at the heart of earth, art and spirit

Writing Guidelines RESURGENCE WRITERS’ BRIEF

project, got the law changed, written a pioneering book, The new Resurgence Writers’ Brief is Here are five very general guide- THE ‘BIG FEATURE’ banged the drum long before anybody else…etc etc. Usually based on a face-to-face interview, in essence, this needs to be designed to help you – the freelance lines that we adhere to when We are always open to ideas for the Big Feature, which is an article that challenges the status quo. writer – understand better the commissioning and considering actually a collection of features around the same topic/theme. For example, Consciousness (Sept/Oct 2009); Resilience Nature Writing internal workings of the magazine unsolicited articles. (Nov/Dec 2009); and Liberty (Jan/Feb 2010). The topic This series started in 2008 with an invitation to published so that you can more confidently itself has to have depth and will be given an international nature-writers to introduce the nature-writer(s) that focus in the magazine i.e. developed and developing inspire(d) them to Resurgence readers. This brief is on-going, pitch the right kind of ideas for the 1. Non-academic & jargon-free: no countries. That said, the topics are generally selected in-house, but we have broadened it to include non-published writers right sections. references or footnotes please! several months before publication. For more information on and their proposals. The emphasis of this slot remains on Under each section, we’ve upcoming topics for 2010, please contact editorial on 01237 the language writers use to engage their readers and involve 2. We have a bio-centric perspective; 441293. them in nature. You must be passionate about nature and included examples of recent articles knowledgeable about this genre. This is not the ‘I went for Resurgence represents nature with See examples of Resurgence features a nice walk in the woods’ or a poetry slot! This is usually a we have published in the magazine double-page spread and 1,200 words. to illustrate the brief for that section. a capital ‘N.’ One key thing to remember is Sense of Place 3. We only use non-violent and BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY This is a very broad brief; a sense of place can be literal (in that we are bi-monthly and in the time and space) or more inward-looking and esoteric. It respectful language in our articles. In a bid to enhance the authenticity of this section, we are needs to be an evocative and intimate piece of writing that readers’ hands for two-and-a-half really keen to include more Bio-Cultural Diversity features takes the reader on that same journey which makes it one of months, which means we have to be 4. We encourage a healthy and written by writers indigenous to that part of the world that our more personal writing sections. It can link to a project/ is under discussion in the article. We also run bio-cultural course or other kind of trip that has a profound impact on careful about topicality. positive perspective. diversity pieces written by authoritative experts, investigating the writer. Again, although the piece will make the reader It is also worth noting we are an bio-cultural & diversity issues and shining a light into those want to ‘go there’ too, this is not a travel piece. This is also a 2 international publication; distributed 5. We are non–campaigning and corners that may otherwise remain in the shadows. The key double-page spread and 1,200 words. 3 unbiased. thing to remember is that these are not standard travel pieces in the USA, Australia, Japan, South giving a visiting Westerners ‘impressions” of a locality and its Slow Travel challenges. The usual word count for bio-cultural diversity If you cycled, walked, ran, swam, trained, rode a horse or Africa and the UK. articles is 2,000 words. a camel, sailed, rafted, hitch-hiked, canoed, skated, skied, glided or skipped somewhere then you qualify for the Slow See examples of Biocultural Diversity articles Travel section. In other words, you did anything but fly! Slow Travel articles are all about the journey, more than the destination, which is good old-fashioned travel writing! an Undercurrents feature is 1,200. FRONTLINE Usually, a double-page spread and 1,200 words. : See examples of Undercurrents articles REGULARS This section is a selection of grass-roots around-the-world See examples of articles from our Regulars section news, normally compiled by contributing editor, Lorna We tend to run between six and seven of our Regulars, Howarth, or in-house. If you know of projects deserving of which can be one- or two- page articles. Obviously, a number this kind of publicity, please contact [email protected]. KEYNOTES of our Regulars are written by commissioned Resurgence columnists, but we do welcome proposals for those outlined ARTS & CRAFTS See examples of Frontline articles below. Following on from Undercurrents, our Keynotes feature If you specialize in this area, then do let us know of any is usually a four-page article written either by or about The word count for a one-page article is 600-800 words. upcoming exhibitions/artists/craftsmen and women whose an established opinion-maker. These articles can be work has an environmental or ecological foundation. environmental, spiritual, esoteric, political or a mix of all Pioneers/Visionaries/Political UNDERCURRENTS these. The important thing is that the reader gets the sense of As the name suggests, these are profile (or comment) pieces See examples of articles from our Arts and Crafts section a ‘strong’ voice speaking with clarity and credibility. The usual Following on from Frontline, Under-currents are the longer written either by or about high profile people who actively word count for Keynotes features is 2,500. and more in-depth features on the projects that have emerged make a difference and have something to say about the way from the grass roots. Think of these are the new and emerging we live (environment/policies/esoteric matters) and how Click the underlined links or colour coded quick links See examples of Keynotes articles ideas; environmental and spiritual. The usual word count for to improve society. They may have set-up a ground-breaking below to jump straight to the examples.

Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide FRONTLINE

to be part of a global coalition that a model of how to quickly implement UK NEWS FROM THE GRASSROOTS stimulates innovation and creativity to policies to avoid deforestation. Earlier written and edited by Lorna Howarth enable us to leapfrog over the high-carbon last year, the prime minister of Norway, development path that today’s business-as- Jens Stoltenberg, and President Jagdeo CARE FARMING usual trajectory suggests we must follow.” announced a partnership to support “the A new paradigm for social To this end, Guyana would be seeking creation of low-carbon employment” and UK Climate Camp activists have staged a third runway. Climate Camp protesters international agreements and partnerships, the financial mechanisms to support this. health care with positive high-profile events to raise awareness of were delighted when The Times announced: at the Copenhagen Climate Summit Their low-carbon development the unsustainable growth of coal-fired “The airport operator BAA has bowed to benefits for the entire and beyond, that will make it more trajectory includes hydro-electric ACTIONS THAT power stations worldwide, focusing opposition to a third runway at Heathrow economically viable to leave rainforests generation that doesn’t “entail community. on Kingsnorth in particular, which airport. It will not submit a planning standing than to cut them down. significant forest disturbance”; growth COUNT would have been the first coal-fired application before the general election and Guyana’s rainforest is bigger than England, in ‘ecotourism’ by partnering with small, power station to be built in the UK for will not sign large contracts to ‘bounce’ Climate change activists and provides amongst countless other local companies that place a high value he Japanese visionary and more than thirty years. Despite E.ON a future Conservative government into ‘ecosystem services’ an enormous sink for on the protection and enhancement environmentalist Masanobu Fukuoka celebrate two major claiming that they would be using ‘clean’ accepting it.” T greenhouse gases. Yet global carbon markets of Guyana’s natural assets; producing once stated that “the ultimate goal of technology, if built, Kingsnorth ‘victories’. place no value on the contribution forests biofuels from bamboo and sugar cane farming is not the growing of crops, but would emit between 6 and make to the world’s economy. Instead, it without impacting on food security; and the cultivation and perfection of human 8 million tonnes of CO every This is an amazing victory which 2 is entirely legal and economically rational sustainable forestry products. beings”. This sentiment is at the heart of f you think that your small actions year. If all the new coal plants shows“ how ordinary people can take for Guyana to cut down its rainforests, Admittedly, some of their development ‘care farms’ which aim to combine care cannot make any difference in the proposed for Britain are built, I brimming as they are with biodiversity procedures seem less ‘low-carbon’ and meaningful work in the supportive world then perhaps it is time to recall an extra 50 million tonnes of back power. – including the endangered jaguar – for in spirit, like the road transport link natural environment of farms, woodlands the words of Margaret Mead, who once carbon dioxide a year will be timber extraction, post-harvest agriculture to Brazil, but the strategy also infers and market gardens for some of society’s said, “Never doubt that a small group pumped into the atmosphere ” and mineral extraction. The value of this that this will facilitate local (or at least most vulnerable people. Care farming of thoughtful, committed, citizens – almost a tenth of the UK’s forest is estimated to be the equivalent of an intercontinental) trade, rather than provides a healthy daily structure for can change the world. Indeed, it is the current total emissions. These proposals Climate Camp campaigners were annual annuity payment of US$580 million. global trade, and this is a step in the right the participant ‘farm helpers’, building only thing that ever has.” And a group make a mockery of the UK’s stated aim delighted. Activist Dennis Stevens said: However, as Guyana’s president direction. Likewise the biodiversity and confidence and supporting people to of people going under the banner of of reducing carbon emissions by 80% by “This is an amazing victory which shows has acknowledged, generating this pharmaceutical/medical research and develop their social and practical