Transition Culture

19 Jan 2015

What does the Power to Convene look like in Stroud?

What does the Power to Convene look like in the work of Transition Stroud?  Transition Stroud describes itself as “a dynamic group of volunteers who are supporting the local community to strengthen its’ local economy, reduce the cost of living and prepare for a future with less oil and a changing climate”? They were one of the first Transition groups to form and have an impressive portfolio of projects they’ve achieved over the years.  Recently, the Power to Convene has become a key part of their work.  I asked Simon Allen, James Beecher and Erik Wilkinson to tell us more: 

Erik: “For me the key strategic development was the launch in November 2011 of the “Stroud in Transition” newsletter. The first paragraph stated its key objective of “providing news and information about what’s going on not only in Transition Stroud but in the wider world of “Stroud in Transition”.  That first 12 page newsletter had articles on partner organisations such as Stroudco CSA and Wood U Waste. It built on good networking done at our events such as Winterfest, Eco Homes weekend etc – and it took us centre stage.  All this good will and support from our partners was very evident when Seb, I and Imogen produced the Stroud in Transition Action Menu.  The Twitter link on the newsletter consolidated our developing effective use of e newsletters and social media”.

Simon: “At our 2013 AGM we got an all time low attendance of about 10 people, so for 2014 we decided to go much bigger and widen our invitation list to partner organisations, and also launch the Action Menu Leaflet at the AGM. It looks like we had a 12 month plan to get the leaflet done and then launch it at our AGM, in fact more by chance than planning the 2 things came together at the right time! At the AGM, speakers from some 11 organisations gave a 2 min shout on their work/organisation”. [Here is a video of that event]. 

James: “With our film series I arranged several events ‘partnered’ with other groups (a film on supermarkets with the anti-supermarket group, a film on fracking with the anti-fracking group, for example). This has meant those groups can use the training I’ve been given in setting up a venue, save the money on hiring a member of staff for the night, and know that their event will be fairly well publicised. Of course, it also helps a little with cross-fertilisation of audiences. The book group has been pulling in new people too. It would be possible to write more about the films and book group with regard to ‘convening'”

Erik: “We have also sought to “fill in the gaps” by supporting the development of new Transition action groups.  We run a programme of “SkillsGain” workshops and if there was sufficient interest after the two hour workshop –  then an ongoing action group was proposed.  Through this approach a “Building Skills Action Group” and a “Building a Wind Turbine Group” has developed  – and there may be a Joanna Macey group about to form. This approach has been successful also with Repair Cafes where a group in nearby Nailsworth has replicated/improved on Repair Cafes run in Stroud.  The benefit is that it expands the number of active people involved with Transition activities (and reduces the pressures on core TS volunteers)  – a drawback is that these groups may be less stable”.

Simon: “We first adopted the strategy to try and partner with like-minded organisations in 2010, when Gail Bradbrook, who was new at that time, pointed out that there was an opportunity to create synergies between the many (and small) Stroud environmental ‘Transition-like’ initiatives through partnership and sharing of info and publicity….’we didn’t have to do it all ourselves’ ……others were already doing good stuff …but everyone was struggling with publicity and getting members. 

James: “hubStroud is even more about cross-fertilisation. It was set up by TS, and can and does promote TS events along with others, but because it is ‘arms-length’ and has a purpose to promote the wide variety of events in Stroud, it has a larger following on Twitter, particularly a larger *local* following, and one it may have been hard for TS to reach otherwise. This year we’re looking to finalise the coding and start offering it to other places to set up their own versions so this could be worth writing more about… take a look at the site and see if you’re interested”.

Erik: Another key issue/opportunity is that of insurance.  Transition Stroud insurance arrangements have been attractive enough for a number of groups (including Stroud Community TV) to be more attracted to coming under the auspices of Transition Stroud.  So we are currently looking at how Transition Stroud‘s insurance arrangements might be a marketing opportunity to promote and engage new transition action groups.  However it will be critical for those groups to be absolutely clear what their responsibilities are under the insurance arrangements (risk assessments etc) and that they need to contribute to the cost of insurance.  It may be that there are two types of action groups – those who have actively chosen to be insured and those who have not. It is important that groups do not think they are covered when they are not.  We are in the early stages of developing this approach.

James: “It’s also worth noting that there is a Local Development Plan process happening in the town centre which in presenting some interesting opportunities with regard to partnering. It is the local town council which is convening this, but TS has a ‘power to input’ greater than it would have done some time ago”.

Simon: “Rather than re-create what others in Stroud were already doing, we have gone for a centre ground pivotal position and focussed on partnering,  publicity through our e news letter (MailChimp list of 650 at present) , and as Transition Stroud we have only focussed on 1 or 2 big public events a year, plus film shows, and projects that others are not doing, e.g. Environmental training/ audits with students in secondary schools, back-to-bicycle initiatives (now been picked up by the NHS surgeries as Cycling on Prescription),  Repair Cafes etc with the aim for these to become self sustaining and have an ongoing life beyond TS’s initiation”.

