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April 2019: Healthy Community, Healthy Land: rediscovering the art of community self-governance
Between 20th and 30th April 2019 a delegation from the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (covering the western half of New Guinea) visited Scotland to learn from people in the Hebrides about what it takes to rekindle and govern community, and to share their own experience with these things. Most of the delegation’s time was spent meeting with Community Land and Development Trusts on the Hebridean island that is known as Harris in the south and Lewis in the north.
The core of the delegation were village leaders from a range of island settlements involved in community-based ecotourism and who are members of the Raja Ampat Homestay Association (PERJAMPAT). The Association represents around a hundred indigenous, family-run, ecotourism businesses dedicated to sustaining their island home and way of life.
A report on this event was presented in the Anual General Meeting in October 2019.
May 2019: 21st Century Internment Camps: Identity and Security in Xinjiang
This talk analyses the social and political dynamics behind China’s ethnic minority policy shift towards “fusion” that has culminated in both mass extra-judicial internment camps and the “One-Belt-One-Road” foreign policy initiative. The talk draws from ethnographic fieldwork during the riots of 2009 and the latest official documents from the 19th Party Congress and Xinjiang Working Group meetings. It argues that the party-state exacerbates cycles of insecurity in the region by targeting Uyghur identity as a threat to China’s existence and provoking Uyghur resistance to official policy.
About Dr David Tobin: Hallsworth Research Fellow in the Political Economy of China at the University of Manchester. He is currently researching how postcolonial relations between China and the West shape foreign policymaking and ethnic politics in contemporary China. His forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, Securing China’s Northwestern Frontier: Identity and Insecurity in Xinjiang, analyses the relationship between identity and security in Chinese policy-making and ethnic relations between Han and Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
June 2019: Introduction to Sociocracy; exploring the basic concepts
Sociocracy is a model for both decision-making and governance that allows any organisation to behave as a living organism; self-organising and self-correcting. The term literally means governance-by peers, however it is sometimes referred to as Dynamic Governance.
This workshop was led by Kim Scott and aimed at how we empower and connect teams and improve continuously over time. Participants were given practical tools and embodied knowledge of Sociocracy.
September 2019: Why Scotland Needs Beavers, by Richard Horobin
Scotland has a variety of environmental problems, including flooding, soil erosion, water quality and biodiversity loss. What these problems have in common is that they could be ameliorated by a relatively simple intervention: maintaining and encouraging wetlands. We might try to do this for ourselves, but much better would be to encourage beavers to do the job. They’re good at it, they’re highly motivated and very persistent, and they’re cheap with it. But beavers and beaver wetlands would not be a free lunch: there would be costs and conflicts, albeit these could usually be mitigated.
Dr Richard Horobin is a biologist, consultant and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow.
November 2019: Like Leaves We Fall, sharing ideas about migration, borders and ecology through wee talks
How do we create a hospitable environment within a hostile environment? With the uncertainties of Brexit, we are falling into a new era of instability. To soften a hard landing, we work together to move into a phase of renewal, turning leaves into mulch to stimulate new growth. We celebrate migration, and embrace a world on the move as our ecosystems continue to unravel. How can we actively nurture and strengthen old and new networks of solidarity and mutual support?
December 2019: Invading the Skin of the Earth
A series of discussions around archival films related to the subject of extractivism and our relation to the surface of the earth, in two parts:
1.Soil
An evening using archival films looking back at crofting and farming in Scotland to frame a discussion about the future of farming, extractivism and agroecology.
With Geoff Squire (James Hutton Institute) and Zarina Ahmad, environmentalist / climate change trainer and communicator at CEMVO Scotland).
2.Coal
An evening using archival films looking back at coal mining in Scotland and the UK to frame a discussion about the impact of coal industries and extractivism on communities & the environment today. Drinks and snacks provided.
With Mike Small (Bella Caledonia, Enough!), Dr Maria Antonia Velez Serna (Communications, Media and Culture, University of Stirling) and Chris Silver, a writer and researcher who will tell us about his month-long journey visiting coal mining communities and spaces of resistance across Europe.
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May 2018: The Work That Reconnects – Finding Hope When Dreams Have Shattered
Central to the Work that Reconnects is the Great Turning from an industrial growth society towards a life-sustaining culture. Participants explored this through a range of practical exercises. Acknowledging and addressing some of our fears and concerns around current challenges and the collective mess we’re in, the workshop aim at tackling overwhelm and helping find new energy.
The workshop was facilitated by Larry Butler, Luke Devlin and Svenja Meyerricks. Larry Butler is a poet and Tai chi teacher who co-founded the Poetry Healing Project out of which he founded and developed Survivors’ Poetry Scotland and Lapidus. Luke Devlin and Svenja Meyerricks are human ecologists and activists who have trained with Joanna Macy.
March to August 2018: Practicing Freedom, a reading group
For the 50th anniversary of the publication of Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, we explored, celebrated & unraveled its relevance for all kinds of practice. The CHE teamed up with CAMINA to set up a reading group of the influential book in four sessions.