skills. Climate Camp can claim responsibility 2050. how ordinary people can take back power kind of income, while economically agri-business policies give some cause for Three fundamental ingredients for such change, as news broke that the Similarly, Climate Camp have held from corporations and government.” ‘logical’ for the country, would have concern – but the policies in general seem make care farming so successful: the huge electricity generator E.ON had demonstrations against the building of Activist Emma Jackson said: “E.ON and significant negative consequences for the progressive and enlightened, putting connection with Nature, the connection announced plans to shelve the proposed a third runway at Heathrow – creating BAA know that the days of committing world, reducing the critical ecological low-carbon development at the heart of with other people and the connection building of the Kingsnorth coal-fired a high-profile argument against the climate crimes are over.” 4 services that Guyana’s forests provide. decision-making. with meaningful work and a healthy 5 power station and, in the same week, irrational logic of a government that Conservative estimates of the economic Guyana’s low-carbon development daily structure. People experiencing that BAA had withdrawn plans for a ostensibly supports reducing carbon www.climatecamp.org.uk value provided by Guyana’s forests to the strategy sets a precedent for other mental health issues or depression find third runway at Heathrow. emissions whilst also backing plans for www.leaveitintheground.org.uk world suggest that, left standing, they developing nations, because it has vision: themselves with negative thought spirals contribute US$40 billion annually to the it values its young people and natural that engender low confidence and low self- global economy. President Jagdeo is aware assets wisely and is not seduced (or so esteem. Stepping out of their front door that our economic systems are utterly it seems) by consumerism or economic into the wider world is often challenging, irrational and he doesn’t want to commit growth at all costs. The government is but knowing that they are going to spend GUYANA a day working in the natural environment with people who understand their difficulties can significantly support their LOW-CARBON COUNTRIES We want to leapfrog over the high-carbon development healing process. Farm helpers do not path“ that today’s business-as-usual trajectory suggests we feel they are ‘in therapy’ but rather they Guyana’s call to action for are simply making friends and doing climate resilience and low-carbon must follow. something useful for society in the form of providing healthy, nutritious food. development. ” Another group of farm helpers his country – or indeed the world – to a actively working with its people to adapt successfully using care farms are young path that leads to devastation. to climate change through measures people excluded from school. Around Currently, there are no trading such as replanting mangrove forests and 10,000 students are excluded from s this Frontline column went to press, the run-up markets in existence for environmental building dykes and canals, seeing that as school in England and Wales every year, Ato the climate change conference in Copenhagen services, but to redress this short- true security for the future. I admit to yet many young people whom teachers was gathering pace. There was much talk of technical sightedness, Guyana is working with knowing little about Guyana’s history, but felt were “unteachable” in the classroom and policy-driven solutions, but as time ticked by, one the visionary Norwegian government if its draft policy documents are anything become engaged and redirected through ‘rainforest nation’ – Guyana – had already produced a to develop market-based incentives that to go by, there are bright rays of hope spending time on a care farm, finding ‘Low-Carbon Development Strategy’ and was already are proportional to the climate change for its future and for all the Southern that they can release their immense inner actively working towards protecting its rainforests, mitigation value provided by forests. hemisphere. energy and creativity through their hands people and economy. These two governments have agreed to in practical ways. Guyana’s president, Bharrat Jagdeo, says,“We want work together to provide the world with www.lcds.gov.gy It is interesting to see how the PHOTO: FLIP DE NOOYER/FOTO NATURA/MINDEN PICTURES/NGS NATURA/MINDEN FLIP DE NOOYER/FOTO PHOTO: Hoatzin balancing on branch, Guyana