James: “There are challenges here – it’s hard to keep everyone up to speed and it feels a bit like more and more of TS activity is administrative sometimes, with less expectation from ourselves that we will prompt projects. However, that’s largely because none of us have the time… nonetheless, that means we’ve adopted a strategy as much out of necessity as design (though as Simon said, it was undoubtedly designed), which is worth noting at least”.

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9 Jan 2015

What makes a good mediator?

Part of the Power to Convene (our theme for January and February) is the ability to bring groups and people together to work in new ways. The story of the South Devon Cycle Link campaign and in particular the role of James Furse has many useful insights for this.  “You have to share enough of yourself to bring people into their trust – it’s a combination of tact, diplomacy and determination” he tells me.

James is the non-executive chair of what has hitherto been known as the Littlehempston Cycle Path team but is now known as the South Devon Cycle Link campaign, which has been lobbying for a particular route to connect the National Cycle Path from Newton Abbot and on down to Plymouth and beyond via Totnes.  We started by asking him to tell us the story of the campaign:

Could you tell us the story of the campaign?

It has a long history and in a way, that’s commendable because those who have been pushing for this for some time have never diminished in their energy and effort, but have been frustrated at times by the lack of progress and inability to engage with stakeholders who really hold the key to unlocking this particular pathway for them. It has been running for many, many years, driven by a logic that this is the most attractive and most importantly safest route from the villages between Newton Abbot and Totnes to get to this main communications town (Totnes) and then take the route down to the South West beyond Plymouth.

What’s your sense of where this campaign has got to? What progress has been made and what’s stopping progress from happening?

The campaign has been successful in whittling down the options for the route. Inevitably in between Newton Abbot and Totnes there are many routes this cycle path could take, picking up as many villages in the safest way possible. A number of years ago a range of routes were offered and really it’s come down to two (you can see the various proposed routes here). 

By having two options and polarising them there is a risk around that, but it has given really great focus to bring absolutely to the fore the impediments to creating the preferred route which is over the footbridge by the South Devon Railway as opposed to a route that goes more onto main roads. At the present time, the team is focusing on ways in which it can bring stakeholders together to achieve the preferred route which is through the villages from Newton Abbot through into Totnes.

Are negotiations still ongoing or does it feel like it’s got stuck?

The discussions are still ongoing and if we look at how the problems arise and how they might be resolved, the one success I would say of the cycle path team is that they recognise that the tactics employed up until the last 18 months have been more of the direct action kind and maybe have not thought through carefully enough how stakeholders like to see and receive information and be engaged with.

This isn’t about my capability as an individual, but the presence of a neutral person who has a good understanding of the arguments on both sides as a mediator has been seen by the stakeholders as a very positive thing and the comment I’ve received directly as regards my performance in doing it has been that the presence of somebody like me has been really useful in taking the heat out of what has hitherto been a more shrill and confrontational campaign.

As a result, I’ve been able to improve understanding amongst key stakeholders, local authority, landowners of the route and the issues surrounding it, so at least decisions and positions that have been taken are better informed. That also allows me to support the cycle path team in thinking of ways to address what are legitimate concerns of the stakeholders.

As community groups, our default position when we want to shift something like that is to go into what you call the “shrill” kind of mode and run campaigns and be as much of a nuisance and put as much pressure on as possible. Is your sense that actually it would have been better to have taken a different approach from the beginning? Or that actually where we find ourselves now is that we’ve moved a certain distance because of the more adversarial kind of campaigning and now it just needs a different approach to take it further. I wonder what advice you would give to other communities who might be at the early beginning stage of something like this.

There has to be a period of awareness raising, and inevitably these sorts of projects succeed by a weight of public opinion and public interest from those who will be the beneficiaries of whatever it is that’s being considered. It’s inevitable that there will be a public element to the campaign. It wouldn’t survive otherwise because if you’re looking to bring people together and persuade people, they need to understand that this matters and this is important.

One of the issues with the cycle path is that it has perhaps been seen by some stakeholders as a little local issue trying to give a shortcut into Totnes for 200 people, rather than seeing it as a national issue where the connecting of the cycle route nationally affects many more people beyond the village of Littlehempston. There’s something about how you position a campaign that needs to be thought through that won’t apply everywhere, but it’s probably an opportunity that was missed early on here.

When it comes to engaging with those who may take a contrary view, then again I come back to an earlier point around reflecting on how the people you’re trying to address like to receive information. The risk of a direct action campaign is it’s a one-size-fits-all approach and the risk is you may find some of the key people you want to influence are receptive to that and others are simply not.  Care needs to be taken to understand those minds you really want to influence, and then reflect carefully about how they like to receive information.