June 2018: In dialogue: exploring critical pedagogy with Antonia Darder
CHE, The Radical Learning Network, Variant, Plan C and CAMINA organised an evening of dialogue with Antonia Darder and fellow critical educators. The evening will give you the chance to explore the relevance of Pedagogy of the Oppressed today and how we can draw greater value from this important text. This event will offer a space to engage our hearts and minds around the opportunities and challenges for critical pedagogy today as well as hearing about Antonia Darder’s new Student Guide to Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
September 2018: Acting as We Mean It – Participation, Connection and Solidarity
Brexit has exposed huge faultlines in politics, accountability, public life and social attitudes. Following on from our Unbrexable event on caring and connections in European Scotland, Luke Devlin from the CHE will discuss where we are at, one year on. What has changed in the wider political landscape? Where lie the opportunities and challenges for grassroots movements? We invite participants to contribute to the discussion, a chance to reflect on current work, to identify gaps and to forge new connections.
At this open forum, participatory researchers Kye Askins and Sara Kindon shared insights about their work in relation to emotional citizenry and solidarity.
Sara Kindon is Associate Professor at the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand/Aotearoa.
Kye Askins is a Reader at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow.
October 2018: Radical Co-operative Education: co-producing it in Glasgow
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Between 2014 and 2015 the CHE organised a series of library conversations:
January 2014: Audio Chatcast: Alternative currencies – can we create our own money to build local economies that sustain us?
Leading the discussion, and sharing his knowledge is CHE’s Walton Pantland, who works for Unite, the biggest union in the UK. Walton is joined around the table by CHE colleagues and members of the public who also contribute.
Walton is South African, and before coming to Scotland worked with trade unions and community groups in South Africa. He wrote HIV-Aids manuals for COSATU and the ITF, and worked on projects for Workers’ World Media Productions and Ditsela.
February 2014: Burning the planet at both ends: how can we cool it? The struggle for the global commons- with Justin Kenrick
What connects the torching of indigenous communities in Kenya and Osborne’s ‘Sermon on the Pound’?
The Kenyan government is currently torching thousands of homes of indigenous Sengwer communities in the name of conservation. The global clearances continue despite the fact that the poor in Kenya do have lawyers – for the courts are simply ignored. Can aligning communities struggles, national concern and international campaigns counteract local, national and international elites attempts to capture resources from those who have maintained their resources for centuries? Can the independence debate enable us to focus on, rather than distract us from, responding to the state of the world? How?
Justin Kenrick received a BA in Social Anthropology at Cambridge and his PhD in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh. He was a lecturer in social anthropology at Glasgow from 2001 to 2009. He left to work with the Forest Peoples Programme to support Central African Forest Peoples’ rights, and to work on parallel processes of community resilience in Scotland (www.pedal-porty.org.uk and www.holyrood350.org).
February 2014: Beyond Post-Politics and ‘Soft’ Urban Fixes: Developing A Politics of Space- with Neil Gray
Neil Gray is currently developing the idea of ‘territorial inquiry’ as a means of militant co-research adapted for urban life. He is contributing editor for Variant, has written regularly for Mute, and is part of The Strickland Distribution, ‘an artist-run group supporting the development of independent research in art-related and non-institutional practices’.
February 2014: A Thousand Huts: the campaign for huts and hutting
Do you dream of a hut in the woods? Changes are afoot that could bring that dream a few steps closer. Karen Grant, from Reforesting Scotland’s campaign for A Thousand Huts, introduced the world of hutting, discuss the recent campaign developments, explore the current barriers to hutting and celebrate the many causes of hope for a new hutting movement in Scotland.
The aim of Reforesting Scotland’s Thousand Huts Campaign is to promote huts and hutting – the building and enjoyment of simple structures (usually wooden) for living, working and recreation in the countryside. The campaign wants to achieve this by securing a change of culture and attitude and reform of the law so that those who wish to build huts and pursue hutting can do so freely and within the law.
March 2014: Community Energy and Cohousing: Doing It Ourselves- Library chat with Kevin Frea
Sixty members of Lancaster Cohousing have built an energy self sufficient and efficient community on the banks of the River Lune near Lancaster.
The 41 homes, built to Sustainable Building Code 6 and Passivhaus standard, have a district heating system, powered by woodchip from a nearby sawmill, and generate electricity from solar PV and (later this year) from a 200 kWe community hydro scheme on the nearby weir.
Lancaster Cohousing intends to “build a community on ecological values and to be at the cutting edge of sustainable design and living…Our concerns span climate change, biodiversity, food, chemicals, transport, waste, resources and global development issues.”
Community energy schemes have the potential to increase democratic control of energy resources, reduce carbon emissions, alleviate fuel poverty, generate income for community projects, and provide an ethical investment opportunity. They have enthusiastic support across the political spectrum, from (moderate) Conservatives to the Green Party and hold the possibility to engage people who would not otherwise be interested in alternatives to fossil fuels.
April 2014: Gerry Hassan on Caledonian Dreaming: The Quest for a Different Scotland
Caledonian Dreaming examines the state of contemporary Scotland, the context of the independence referendum, what it means and its wider consequences. It challenges some of the central assumptions of public life and politics and identifies six myths that define modern Scotland – from the notion that it is a land of egalitarianism to the idea of educational opportunity and that power is regularly held to account.