6 Resurgence No. 258 January/February 2010 Resurgence No. 258 January/February 2010 7 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide FRONTLINE

NEWS FROM THE GRASSROOTS

ECUADOR KEEPING OIL IN THE GROUND CANADA Peter Bunyard explains VANCouVer – the how the Yasuni Initiative sets a precedent for rain- GreeNest City iN forest nations to protect the WorlD? their natural capital. Allan Badiner extols the n absolute contrast to the recent terrible virtues of a city that is Ievents resulting from the Peruvian government’s determination to develop embracing the seismic shift its petroleum reserves in the heart of the Amazon – when as many as 100 towards a green economy. Life long Vancouverite Blain Spencer takes his bicycle out for a spin Indigenous people and their supporters PHOTOGRAPH: REUTERS/MIkE BLAkE may have been killed in clashes with police and army – its neighbouring country Ecuador has offered to keep oil in the ground for perpetuity and so 6 protect its rainforests, biodiversity and irthplace of Greenpeace, and a leader and politicians denounced the plan – focused, particularly in light of 7 Indigenous peoples. Bin hydroelectrics, Vancouver draws predicting it would pave the way for his the intensifying climate crisis. The Ecuador’s proposal for ‘avoided oil 90% of its power from renewable sources defeat in the next election – the new realisation that our lifestyles are not extraction’ is focused on the Yasuni and is now preparing to use wind, solar, lanes did not disrupt traffic, and the just injurious to the Earth, but literally National Park, which covers some wave and tidal energy to significantly public responded enthusiastically. suicidal, grows apace. In Vancouver, all PHOTOGRAPH: REUTERS/GUIllERMO GRANjA GG/KS REUTERS/GUIllERMO GRANjA PHOTOGRAPH: 928,000 hectares and has extraordinary A young boy swims under an oil pipeline in Ecuador reduce its fossil-fuel use. For one- and two-family dwellings, development issues, all policies and all biodiversity, with one hectare of rainforest Vancouver’s dynamic young mayor, Vancouver already has the greenest actions may soon be viewed through harbouring an average 655 distinct Gregor Robertson, wants Vancouver to be building code in North America. New the lens of this looming crisis. species of tree and bush – a number the North American hub for green jobs homeowners now stand to save up to Long arguing for the inevitable greater than the total number of native metric tons of carbon dioxide. emissions from the consumption of the and sustainable industry, and to “capitalise 30% on their energy bills, use less water decentralisation of political power, tree species in the entire United States In return for leaving the oil untouched, oil. The capital fund would allow Ecuador on what is now globally a seismic shift and have healthier places to live. professor Warren Magnusson from and Canada. Meanwhile, the Ecuadorian Ecuador has proposed the establishment to fulfil its aims to a) protect National toward a green economy”. Robertson Host to the Olympic Winter Games British Columbia has promoted the idea government will continue to respect the of a capital fund administered by an Parks and native forests over 38% of envisions the city attracting new green in 2010, the city has constructed a of ‘radical municipalism’: that global desire of Indigenous peoples to live in international trust fund, with guarantees the national territory; b) carry out businesses that will “thrive as they roll out nine-block ‘green’ Olympic Village, cities will open the political space for isolation in the park. in the form ofYasuni Guarantee Certificates reforestation and forestation of 1 million their goods and services to other cities that where 10,000 athletes will stay, which new forms of social and political life. Some 20% of Ecuador’s known that the oil will remain underground hectares; c) substitute renewable energies are still playing catch-up”. will become environmentally friendly Radical municipalism may well be one recoverable petroleum reserves are to forever. Ecuador is looking for the fund to for fossil-fuel-based thermo-electric Those “other cities” in North America apartments after the games. Half of of the strategies that gives Vancouver – be found in the Yasuni National Park have a value equivalent to at least half the power generation and d) invest in the racing to be the world’s greenest include the buildings will have green roofs, indeed cities and towns throughout the and therefore the country is prepared earnings the country would receive were social agenda of Indigenous peoples. And, Toronto, San Francisco, Portland, Santa providing insulation and reducing the world – a fighting chance to adapt to and to commit itself to leaving 846 million it to extract the oil. The present net value of course, the proposal would prevent Monica, Austin and Chicago. However, energy needed to heat or cool them. address climate change, when the larger

barrels of heavy oil in the ground. And if, as of the oil, if exploited would amount 407 million metric tons of CO2 from according to The Vancouver Sun, Vancouver is Environmentalist David Suzuki, political entities, provinces, states and is likely, more oil were discovered, that too to some US$7,000 million, which getting into the atmosphere. still well behind Reykjavík, Copenhagen, who warns that climate change could nations are too slow to act decisively. would be subject to the same jurisdiction, coincidentally is not far from the value of The international community via the Stockholm and Amsterdam when it eliminate ice skating, cross-country thereby preventing its exploitation. the carbon offsets as Certified Emission COP15 United Nations Climate Change comes to its shade of green. London, skiing and low-elevation downhill skiing Allan Badiner is a writer and activist and Were the 846 million barrels of oil Reductions (CERs) that would result from Conference in Copenhagen this December Sydney, Barcelona and Bogotá are also in by 2050, has partnered with Vancouver editor of Dharma Gaia; Zig Zag Zen; and to be exploited – a daily production of avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions. must give priority to this kind of ground- the competition. to reduce the size of the 2010 Games’ Mindfulness in the Marketplace. some 107,000 barrels for thirteen years, Ecuador’s daring and unprecedented breaking initiative – for all our sakes. Robertson recently enjoyed a sweet carbon footprint. followed by dwindling production over initiative, if supported by the international victory with the initiation of bicycle The city’s aspiration to become the the next twelve years – that consumption community, would go much further Peter Bunyard is science editor of the Ecologist and lanes on a major city bridge. While most greenest in the world may be what would result in the emission of 407 million than simply preventing greenhouse-gas author of Extreme Weather, Floris Books, 2007. of the local media, business groups makes Vancouver the most future-