Part of my engagement has been to do a bit of repair work. Not to make huge apologies on behalf of the previous campaigners but I have recognised openly that they got a few things wrong, and that notion of humility in discussion has, I think, been a help in this situation.

So yes, right to raise awareness, right to show the breadth and depth of interest in finding the resolution, but before direct action type campaigning gets underway, really think hard about those people you wish to influence. In the end, what might make them feel vulnerable if they weren’t to come to the table and have a discussion. So it is about historic, almost military campaigning tactics.

You mentioned before about the national context here. So at the moment we operate in a political climate where communities are, on paper at least, being given all manner of powers through the Localism Act, the Right to Build, the Right to Bid and so on and so on, referendum powers on certain things. What’s your sense of the balance of that? For a campaign like this, what additional powers would be useful?  I was up in Scotland recently, and they have a thing called the Community Empowerment Bill which is going through the Scottish Parliament. One of the powers in that is an Absolute Right to Buy, so this would be a community compulsory purchase order power which would be extremely useful in this case!

If you take this particular project, or perhaps any project, where you have an idea, a campaign that you wish to progress that seems eminently sensible and will benefit many, but you encounter people who hold all the positions and say they don’t want this to happen either because of funding or land use or whatever, there is a risk that if you take a coercive – a compulsory purchase or a community purchase to resolve the issue, it has to be done with real care because you’re going to have to be neighbours with these people and have a relationship with them for many years to come.

My preference, which perhaps is more in my nature, is to try and come up with a consensus, a coalition of willing parties rather than taking the route of coercion. That isn’t in the spirit of achieving a harmonious community. In the particular instance that we’re talking about, whilst it may be possible to force through at some point a particular route, the route will cross the land of three people, it will affects tenants of some of the land or property and their ability to make life unpleasant through their own direct action is just clearly a risk.

I still believe that consensus is right. But I think the need is to explore and make it very clear to all sides what the rules are and what the lie of the land is, so one could pull a particular lever if one wished.

All too often we think in terms of “this is happening and I don’t agree with it”, so the default position is to rush to opposition. If instead people were to look at filling the mediator space, what would you say are the qualities of that? What other skills does one need in order to perform that role, and what’s it like to be in that place?

For a mediator? To be engaged, then one or other party has got to think that this is a good idea. It’s how you build trust and confidence between the two parties, that you will be an honest broker of information between the two sides in an adversarial situation. Inevitably it was the cycle path who found me and asked me if I’d get involved. I got involved because I have a strong sense of justice and fairness and it seemed peculiar that this wasn’t happening, and could I play a part in actually rebalancing the relationship. So I do it for nothing, and it’s a project that interests me because I’m just intrigued by human nature, use of language and all those things, that’s why it attracted me to start off with.

In terms of the benefits it brings, then you have to have a very clear logical mind and be a very active listener in trying to establish some kind of rapport across and confidence between the parties. You have to share enough of yourself to bring people into their trust. And so it’s a combination of tact, diplomacy and determination.

But I believe, in all that I do, in fresh air and frankness. I was in very direct discussions with the cycle path team and similarly with other people on this subject. It’s not being manipulative, just saying it how it is and trying to find common ground and also to develop tactics. 

For example, because of the way I work I was looking to say “What is it they’re really looking for? What would cause them concern?”  In the case of the railway, fine, they were looking for a significant Heritage Lottery Fund bid, so I know that the railway is seeking funding. If the railway needs money, what can we do to help them get some money that I could offer in the sense of reciprocity? So the answer was, we will put 1400 people behind their bid, saying you’ve got huge community support, you’ve got all the schools and 1400 people, isn’t that great?

It turned out they decided not to progress with the Heritage Lottery bid … but nonetheless it was trying to find ways where you could bring something of benefit to them and making sure that in the event of progress being made, behaviour would not be about triumphalism or crowing, but about celebrating that something had happened. Now with the local authority, finding areas of reciprocity is less obvious, but personal reputations do matter, so the thought process has to be the same.

Here is the podcast of this interview for you to listen to or to download.  

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8 Jan 2015

How the BBC might hold the election to account, carbon-wise

The UK election (due to take place in May) kicked off this week.  Exciting I know.  BBC Radio 4’s flagship evening news show PM launched its coverage with a request to listeners to let them know how they would like the election to be reported to them.  The request had been preceded by interminable wranglings between the Conservatives and Labour over whose election promises have been properly costed and whether an independent body should be brought in to audit each party’s promises.  

Their request for ideas prompted me to suggest the following.  What do you think? 

“Dear PM,  

You asked yesterday for ideas as to how people would like the UK election in May this year to be reported.  Here’s my idea.  2015 is the year of the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris in December.  It is pretty much universally agreed that achieving a global binding agreement on climate change there is absolutely vital.   

