what can we do about it?

Hearing each other and acknowledging the scale and magnitude of the problem is certainly a first step. It awakens us all and begins the process of addressing the problem. What we realise with Cultural Emergence is that staying in the phase of challenge and awaken too long can lead to overwhelm, anger, frustration – we need to find a way to move and invigorate ourselves, ways in which we can feel movement out of the problem and into the solution.

Visioning is one of the ways we can do this, can we take time to vision the world we want, to imagine in our hearts and minds different possibilities. One of the principles of Cultural Emergence is ‘allowing for the possibility of the seemingly impossible’, and right now it really does seem impossible that sexual violence will one day be a thing of the past, that perhaps one day to future generations it will seem inconceivable and they will be shocked that it happened at all. We need to allow that dream to take root and give it voice and form.

As we enter a new moon today let us begin a new cycle, a new phase, where we can breathe life into that dream in every waking moment.

And it isn’t enough to just vision and hope that it will come true, we need to give it our attention and intention as well. We are able to manifest these dreams through design and action. At first this can be in small ways while we build up confidence and momentum. And then the bigger visions will come more into our sight and reach.

Is there one step forward you can make today to move us towards a safety culture?

My step today is to share this with you, and to share some design questions which a small group of us worked on a while back. We came together with a grand idea of using permaculture design and principles to work on a conceptual design for creating a safe world. We lost some momentum with this but today feels the right moment to release it and see what comes back. These questions follow the Design Web with the intention of bringing together a large scale conceptual design, which will then hopefully find ways to seed hope and solutions for emerging a safety culture into the world. Even as I write this the voice on my shoulder tries to tell me that the problem is too big and I am too small, and I try and avoid the hundred different ways I could procrastinate further. But today I will give my trust and hope to the small actions of individuals that will come together to nourish and empower us all, and through the emergence of collaboration and co-creation we can create the conditions for a safety culture to emerge. We are the Voice of Gaia and we are being listened to.

To share your design ideas please follow this link – https://goo.gl/forms/sBlPFipex0nAas5g1

There are 3 phases of Cultural Emergence the 3rd phase is to Nourish and Empower and one of the ways we can do that for each other is to really listen, listen without judgement or trying to fix things, or wanting to interrupt with our own stories, and as we do that for each other in real life and on social media we are supporting emotions to flow. There is a widespread need for us to do this, to lower our numbness bar and to honour our pain for the world (in Joanna Macy’s words). Let this be a time of healing and emergence.

We have opened a Facebook group for women who would like to share experiences and stories and questions about Activating Cultural Emergence for Women.

We are the Voice of Gaia

Activating Cultural Emergence

and Working Towards Zero

in Nurturing Circles of Connection

We Find Ourselves

and We Make the Great Turning

We are the Voice of Gaia

We Challenge and Awaken

We Move and Invigorate

We Nourish and Empower

 

 

Some people are looking to our nation’s leaders to get us out of the mess we are in, waiting for them to take action and show us what we need to do. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. (It’s looking increasingly likely that they won’t!)

Either way we can’t wait for them and avoid the responsibility of taking action for ourselves, for changing our own attitudes and behaviours. We need to redefine leadership: What do we want from leaders? What do we want from ourselves?

Leadership can take many different forms. In our homes and work places we can stand strong. We can start our own organisations and projects, writing and speaking in public, or take on responsibilities in our groups. We can be pioneering, breaking new ground. We can expand our circle of influence into our circle of concern. We can look for opportunities, align ourselves with others who share our concerns and take the initiative. We can forge new pathways of influence.

When we take time to look we can see leaders all around us, people who are stepping into their power, people who are willing to speak out against injustices, people taking charge of their own lives; movers and shakers, activists, writers, campaigners, spokespersons, organisers and the people who keep track of the administration that enables things to happen.

By standing for what we believe in, and being willing to push edges and boundaries, we are taking leadership in our own lives. We don’t need to wait until we know everything or even know the right thing to do. We can act now to speak our truth and step into our power, we can shine our light as brightly as possible and attract followers. We can know that we will meet challenges along the way and trust that support and our own inner resources will come through when we are ready and in need. Leaders are ordinary people who become exceptional through their leadership.