6 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 11 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide UNDERCURRENTS

INTERVIEW with FIONA REYNOLDS and they came to walk in the bluebell woods. Dartmoor, which has an old water-powered electricity generator, You don’t need lots of money to enjoy these the original power supply,” says Fiona. “Reviving that as a 21st- things, and people are finding that they are century phenomenon is “The need of quiet, the need of air, the need of exercise more rewarding than shopping. The public In the spring more exciting. Then there’s Gibson want to have access to these pleasures, just people“ came to see the Mill in Yorkshire, which was as our founders predicted. They want to built to be self-sufficient for and … the sight of sky and of things growing seem connect with Nature again and I think there’s snowdrops and the daffodils power in 1701, but it fell definitely a move towards rediscovering out of use a hundred years human needs, common to all.” – Octavia Hill what’s special about our own environ- than usual, and they came ago. We have now fixed it to ment,which has tremendous diversity and to walk in the bluebell run entirely off-grid from beauty and depths of possibility.” a mix of water-generation, There are undoubtedly bigger and more woods. solar power and wood- unpredictable changes afoot than the ”burning fuel. These are just two examples of how we are The economic recession – such as climate change looking at good practice in a historical context and helping – and, for the National Trust, looking after people to see what they could do in their own homes. If you so much of the nation’s land and history, this think that changing to a low-energy light bulb is difficult, POWER is surely a huge responsibility. “The climate you should try it for some of our chandeliers! change debate is an interesting one for us,” “I also think food is completely inspiring,” she continues. Fiona agrees. “I think of us as the nation’s “With the work we are doing on food, we seem to be tapping ‘canary in the coal-mine’ because owning into something with enormous resonance, almost like a cri de of so much land and coastline puts us in a cœur from the population. We have lost touch with something good position to spot trends before others that is so fundamental to our lives – the feeling of authenticity TRUST do. And, yes, there are certainly big changes and good health that comes from eating home-grown food happening such as coastal inundations, in season. We’ve really been encouraging ‘grow-your-own’ storm surges and extreme events which across our properties this summer, with free seeds, gardening mean that some of the landscapes we have demonstrations and experts on hand so that visits to National Rachel Fleming interviews Fiona Reynolds, Director thought of as enduring will not be. But as Trust properties can be times where you can really take part well as raising the alarm and accepting that and learn something. We’ve also had ‘Wild Child’, where General of the National Trust, which, with its 3.7 we can’t turn these things back, we also feel we encourage children to get their hands dirty and connect it is our job to show what can be done to with Nature in a practical way – like days out building dens million members, is in a good position to take a lead in minimise the risks and point us towards a when we were children. At the end of the day, the National 8 sustainable future.” Trust is not an antidote any more. It’s not a place where you 9 the sustainability agenda. The Trust currently owns the best part come to forget. It is more about being part of something – an of forty villages, all of which will be retro- inspiration on how to live.” fitted for energy efficiency in a drive to cut fossil-fuel dependence. There is also a t’s an important time for the National Trust, which finds he National Trust was founded in the National Trust, Dame Fiona Reynolds. huge push towards local food production Iitself at the heart of what we as a nation will leave as 1895 by three philanthropists, “I feel as though I am picking up the and the revival of kitchen gardens, a legacy for future generations. Will there still be green one of whom was Octavia baton that was passed on by Octavia orchards and schemes for community spaces for children to feel grass under their feet as Octavia Hill. Concerned by the impact Hill,” says Fiona. “The values she held are involvement on the land. Hill intended, and will the buildings tell a story of how we Tof uncontrolled development and remarkably similar to those we are talking turned back to a sustainability that was inherent in their industrialisation on the nation’s health and about today. She wanted open-air living construction? What will be the new shape of the land once psyche, they set about forming a trust that rooms for the poor at a time when green Fiona Reynolds PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY THE NATIONAL TRUST we have adapted to the worst of a changing climate, and would protect countryside, coastline and fields were being gobbled up and beauty TRUST IN NUMBERS will our local communities be stronger for it? beautiful buildings for every person, rich wasn’t on the agenda at all. She wanted 612,000: Number of acres held in trust by the National Trust It’s a big job for Fiona at the helm, carrying the baton of or poor. Now, more than a century later, green spaces for children to feel the grass 700: Number of miles of coastline managed by the Trust Octavia Hill through different but very similar times. “So the inventory of land and history available under their feet. This was a time when many people still see us as telling stories about the past,” she to us as a result of their vision totals an the government was more excited about been an opportunity. It has allowed people he organisation is certainly in a good concludes, “but today we are as much about telling stories of impressive 612,000 acres of countryside, empire, wealth generation and progress, to re-evaluate their priorities and look at Tposition to take a lead in the sustainability the future. We are all going through a period of readjustment more than 700 miles of coastline and but the founders of the National Trust didn’t what really makes them happy. For decades agenda, not least because many of the and reprioritisation but I do think that people want to feel upwards of 200 buildings and gardens buy this. They knew that there were other the general assumption has been that estates it manages were originally built to optimistic about the future, they want their children to grow of outstanding interest and importance. values that were important to preserve.” happiness is about having more ‘stuff’, but run as sustainable enterprises. The needs of up in a positive world and they want to do their bit. Whilst we These assets are held in perpetuity, so These values are still alive today, if the the work we are doing here at the National the estates would have been self-generated: live in a constant cacophony of sound, it’s important to listen their future is as secure as possible, and membership of the National Trust is anything Trust is in direct response to an insatiable energy in the form of wood and charcoal, to our own inner voices about the fundamentals of what really the stories they tell, which link the past to go by: current membership figures stand at public demand for the simple pleasures of food from their farms and kitchen gardens, matters. Our membership numbers show that it’s the simple to the present and the future, give us a more than 3.7 million, with visitor numbers life – a walk on the beach, a beautiful view grain for the mills and sheep’s wool for pleasures that really matter to a lot of people.” tremendous reminder of our history and up around 20% on last year’s despite the – things that are priceless but not valued cloth. At locations all over the country, these place. It is these stories, along with a economic downturn. by a busy world. principles are slowly being brought back as www.nationaltrust.org.uk sense of continuation and evolution, that “At one level the recession has been a “In the spring more people came to see an inspiration for how we can live today. inspire the current Director General of crisis,” says Fiona, “but at another it has the snowdrops and the daffodils than usual, “A good example of this is Castle Drogo on Rachel Fleming is Editor of The Source magazine.