Yesterday you reported on whether an independent body might take on the role of assessing the financial implications of each party’s policies.  This sounds like a reasonable idea.  I wondered then if you might also assess the climate impacts of each party’s policies?  When a new policy idea is announced, you could assess whether it is consistent with the UK staying on an emissions pathway consistent with staying below 2 degrees, or not.  Dr Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows at the Tyndall Centre have done a lot of work on this and could be good people to help you.   

It would, in my opinion, be more important than whether it represents responsible budgeting.  You would, in effect, be putting short term economic responsibility, alongside longer term climate responsibility.  It would also hold each party to account for future generations.  It would be a fascinating lens through which to view the policies coming forward for the election.  

Thanks

Rob Hopkins

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7 Jan 2015

How ‘The Power to Convene’ can transform Transition.

I had seen it in lots of different places. I’d seen it in the 30 people who turned out to plant nut trees on a grey Sunday morning in Totnes. I’d seen it in Liege in Belgium, where representatives of many local organisations had come to an event to discuss creating a ‘Food Belt’ around the city. I’d seen it at the launch of the Brixton Pound, in a hall packed with local traders.  What I didn’t have was a name for it. 

It was in a small sideroom at the Resilience Hub in Portland, Maine, that I first heard the term ‘The Power to Convene’.  It fascinated me, and finally gave me a name for this thing I’d been seeing for years.  I was doing an interview with Chuck Collins of the fantastic Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition (JPNET) group.  “One thing we have”, he told me, “is the ‘Power to Convene’”.  He continued: 

“Somebody comes and has a great idea, such as “I really want to start a bicycle taxi business”, and young people who are graduates of a local bike mechanic programme say “we know how to take care of bikes, we’d like to start a business.

So we pulled together a community event, and got 70 people there who were interested, and we got a whole bunch of new stakeholders and allies, and now they have a working group and are working on setting up that business.  I think we just keep doing that in every area where there is both a problem and people who want to do something about it.  We can get a crowd together, help identify resources and spark them”. 

‘The Power to Convene’ put a beautiful, succinct term to something you will no doubt recognise. We’ve noticed more and more groups working in this way and exploring the potential of their own, place-based, ‘Power to Convene’.  We see it in different forms: 

• galvanizing people from a wide range of backgrounds and motivations to get involved in a particular project or activity (i.e. community tree planting, beach clean ups…)
• bringing the community together to engage with, and support, change to happen (such as a Local Entrepreneur Forum), and/or
• acting as a catalyst, enabling and inspiring organisations to put their collective energy and attention into a particular issue (such as ‘Caring Town Totnes’ or an Economic Blueprint).

Over the next two months we will be hearing examples and stories from each of these.  We would also love to hear from you.  A number of Transition initiatives, like JPNET, already work in this way.  Transition Bristol has from the start.  It’s a new departure for Transition Stroud, whose recent AGM marked this shift in their focus (we’ll hear more from them in a few days).  Convening could happen around public health, REconomy, community energy, complementary currencies, or a number of other areas.  Transition Buxton, for example, rather than having their own Local Economy group, are involved in their local community Town Team. 

“So what’s new?” you may well ask.  “Haven’t local groups worked in partnership since time immemorial?”  Well yes.  Clearly there is ample evidence that working in partnership with other individuals and organisations can be highly effective as opposed to everyone feeling the need to always start from scratch and reinvent the wheel.  But done well, Transition can bring something new, something different, to it.  It can be a powerful thing to harness.  As Frances Northrop of Transition Town Totnes told us last year in an article about ‘Caring Town Totnes’:

“The overwhelmingly positive thing about this work has been the sense of solidarity, goodwill and energy that has emerged. Whenever I talk to people about the project, they are truly delighted by the liberation of the approach and the opportunities it provides, using words like “thrilled”, “brilliant” and in the case of the lady who runs the Memory Café just welling up and giving me a huge hug”. 

So what are the particular practices, skills and approaches that Transition initiatives are drawing on when operating in this way?  What are the advantages of working with and through other people and organisations rather than approaching everything as a Transition-branded project, and what are the risks?  

One of the key things that distinguishes the Transition approach is the attention paid to both Inner and Outer change, being clear about the need to balance being and doing.  How can we ensure that such partnerships are intentionally aware of people’s emotional as well as their practical needs?  Here are some of the things we’ve noticed as being helpful: 

The value of a simple framing question or challenge: For example, Transition Sarasota’s Food Gleaning project convened not just a lot of volunteers, but also the Rotary Club of Sarasota, All Faiths Food Bank, the Peace Education and Action Center as well as Transition Sarasota. 

It had four simple goals which were the thing that mobilised people to get involved:

1. To provide healthy, fresh, local produce to those most in need;

2. To harvest produce from area farms that would otherwise be wasted;

3. To educate youth and other community members about hunger, food security, and agriculture; and

4. To help local farmers survive and thrive through tax-deductions they will receive for the full value of the produce they donate.