Activity: Reflections on myself as leaderLook around you at what role models there are in your own workplace, extended family, and community.What qualities do they bring?What qualities can I bring to a leadership role?

(excerpt from People and Permaculture, Looby Macnamara 2012 – signed copies available here)

If we were to accept the fact that no-one is going to lead us away from the gathering storm but that we have to all of us, each single one, become the leader and walk towards the storm, trusting that others will follow…

If we can do this – and we can if we choose – then this period of human history will be the time that humanity chooses to honour the gift of life and come of age and it will be a time of great celebration.

Tim Macartney

Finding Earth, Finding Soul –The Invisible Path To Authentic Leadership; Tim Macartney; 2007

It’s the end of an era with the passing away of Bill Mollison, co-founder of permaculture. It’s up to us now to follow in his footsteps and be courageous, bold, outspoken, practical and visionary.

When an elder dies it is a real wake up call to the next generation – we are now the ones to take it forward, we are the leaders. One of the amazing gifts that Bill and David gave the world with permaculture was making it open source well before open source was even a term. Permaculture has shifted the paradigm of just one leader to – there are many leaders. Through letting permaculture out into the world to be tried and tested it has evolved and grown immensely over the last 40 years, well beyond, I imagine, even what they originally envisioned. And we still have a long way to go. One day hopefully the term permaculture will become obsolete, as everyone will have permaculture ethics, principles and design as part of their internal operating system.

When I first did my permaculture design course, I loved that it allowed gifts to surface, you didn’t need one particular skill set, all skills are needed and welcomed. Permaculture tapped into our innate wisdom and creativity and was a collaborative effort. I am very grateful to permaculture and all it’s brought me. I am very lucky that everyday is a permaculture day for me now, with teaching, writing, tutoring and living and thinking permaculture. Permaculture has connected me with magic, hope and possibilities and a global community that is fun and connected and using their gifts, developing skills, and making real change. Now I see this global community is collectively giving thanks and grieving. Bill has given so much to so many people through permaculture.

There have been many progeny of permaculture, Transition, LETS, incredible edibles and many more. My own work with People and Permaculture, 7 Ways to think Differently and now Cultural Emergence are descendents of permaculture. And permaculture has had many ancestors and siblings as well. It was almost an accident that perma-culture had an incidental focus of culture, though of course our agricultural systems are a result of habits, priorities and beliefs embedded in our culture. Cultural Emergence is a fledgling initiative with a vision of long-term, large scale cultural transformation. Bill wasn’t well-known for his focus on peoplecare, and no doubt his response to Cultural Emergence would be “hope it’s not any woo-woo stuff”. Well there might be a bit of useful connection practices in there!

His famous quote ”although the problems are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embrassingly simple” is a reminder to all of us that we can simply make change in our lives. My personal vision for my work in permaculture is to share the simple solutions that can change anyone’s thinking and lifestyle. I have learnt through experience that we can manifest through design and action, and am happy that 17 years after my permaculture design course, my family and I have manifested the Applewood Permaculture Centre where we will plant an apple tree in Bill’s memory.

At the end of our courses we invite people to take 3 steps to participation that Bill shared –

1 – align yourself with like-minded people – the peoplecare ethic, 2- involve yourself in the growing cycle – the earth-care ethic, and 3 – reduce your consumption of non-renewables – the fair shares ethic.

I only met him once at IPC in Croatia but his influence has been immense in my life. And to end on another quote from him – “I can’t change the world by myself, it will take at least 3 of us.” Thank you Bill for ensuring there are hundreds of thousands of us globally committed to bringing more earthcare, people care and fair shares into the world.

 

It’s the end of August, September is on the horizon and although we still hope for hot, sunny days they are now considered a bonus. Me and my family have completed our first season at Applewood North and it has been an extraordinary adventure. Over 50 people have sat around our hearth, and shared stories, songs, visions, laughter, inspiration, tools for change and delicious, nourishing food. Time for a bit of a review as well as taking down marquees and getting things ready for the next part of the adventure.