44 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 45 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide UNDERCURRENTSUNDERCURRENTS NEW ECONOMICS • ROBIN MURRaY

10 11

A wasted heap of scrapped cars PHOTOGRAPHS: CHRIS JORDAN A pile of old circuit boards

food, for every kilo we eat, ten kilos of But what started as primarily a movement concentrated in landfills where, coupled waste is generated along the food chain. of resistance has turned into a movement with garden and other organic waste, For consumer goods the trail of waste of alternatives. it became a significant contributor to can be much greater. A car that weighs The case is highlighted by organic climate change. Z E R O W A S T E a tonne takes seventy tonnes of material waste. In England, we throw away a third However, as evidence grew about soil to produce. Waste is the leviathan of the degradation and erosion, “Zero waste is the mark of a civilised society.” modern industrial system. Much of what had been discarded the environmental impact Over the past thirty years there has been of artificial fertilisers, – SatiSh Kumar a growing recognition that this system as“ waste is potentially a source of and the potential role of of extensive exploitation of the material value: recyclers in cities now refer to compost-improved soils for world cannot be sustained. It is not just a the prevention of flooding aste is the shadow side From the perspective of policy, waste everything. Mass production has generated question of the profligate use of materials: waste as ‘urban mines’. and for the sequestration of the economy. Stripped has first and foremost been seen as an issue as its counterpart mass waste. it is also the energy it takes to process the of carbon, the pressure of desire, it weighs like a of public health, something that needs to Mass waste is not simply the discards materials, and the ever mounting problem of all the food we buy. In the pre-modern” rose to restore the biological cycle. In the corpse around the necks be removed from society as quickly and of mass consumption. It also comprises of disposal. period much of this would have been UK a community composting movement ofW the living. It is placed in black bags cheaply as possible. What has developed the waste generated at each phase of In many countries the trigger for composted or given to pigs and chickens. grew up. Municipalities encouraged and transported, like the dead, to sites of in response is a system of mass disposal, production, in mines or fields, in factories change has been political – the opposition But urbanism and food regulation broke home composting and introduced ‘green’ exclusion – to landfills and incinerators, where household rubbish is collected and shops, all of which far exceed by local communities to extraction and this cycle and resulted in a double collections. By 2003, 2 million tonnes of the graveyards and crematoria in the and disposed of as a single stream of consumer waste. In England, ‘producers’ logging at one end of the chain, and to loss. Not only did the land lose a major organic waste were being composted at kingdom of objects. mixed waste. Scale and speed have been account for 91% of national waste. With new landfills and incinerators at the other. source of nutrients, but food waste was 325 facilities nationwide.