Keep it simple, a rallying cry with as much ‘edge’, i.e. overlap, appeal to others, as possible.  

Build on what’s already there: there is much to be gained from aligning what you want to do with the existing interests of others, identifying what’s already strong and moving, and working with that, bringing a Transition perspective to help support what’s already underway.  This can also be a helpful approach in that it can take some of the pressure off your Core Group.

The ‘suite of tools’ Transition can bring: Visioning, backcasting, conflict resolution, running productive meetings, providing organisational support, introducing into meetings a distinction between being and doing are just some of them (check out our Support Offer for more).  As in all aspects of doing Transition, the actual doing of the projects is the easy bit.  It’s the inner aspects of it that are harder, the bits that take place on the inside of those involved and of the newly-convened group itself. 

Bring in the need for support: Explicitly raising the idea of support at an early stage is key.  What support do people need in order to be able to work as effectively as they can?  How might they let other people know if they feel they are close to burnout, and what support would they like from other people (a model like Transition Town Totnes’ Mentoring and Wellbeing Support scheme can really help).

Convene so as to bring everyone along with you: Another insight that Transition brings to the Power to Convene is the need to take those that we are convening on a journey.  People are drawn to getting involved from a range of perspectives.  There may be groups or individuals we’d like to get involved who don’t yet know they might have anything to contribute, who aren’t familiar with the way in which Transition frames the reasons for doing these projects.  We might think of them as ‘disinterested’. 

Just as we need to not assume that individuals we work with as a Transition group will leap straight from Disinterested to Doing, the same goes for potential partners and other organisations.  We need to design into events or meetings the key bits in between. 

• ‘Deliberating’: Introduce some of the framing issues in an accessible way and create space for people to discuss and digest it. Enable conversation and discussion.
• ‘Designing’: This is the move from looking at the challenges to being part of collectively trying to figure out what a response to them might look like.  Open Space, World Cafe, different creative ways of facilitating these conversations are really helpful. 

Making space for these means that when you do reach the stage of Doing, the group has gone on a journey together, trusts each other more, reflects the voices and thinking of everyone present.  Suggesting to those we are partnering with, who may be groups with a very different culture and way of doing things to ours, that we work in this way will push everyone out of their comfort zones.  But the groups, and the projects they create, will be all the stronger for it. 

Whichever approach you take, the Power to Convene offers a number of benefits.  Firstly it offers scope to reenergise your group, bringing in fresh energy, new attention and good connections.  Secondly, it offers the potential to reach and work with people you might not reach through doing Transition.  Thirdly, it brings the opportunity to share knowledge and experience as well as to learn from other organisations and saving a lot of wheel-reinvention. And lastly, it can offer the potential to generate income through providing services to support the process, or through funding for the convening role. 

When I spoke to Chuck Collins, he summarised it as the ability to “broker all kinds of interesting stuff”.  That ability to “broker all kinds of stuff” is at the heart of the Power to Convene.  Ought it be the key role of what Transition groups do and how they function?  That’s the question we’ll be returning to during this month.  We’ll close with a few questions we’d love to hear your thoughts on.  Do you recognise your group as having a role as a convenor?  When has this worked well?  What have you found difficult?  Do share your thoughts below…

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19 Dec 2014

Pandora Thomas on responding to the Prison Industrial Complex with permaculture and resilience

Pandora Thomas is a teacher, writer, speaker and designer. She currently lives in Berkeley, California and is a board member of Transition US, a founder of the Black Permaculture Network,  a co-founder of Earthseed Consulting, and co-creator of the Pathways to Resilience programme.  We’ve been trying to get an interview with her many months, so we’re delighted to share this with you as our last blog of 2014.  We started by asking her to tell us more about Pathways to Resilience.  

“For many of you that might not be in the United States or specifically in California, there’s an opportunity that exists that’s grown out of what we call the Prison Industrial Complex. I’m not going to get too deep into it but there’s a high rate of incarceration in the United States in general and about 60% of people incarcerated in the United States represent communities of African-American, Latino, Asian, Native, and it’s disproportionate to the amount of people actually doing crimes.

 

There’s pretty much no way, when you look at the numbers, that 60% of people of colour could be doing crimes! There are lots of challenges in our justice system that have resulted in this inequity of incarceration rates. Also there’s overcrowding in the prisons. California are releasing people early, there’s a lot of legislation being passed because lots of people are waking up and saying this is absurd, we’re paying money to house millions of people instead of supporting their transformation and their healing.

In California you have what’s called ‘re-entry’. Re-entry exists all over, but you have a very robust re-entry initiative that’s attempting to take people from prison, especially non-violent offenders, put them into jails and then release them. So the question is, why are they serving time? We need to really support them and really look at the economics of it. We’re spending about $47,000 to incarcerate them a year in the United States, and you could use that money in so many other ways.