This season has been part of my pathway design that I completed at the beginning of the year. Although at the beginning there will still some big uncertainties. In particular we didn’t know that we were even going to look for a smallholding. In 2014 we had brought a piece of land, which we had started to develop into a permaculture learning and demonstration centre. My partner, Chris Evans and I had previously done a ‘land search’ design which was very successful in finding land – but we still hadn’t resolved where to live and houses near the land were very elusive. While doing my pathway design and other designs in my life, it became very apparent that the projected uncertainty, risk and timescale for getting planning permission was a fundamental base limit to most of my designs. With this recognition came the clarity that it needed solving a.s.a.p. We were incredibly fortunate in so many ways to find our new home in North Herefordshire so quickly, and for it to have enough infrastructure that we could begin courses immediately. And lucky it has been owned by people who had an interest and knowledge about permaculture, and has many mature and useful plantings and resources.

We moved in at the beginning of July and only a few days later we were joined with a pioneering group of 26 people ready to skill up to be Cultural Emergence leaders, with myself and Jon Young from the States.

Doing something so quickly has been an important lesson in just going for things. So many times in our lives we are held back by waiting for things to be ‘right’ – the right time, resources, support, level of confidence, anything can be seen as not quite ready or right. Two of the principles of Cultural Emergence can help free us from needing things to be right and gain momentum towards our goals; allowing for the possibility of the impossible and trusting the process. Everyday when I sat down to write People and Permaculture I had the quote from Tomas Caryle on my wall begin and the impossible will become possible. Sometimes we just need to begin and learn through doing.

What followed on the Cultural Emergence Leadership Training (CELT) was an extraordinary culture of co-operation, shared leadership, care, connection and emergence. Not everything was smooth but there was a commitment to being flexible, trusting the process, supporting everyone, being innovative and working with what we have. The times and ways that we needed to flex often provided the deeper learnings.

The next part of the Cultural Emergence adventure has begun with Cultural Emergence foundation courses happening across Europe this autumn by those that came on the training.  I too will be running one that brings together Cultural Emergence and the design web in Italy. The Cultural Emergence framework was a synthesis and evolution of my work and Jon’s. We consciously brought them together to see what could emerge, and we were looking outside of the space that both of them hold currently to co-create something that pulled our work forward. There are many stories, photos, poems, songs and drawings to share from our time together, and over the coming month the new leaders will be sharing daily on our Cultural Emergence facebook page. (If you aren’t on facebook then you can still see the stories via my facebook portal on my page)

Next came an introduction to permaculture course, which was a more intimate course allowing for deep conversations and debates to develop. One of my profound insights over the weekend was during a session on the ethics of permaculture. Sam asked about what the story is that we are living with the ethics of permaculture – is that we believe it possible to live in an abundant, connected, fair world where the ethics of Earthcare, Peoplecare and Fair shares are met? Or are they just an unattainable ideal? This related very well to a realization that I had had last year at the Social Permaculture course, when one of the limits for the growth and acceleration of social permaculture and permaculture was identified as the belief that about whether we can and will make the difference we want to see in the world. If this is the limit then in permaculture design we turn this around to become the function of the design. I have made a personal commitment to show the effectiveness of permaculture design through my own designs and supporting others in their design work.

Following this was the Empowering Women with Permaculture course with Maddy Harland. After Maddy’s first night here, she was sharing her feelings about the land and the story of the parliament of owls who called their stories through the night, Maddy felt they were calling ‘we are here and we are many’. Maddy described how she felt the land here as a sanctuary, a place for healing. This led us to reframing the earth-care ethic as not just about us caring for the earth, but allowing the earth to care for us. Wow what a potent reframe. (as I write this at 9.30 in the morning a owl calls to me!)

Our journey with the group of women was nourishing and empowering. Right from the start we thought about our individual empowerment and the collective empowerment of women. We built a wood shed and shared experience with tools, and broke through limits of confidence. We explored patterns, danced, sung, painted, laughed, played, designed, stretched our edges, shared stories and rewrote stories of ourselves.