34 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 Resurgence No.255 July/August 2009 35 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide KEYNOTES TRANSITION • ROB HOPKINS

Resilience: the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks. RESILIENCE THINKING

Why ‘resilience thinking’ is a crucial missing piece of the climate-change jigsaw and why resilience is a more useful concept than sustainability.

n July 2009, UK Secretary of State (pollution, carbon emissions, etc.). internet servers as we check our morning for Energy and Climate Change Ed However, responses to climate change that emails, not to mention the breakfast we Miliband unveiled the government’s do not also address the imminent, or quite eat and the coffee we drink that continue UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, a bold possibly already passed, peak in world oil to be sourced from far and wide, often Iand powerful statement of intent for a production do not adequately address the with a disastrous impact on the local food 12 low-carbon economy in the UK. It stated nature of the challenge we face. systems that would have supported us in 13 that by 2020 there would be a five-fold Let’s take a supermarket as an example. It the past. Despite the temptation to believe increase in wind generation, feed-in may be possible to increase its sustainability otherwise, we still operate in the physical tariffs for domestic energy generation, and to reduce its carbon emissions by using world with very real and pressing energy and an unprecedented scheme to retrofit less packaging, putting photovoltaics on the and resource constraints. every house in the country for energy roof and installing more energy-efficient efficiency. In view of the extraordinary fridges. However, resilience thinking would he concept of resilience emerged scale of the challenge presented by argue that the closure of local food shops and Tfrom within the ecological sciences climate change, I hesitate to criticise networks that resulted from the opening of as a way of looking at why some systems steps in the right direction taken by the supermarket, as well as the fact that the collapse when they encounter shock, government. There is, though, a key flaw store itself only contains two days’ worth and some don’t. The insights gleaned in the document, which also appears of food at any moment – the majority of now offer a very useful overview for in much of the wider societal thinking which has been transported great distances determining how systems can adapt about climate change. This flaw is the to get there – has massively reduced the and thrive in changing circumstances. attempt to address the issue of climate resilience of community food security, as Resilience within communities, for change without also addressing a second, well as increasing its oil vulnerability. One example, depends upon equally important issue: that of resilience. extreme, but relevant, example of where ♦ Diversity: a broader base of livelihoods, The term ‘resilience’ is appearing sustainability thinking falls short was Tesco’s land use, enterprise and energy systems more frequently in discussions about recent ‘Flights for Lights’ promotion, where than at present environmental concerns, and it has a people were able to gain air miles when ♦ Modularity: not advocating self- strong claim to actually being a more they purchased low-energy light bulbs! sufficiency, but rather an increased useful concept than that of sustainability. Some people believe that we can move self-reliance; with ‘surge protectors’ for Sustainability and its oxymoronic from our current ‘high carbon’ model, the local economy, such as local food offspring sustainable development are where goods are transported at great production and decentralised energy commonly held to be a sufficient response distances, to a ‘low carbon’ information systems to the scale of the climate challenge we economy, where it is ideas that are ♦ Tightness of feedbacks: bringing the face: to reduce the inputs at one end of exchanged rather than goods, and where results of our actions closer to home, the globalised economic growth model we operate in a virtual world with few so that we cannot ignore them (energy, resources, and so on) while impacts. Yet such an economy still reducing the outputs at the other end depends on fossil fuels: to power the vast A recent report by the think tank ILLUSTRATIONS: HUGH DUNFORD WOOD