My family, who are African-American and Native American, are also dealing with high incarceration rates, and so myself and another woman I work with are very passionate about re-entry and specifically looking at how the idea of sustainability or ecological design, how can we leverage this time where there are going to be all of these people coming back into our communities.

We’re also facing what’s happening, climate change, environmental justice, social justice, and to bring all of these together. When we work on the inside in San Quentin, this other woman, Angela, and myself ran a programme called ‘The Green Life’. The men inside were just as committed to sustainability as they were to their own personal growth, and they saw the link.

So we thought – wow, how about if we could make the argument that as people are coming out into our communities, into re-entry?  We can help lower the rate of people returning to prison and we can also educate them and support them in taking leadership around their own life paths and the way that we live on the Earth. That’s why we call it a Pathway to Resilience, because this idea of resilience being a path, the same path that you are taking as you’re re-entering the society and understanding the systems that are in place, some systems that are responsible for you being incarcerated, but also the natural systems and how can we align the lessons.

A lot of the men and women that we work with need everything when they come home. They might have been away for 20 years, so they’re just learning about technologies and communication, moving back into the flow and the world of work. So we thought this was a perfect opportunity to also highlight and teach them permaculture design, social entrepreneurism. Help them create a re-entry plan where they see themselves having people, the planet and making a profit in alignment as opposed to just coming out and having to piece together a life after coming out of an often very traumatic experience being incarcerated.

What are some of the different elements of the programme?

It’s 4 months training. It’s a pilot, and it’s for men and women coming back to Alameda County, which is the county where I live. They get their Permaculture Design Certification. They also get social entrepreneur training. More importantly, they get case management, wrap-around services so that each participant can figure out where they are at in this journey of re-entering their community. They also get linked to a network of leadership in non-profit and for-profit companies that are committed to their success.

They also do these healing circles where they come together and really talk about everything from trauma to relationships to what we’re dealing with right now in the United States about police brutality and keeping yourself safe. So we’re trying to do almost the eco-village model. I call it the ‘Mandela Welcome’ because when Mandela got out of prison everybody was excited and hoping he was going to be victorious and gave him all sorts of support and resources. So we’re trying to create a Mandela Welcome for all these men and women coming back.

After the 4 months of receiving all this training, what we’re attempting to do is not necessarily place them in full time jobs, but give them internships and apprenticeships at local either green business or social and environmental justice organisations so that they can then take the skills they’ve learnt and apply them to creating a career that’s really rooted in their ethics and their values.

You call it “a holistic pathway towards success”. How is it received by the people who do it? How is it working? Is it something that people choose to do or that people have to do?

Right now we’ve had one cohort. A cohort is just 15 participants. Everyone has to apply, so you apply, you’re vetted and you show the commitment to be able to show up over 4 to 5 months. You go to permaculture. You’re getting your PDC, the Permaculture Design Certification, you’re meeting with other people, and we start the whole experience by what we call rites of passage, so it’s a ceremony in the redwoods where we bring out supporters – like the family of incarcerated folks – who really want to see them succeed and it’s a rites of passage thing that they go through.  They write something down that they’ve done, then they burn it, do the ceremony, there’s drumming, and this is a re-entry. They loved that because it was a way to start anew.

A lot of them are especially excited about the Permaculture Design Certification because it’s a tangible skill that they can start to use right away. Several if not all of them have experience of some type of land-based practice, whether it’s just working in their grandmother’s back yard, being a landscaper, or having to do landscaping while incarcerated. What we’re trying to do is give it more relevance and help them understand where we’re at and what’s happening planetarily with sustainability, and also make it relevant to what’s happening in our own communities.

They love learning about patterns in nature, but also the patterns in their own lives that they can transform – seeing we’re having a drought in California right now and understanding that their bodies are made up of water. What is the relationship between their own health and the health of the planet? It’s been overwhelmingly successful in terms of the permaculture design education piece and helping them re-envision what they could be doing with their lives.

What changes do you see in the people who go through the programme?

We had one woman who joined the programme and she was like “I’m into fashion, I’m just trying to go to school and work”, and wasn’t into “the environment”. It wasn’t relevant for her. After the first day of the permaculture course, and we had our other events too, she was like “I had no idea how what’s happening around the environment impacts me and my community and my life, and how urgent it is, and how I can actually take leadership around it”. So there are stark changes, that lens shift that I think everybody gets when you start to learn about permaculture design or Transition or any way of starting to see our relationship to what’s happening with the rest of the systems on the Earth.