Each course and event has had it’s own culture, but a thread of culture has followed through. A culture of co-operation, giving, sharing, honouring each person, harvesting from the collective wisdom of the group and allowing the magic of place and people to come through.

I still have wonderful things coming with my pathway design this year. I am off to Italy to join the European Permaculture Convergence and run a course Designing our Cultural Emergence. And I am delighted that we will be sharing the venue with Rowe Morrow and her teacher training course. There will be rich synergies, cultural emergence in action and connections for being together. It is also a reassuring symmetry for me. Last August Chris and I co-taught with Rowe on a training of teachers course at our land. Then Rowe shared the Sustainability Centre with Robin Clayfield and myself. And then the conversations flowed about the Next Steps of Permaculture at the International Permaculture Convergence. I am grateful to be meeting some of my international collaborators and friends again.

When I come back from Italy I will be self-publishing a poetry book Strands of infinity. The poems have been whispering to me saying it is time to share them.

And then in November I will be running the third People and Permaculture Facilitator’s Training with Peter Cow. It was during this course last year that I formally began my pathway design, and I will in November begin the next cycle of reviewing, dreaming and designing.

One of the seeds from this season I want to take forward is the power of manifestation through design and action. The design brings belief and pragmatism together while allowing for emergence, flow and responding to life. Collaboration is a recurring theme in my designs, and I am going to take this seed forward as well and explore it more deeply within the next steps of my pathway design.

It has been wonderful to already be able to plan many of the courses for next year so easily as we have our venue now. I am looking forward to running 2 PDC’s next year after not having run one at all for many years. Also in 2017 will be a training of teachers, forest gardening, Empowering women with permaculture, permaculture for development workers, and more Cultural Emergence courses. (Our facebook page)

I think over the coming years there will be even more expansion, scaling up, collaboration and emergence, and I am intrigued to know what is around the corner, and trust their are many blessings already on their way.

(photo credit 1st and 3rd photo Kathleen O’Hara Farren)

When I was writing People and Permaculture I had a mindmap, which had ‘any topic’ in the middle and all the tools of permaculture thinking branching off. When starting to write about a subject I would write it in the middle and see what connected with the permaculture thinking. I have now added other tools to add to my mindmap, including the 7 Ways to think differently. My most recent addition to my toolbox is the concept and practice of Cultural Emergence. Cultural Emergence is a new term coined by myself and Jon Young. There are core routines and principles that can support Cultural Emergence.

A few months ago I wrote ‘ Humanity is presently at a time of mass cultural emergency; we see the personal, social, political and environmental problems as stemming from a lack of cultural understanding and cohesion. We believe we have tools that can help turn this around into mass cultural emergence; where abundance, gratitude, care and connection are part of our everyday culture.’ I was talking generally about the multiple cultural emergencies around us, but now we seem to have been launched into another cultural emergency with Brexit. I have been asked what permaculture thinking has to offer us in this time, so I am now putting this in the centre of my mindmap and seeing what arises. This will be the first of a series of posts about Cultural Emergence.

Cultural Emergence is an opportunity to be proactive, thoughtful, inspired and empowered to co-create the culture that we want, through the power of minds coming together with purpose for the common good.

What has become apparent through the last weeks is that the existing paradigm, that global politics and decision making is currently behaving under, is flawed, untrustworthy and ultimately not serving most people. The paradigm through which the referendum was conducted was a win-lose/ only one winner/ limited options paradigm. And the result has added lots of momentum to the spiral of erosion, where mistrust and instability increase and there is a rise of ‘isms’. Another culture might have descended into civil war before now, which of course is the rock bottom of this spiral of erosion that is being played out in so many places over the world and throughout history. Now, each and every one of us that voted, whichever way they voted, (and all those that didn’t vote) has a responsibility to try and intervene in this spiral of erosion. We all can find ways to make our voices heard and share and create the culture we wish to emerge. We are currently at a point of fluidity where conditions are ripe for cultural emergence. Patterns have been disrupted and like that moment when soil has been freshly cultivated, the time is ripe to sow new seeds for the culture of the communities we inhabit. We have the opportunity to write the story of this historic time.