Hassan analyses the strange condition of the United Kingdom – a place of increasing inequality, right-wing politics and limited democracy – and one with a growing obsession with celebrating and manufacturing the past. He forensically examines the shortcomings of Scottish society – from the ‘missing Scotland’ of voters disconnected from public life to the collusion of Labour and SNP on most issues bar independence.
May 2014: A Political Theology of Climate Change: Michael Northcott 14th May 2014
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the only international treaty relating to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but it is not working. This is because national greenhouse gas emissions is the wrong target. Emissions are not the driving force of climate change but fossil fuel extraction. Once fossil fuels are extracted from sovereign territories they will be marketed and burned. But sovereign nations will not give up rights to license fossil fuel extraction because for the last one hundred years they were the dominant source of national wealth. Hence the current UK government’s determination to extract shale gas, and methane from coal beds, despite dangers to the environment.
In this lecture Michael Northcott argues that exemplary action by individuals, communities and nations – or what the Christian tradition calls political messianism – is capable of resolving the problem. Hence the efforts of climate activists and religious groups to make the social case for disinvesting in fossil fuel extraction. In a global market economy this is the only collective action solution to reducing the risk of dangerous climate change. National emissions targets, and carbon emissions trading, will not.
May 2015: CHE hosts climate change study visit to Scotland by planners from Papua Province, Indonesia
Scotland’s community-based land trusts are leading the world in practices that try to tackle climate change from the bottom up. The government planning agency of the Indonesian province of Papua APPEDA, established this contact with them as a way to inspire their efforts in empowerment and deepening the connection between people and the land.
The CHE provided an institutional context and base in Govan, and to serve as the official body through which visas can be processed, finance audited, etc., all of which is supported by a 15% institutional “tithe” on agreed budget lines. As such, the work in Papua strengthens the whole organisation and not just the individuals directly concerned.
September 2015: Ecocultures: Festival of Environmental Research, Policy and Practice 17th Oct
This dynamic one-day festival provided a space to explore existent or potential dialogues between environmental researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. Through a programme of seminars, readings and papers from leading academics, artists, activist and politicians, the current state of the Scottish environment and its place in contemporary art and research were explored.
December 2015: CHE hosts Papuan government delegation to Scotland
A further delegation of a dozen Members of Parliament and senior civil servants from Papua Province, Indonesia, including three party political leaders, was hosted by the Centre for Human Ecology during the first week of December. What distinguished this visit was the presence of elected politicans from a cross-section of parties in Papua. The focus of the visit was climate change, and how this impacts upon land use, community empowerment, and the wider context of sustainable development.
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July 2016: [Roundtable] The Human Ecology of Drug Use
A Rountable facilitated by Mike McCarron where discuss drug policy in Scotland was discussed, together with the wider social, personal, and cultural aspects of drug use. This event was organised in collaboration with Scottish Drug Policy Conversations (SPDC)
January 2017: General Meeting and Open Forum
A participatory forum was organised around CHE’s role in community-based critical education. Achievements, opportunities and future plans were examined, along with challenges and current and potential fundraising efforts. This was followed by a visioning exercise from the CHE’s 45th anniversary in 2017, to our 50th anniversary in 2022. CHE fellow Alastair McIntosh commented on his work on behalf of CHE on the spirituality of understanding development.
February 2017: Communities on the Edge of Extraction; Palm Oil, Corporate Power and Indigenous Resistance
A rountable was facilitated by Tom Younger around the case of Palm Oil extraction in Perú. Palm oil is increasingly found in a range of everyday items: foods, cosmetics, cleaning products and fuels. The expansion of large-scale oil palm plantations is responsible for dispossessing indigenous communities of their ancestral territories and has become a principal driver of deforestation.
February 2017: Lessons from America: militarism, trauma and resistance in post-9/11 USA, with Poppy Kohner
Poppy Kohner facilitated a discussion informed by the findings from her research, touching on the following areas:
– the culture of US militarism, military power and social control
– veteran identities and ‘the military imaginary’
– military culture as belonging forged through fear
– the concept of trauma and its roots in militarisation
– the intersection of militarism, trauma and resistance
– political organising as a tool of healing from trauma and militarism”
June and September 2017: Unbrexable: Connections and Caring in European Scotland
UNBREXABLE was the CHEs active response to Brexit: a series of interventions in June revolving around supporting and strengthening the kinds of emotional connections and caring- and grassroots European solidarity and movements- which are too often left out of political debates.
We had a delicious brunch buffet at The Project Cafe, a discussion and sharing about how we can co-create the kind of society we wish to be part of, in the wake of Brexit. Themes we bring to the table include food security, DIY solidarity and strengthening our connections with European social movements.
The event included also an interactive conference and gathering in Govan on 2nd September, 10am – 4pm around active citizenship, exploring initiatives and inquiring into how we need to collectively move forward to co-create social, ecological and economic solutions for the kind of society we want to live in.
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