We also have other participants who understand – wow, whatever job I get, I can bring this ethic of people care, earth care, resource share to that work. A lot of participants also say “now I feel like I’m serving my community. I don’t just feel like someone’s looking at me like he just got out and I’m afraid of him”. Now people are looking at these men and women and saying “I can look to them as leaders and as a resource for improving our community”. That’s been really powerful to hear from them. They also give us feedback on how to improve the programme. That’s been really good too, how do we make it more relevant or more empowering for future participants.

Social entrepreneur training is one of the key parts of it. Why did you feel that you had to include that?

I consider myself a social entrepreneur. It’s kind of a buzzword that’s going around right now.  Someone asked me the other day “what’s a social entrepreneur?” I think it’s this opportunity we call the triple bottom line: people, planet, profit – just understanding that you can have a mission-driven life, that your work can be mission-driven. We wanted to offer that lens to these men and women coming back into our communities so again, they don’t just say – I’m going to go and work for whatever, but what’s their mission in life and how can they create that.

How can they not just see themselves as whatever one thing they are doing, but what are they passionate about. Is there an issue in their community that they can become innovative and creative about and design a solution that’s needed? So we worked with the Sustainable Economies Law Centre which is a local co-operative of lawyers in the area. They do a lot of training around starting co-operatives.

They also get to meet social entrepreneurs, specifically social entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds like Back to the Roots. They have used coffee grounds to grow mushrooms. They have mini aquaponic systems now and these are located in stores all over the United States. This was two college students who saw a need and that there is no waste actually and wanted to grow something out of it. For our participants to learn about their story and see how they designed a business and that it’s possible to design something, that you can be an entrepreneur and make a true impact in your community.

Last year Back to the Roots made $11 million growth. They’re hiring people locally, they’re committed to social and environmental justice. So for us, including the social entrepreneur lens makes it more holistic, so that the next step they take is what role do I play in creating a mission driven business, or bringing that ethic to whatever work I might do.

How would you rate the level of awareness around issues around race and culture within the permaculture and Transition movements? Is it improving? Is it worsening? What’s your sense?

I should say I have done a lot of work around bridge-building and creating relevancy and engaging diverse communities around sustainability. This is an area that I’m very passionate about and I’ve been working for the last 20 years around it. Firstly I think that Transition and permaculture, there are so many facets to them. In my mind, there’s no one permaculture movement. Permaculture is a discipline that shows up in many different ways. There are patterns that you see in California, how it show up in the Mid-West, in the South. The principles are based on the place where it’s rooted.

If you went to a Permaculture Design Certification in Northern California and you went to one in Malawi, the participants will look very different. Just as if you went to a Permaculture Design Certification where people had made an effort to actually bring people together and create access, like what we’re trying to do. In Oakland it’s going to look different to the Permaculture Design Certification just over the bridge in San Francisco. What I see now is that permaculture, Transition is a microcosm of a macrocosm.

We are still experiencing the legacy of racial injustice in a system that was designed to create racial disparity and foster racial disparity. So these movements reflect that, unless you’re actually using the principles to transform that. A lot of people talk about “diversity as a principle in nature”, and “more resilient systems are diverse”. OK, but we actually destroyed a lot of diverse systems, started monocropping and designing water systems that are not appreciative of how water actually needs to flow. It’s the same with people systems.

We put people in silos and now have communities where certain races and cultures live, people identified as poor or rich. If we’re not designing opportunities to bring people together, heal and transform relationships then oftentimes it doesn’t happen. I feel like that occurs a lot.

How are we dealing with racial inequity in our society, the fact that race doesn’t actually exist, but yet these systems exist that reinforce disparities? If that’s not included at the forefront, you can’t take a Permaculture Design Certification and not talk about the people piece, or social dynamics and expect people to leave and apply the principles anywhere else but land-based projects. You guys in Totnes learned that, where you learned that Transition is more about the relationships of people and how you’re using and understanding resources.

It’s still very fragmented but people want to know what to do. We started the Black Permaculture Network and in the last 2 months we’ve given out 12 scholarships working in partnership with local organisations and trainings to get more people of colour trained and at workshops. I’m just writing letters to people saying “hi, would you sponsor 3 diversity scholarships?” People pay a range, and folks are like “yes, that’s a great idea”. There is a lot of work to do, but it’s also relationship building and acknowledging the past and moving forward, and designing better ways of interacting across different cultures and different groups.

I mentioned at the beginning that our theme this month is around ‘less is more’. The impression one gets from the media is that within certain aspects of black American culture is that aspiration through music and culture is often a very material motivation. Particularly one would imagine guys coming out of prison would be wanting to take that path. How do you bring those permaculture principles around Fair Shares, around living with less, around simplicity and looking at abundance in different ways and introduce those ideas and make them resonate with guys who might be in prison because they were motivated by acquisition and wealth and those kinds of things?