While many of us are experiencing Brexit fatigue in the media and social media, let us not lose this moment. Let us continue to share the positives, feed what we want to grow is the principle that will support us during this time. The event ‘the celebration of Aberystwyth‘s international community’ is an act of cultural emergence, that reaches out and connects people. Connection is one of the core routines of cultural emergence, and now is a beautiful time to reach out and connect with those around you. Connect with the sky and the trees above you, connect with the grass and soil under your feet, connect with your own breathing and sense of hope and responsibility. Connect in any way you can.

I will share more ideas from my ‘any topic’ mindmap after I have finished moving house, in the meantime you might like to try this creating a mindmap like this for yourself using permaculture tools or any other useful tools and ways of thinking you know and see what ideas emerge.

Jon Young and I will be sharing stories and Celebrating Cultural Emergence on July 7th. Please sign up via facebook page or direct to listen to this freecall or get the recording. This is the launch of our Cultural Emergence Leadership Training and Foundation Courses.

Now is a great time to help me with my move and buy a book from me (from here)

Photo credit Dana Wilson of Gaiacraft

My last post a few days ago was about why I wanted to stay in the EU. Now just a few days later and I have to shift my thinking, firstly traveling through feelings of shock, disappointment, disbelief. There seems to have been such an outpouring of similar emotions and collective grief all over my facebook feed today. I can’t help but wondering why we were not so vocal before the referendum. It seems we were hardly given the time to do our research and give proper thought and input into the dilemma before being asked to take sides.

After a day of hearing responses I have ventured into town and it is strangely all normal as if nothing has happened. It is like I am carrying a silent, invisible ache within me.

While driving I have been thinking of the analogy of a chess game, when suddenly the pawn gets to the other end and becomes a queen, suddenly the treat is much larger. But there are still many pawns on this side and together pawns can check-mate.

While driving I have been singing a song that my choir Vision Singers have been singing recently “my heart is ready, what am I going to do (my hands, my voice, my soul). And really feeling into ‘what am I going to do?’ What is the call to action that this vote has brought us to. What can I do? what can we do? What is the next achievable step we can make? What is my commitment to be the change?

My commitment is to pay more attention to politics so that I can enter debates and influence people from a more informed place.

The other step that I am happy to be doing anyway and will call in all the more, is to find, train and inspire collaborators. Together we can increase our collective circle of influence. At the beginning of the year, I did this mandala as part of my pathway design as the attributes that I wanted to bring forth. It feels more relevant than ever today.

I don’t usually get too involved in politics, although having said that everything we do could be interpreted as a political act, from the language we use to what we buy. Even growing our own food can be seen as a deeply political act. I feel drawn to write this as I want to use my voice, just as I would like us all to use our voices to bring about the world we want to live in.

There is a permaculture principle ‘feed what you want to grow’. I believe that staying in the EU will help us feed the feelings of unity and interconnectedness. There is a line from my poem ‘Manifesto for humanity’ ‘We are thinking and acting like a global family.’ If we are able to come to this realisation and really embody in our being, thinking and actions our interconnectedness then we are truly on the road to peace in this world. I want to live in a culture of peace where we don’t spend valuable resources on maintaining our boundaries.

The other reason that I will feel more secure about my children and grandchildren’s futures if we stay in the EU is a greater resistance to corrupt corporations able to manipulate policies and cause more ecocide. I believe there is more accountability, tolerance, democracy and wisdom available to us all if we stay in the EU.

I would like to think that we can welcome the opportunity to be part of something much larger than our tiny island. I don’t want to act out of fear, but come from a place of trust and harmony, I hope we can do that on June 23rd.

This beautiful song by Sara Thomsen By Breath emphasises our interconnectedness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HgOJiJRKMM

(Photo credit Dana Wilson, Gaiacraft, taken at the Social Permaculture Course in UK 2015 with participants from all over the world)