First thing thing I want to say is that’s no means just a part of the black American experience. It’s part of the global design here, to accumulate more stuff. So again, black America is a microcosm of patterns that exist in larger society – partially.  I talk a lot to students in the South in historically black colleges and universities about our African-American legacies of conservation.

There is a huge history of conserving, making do, saving, sharing. There’s a huge legacy of the sharing economy in our communities. They still exist in the desires of all ages. It’s not just the old people. People who care about our communities and understand what it’s going to take to really distribute resources once they understand what to do, they’re like “yeah, how do we figure out how to do that?”  I just wanted to point that out, that we are dealing with a system that everyone’s dealing with.

I’ve never been incarcerated, so it’s just want I’ve seen and heard, but when you are you are confined to small quarters. You do not have a lot of stuff. If anything, they’re probably living with the least, by force. You get very creative and you also become very observant. From what I’ve seen, you’re really understanding how to stretch the resources you have. The food they buy is sometimes not very healthy for them, so they have to be shown how to get enough fruit or just enough healthy things in their bodies.

So when I went inside, when I was working in San Quentin, a lot of the men I was working with were in all these classes and workshops in trying to improve their life. Also, in order to have volunteers come in, you have to be at a certain level, and you have to have proven that you’re not in solitary confinement. I was working with people who were on their P’s and Q’s, but they knew what they did was wrong and they were all trying to improve their life.

So the ‘less is more’ argument, they got it! They were all saying “I want a thriving life, but when I get out I don’t necessarily want the lifestyle I had before”. You pointed out that some of them might have done things and had a lot more resources that when they got out and had this new environmental lens they were like “yeah, I want good things that are quality and support the health of the planet and the health of our community”.

So the same way that you would think about this, or I would think about this, being incarcerated doesn’t make you not think about these things. You have to go through making it relevant. The men and women that are now out in our programme, once they’re understanding what’s going on, that’s why they’re like “wow, so you can use corn to make cups?” Or you can not use plastic cups. Or you can trace the fibre journey of your clothing, fibres that are made in these more sustainable ways. They still want nice things and nice clothes, but like we all do in this movement, rooted in a more sustainable process.

So it hasn’t been difficult at all when we talk about it in relevant ways and also when we build on their experiences of being incarcerated, and on their experiences of their cultures. Most of these people are anything from Filipino to Native to African-American. We talk about “remember that Grandmother you had”, or your legacy. And they understand, this is where we come from and how do we reclaim that.

There’s always the question of “is Transition political?”. How political is Transition, is it political enough? Is it more successful because it’s not explicitly political? In the current situation with the Michael Brown shooting and Eric Garner and the different things that are going on, permaculture, Transition in the context of all the protests and all the demonstrations that are happening all over the US, do you see that as something parallel? Does it have a role in that? For you, how do those things come together?

For me, the most sustainable thing a person can go is continue to live! To stay alive and thrive and create and support systems that help affirm their own life. The practices that resulted in Michael and Eric’s deaths were not life-affirming. So that is about permaculture design and Transition. We are the environment. Black men, and not just black men, anyone.

People are also the environment, we are our own ecological system integrated into the larger systems. It’s a no-brainer for me that we had to discuss this also again because it’s been designed as such. We live in a society that policing and the idea of valuing property or other things over a certain life, it’s been designed that way. There are many people who aren’t surprised. They’re saddened, highly saddened and disgusted, but when you look historically at how the system of policing has been designed and who it has benefited, and how black people are seen, dark skin, black men are seen globally and feared. All of these things.

For me it’s how are we designing. If anything, it’s so relevant for Transition because of this idea that we need to transition to communities where people can walk down the street, stand on the street without a question. The police will actually look to them, look to an Eric Garner and say “I know you are a part of this community, what have you observed?” Permaculture’s all about flow of energy, what if those police officers said to Eric Garner “oh hi, you’ve been standing out here watching” – instead of seeing and immediately fearing that he did something – “What are you observing? You’re helping us do our job, who are you?”

If we can design our communities in ways that take into account the injustice that happens, that lives are being taken early, that has to be part of Transition, that has to be part of permaculture design.  There’s enough people to be thinking of all these different parts. I speak a lot to permaculture designers and they’re like “we don’t know anything about racism or police brutality”. But that doesn’t mean you need to be ignorant about it, or that it doesn’t exist! Once you start understanding that it is a part and has been designed in the society that you live in, and that you benefit and you have privileges, just like I do, as a black woman I have some privileges.

Moving forward the conversation, you won’t be surprised that I am frustrated because you can’t even have the conversation and you just want to talk about the diversity of your crops. I’ve had people say to me “let’s talk about the diversity of plants. I don’t see colour or race”. And I’m like “but you have to! You see diversity in plants! What’s the problem with saying you also see diversity in race, diversity in people, and the beneficial opportunities that exist when you bring them together?” I said race doesn’t exist, but cultural diversity does exist.

Here is the podcast of our interview:  

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