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a lower-energy world might sound like, smell like, feel like and look like. What is hard, but important, is to be able to articulate a vision of a post-carbon world so enticing that people leap out of bed every morning and put their shoulders to the wheel of making it happen. Resilience thinking can inspire a degree of creative thinking that might actually take us closer to solutions that will succeed in the longer term. Resilient solutions to climate change might include community-owned energy companies that install renewable energy systems in such a way as to generate revenue to resource the wider relocalisation process; the building of highly energy-efficient homes that use mainly local materials (clay, straw, hemp), thereby stimulating a range of potential local businesses and industries; the installation DEMOS, Resilient Nation, raised the other less tangible things like community, As Amartya Sen has shown, famine of a range of urban food production models; and the question, “Resilient to what?” Are we meaningful work, skills and friendships. occurs more from the way in which food re-linking of farmers with their local markets. By seeing building resilience in the face of peak When I give talks on this subject, is distributed, and inequality, than from resilience as a key ingredient of the economic strategies oil and climate change, or of terrorism there are always some who interpret food shortage. Even that analysis now that will enable communities to thrive beyond the and pandemics? While it is clearly not the concept of increasing localisation needs to be revisited from a ‘resilience’ current economic turmoil the world is seeing, huge an either/or situation, I would argue to mean that building resilience in the perspective. Over the last few years creativity, reskilling and entrepreneurship are unleashed. strongly that peak oil and climate change West – increasing national food security, we’ve started to see clear impacts of The Transition Movement is a rapidly growing, ‘viral’ are so far-reaching and destabilising that rebuilding local manufacturing and so tying the developing world into global movement, which began in Ireland and is now under we really must give them precedence, on – will by necessity lead to increased commercial food webs, as food prices way in thousands of communities around the world. Its the solutions that arise being markedly impoverishment in the developing rose in step with oil and fertiliser prices. fundamental premise is that a response to climate change different from addressing terrorism or world. I don’t believe this to be the case. In fact, I’d argue that tying developing- and peak oil will require action globally, nationally, and pandemics. But what would this kind of Will the developing world be lifted out world food producers into the globalised at the scale of local government, but it also needs vibrant resilience thinking look like in practice? of poverty by continuing to dismantle system leads to their exposure to both communities driving the process, making unelectable For many years, those writing and its own food resilience and becoming food and money shortages. policies electable, creating the groundswell for practical campaigning on relocalisation have change at the local level. t is clear, as Jonathon Porritt argues in Living Within Our Means, that 14 argued that it is a good idea because We have a paucity of stories that articulate what a It explores the practicalities of building resilience Iattempting to get out of the current recession with the thinking that 15 it produces a better, more equitable across all aspects of daily life. It catalyses communities got us into it in the first place (unregulated banking, high levels of debt, economy. Now, as the potential impacts lower-energy“ world might sound like, smell like, feel like to ask, “How are we going to significantly rebuild high-carbon lifestyles) will get us into a situation that we simply cannot of peak oil and climate change become and look like. What is hard, but important, is to be able to resilience in response to peak oil and drastically reduce win. A friend of mine who works as a sustainability consultant in the clearer, an additional and very strong carbon emissions in response to climate change?” North West talks of a meeting he had with a leading local authority argument has emerged: that as the net articulate a vision of a post-carbon world so enticing that By putting resilience alongside the need to reduce there. Having read their development plan for the next twenty years, he energy underpinning society inevitably people leap out of bed every morning and put their shoulders carbon emissions, it is catalysing a broad range of told them, “Your Plan is based on three things: building cars, building contracts, so the focus of our economies initiatives, from Community Supported Agriculture and aeroplanes and the financial services sector. Do you have anything else and our daily lives will inexorably shift, at to the wheel of making it happen. garden-share schemes to local food directories and new up your sleeves?” As John Michael Greer says, we’re in danger of turning least in terms of manufacturing and trade, Farmers’ Markets. Some places, such as Lewes and Totnes, what could still be a soluble problem into an insoluble predicament. from the global to the local. ” have set up their own energy companies, in order to Transition is an exploration of what we need to have ‘up those sleeves’, It requires a huge amount of cheap oil increasingly dependent on global trade, he need to cut carbon emissions is even resource the installation of renewable energy. The Lewes an optimistic exploration of the practicalities of relocalisation, creating, thundering around the superhighways which is itself massively dependent on Tmore urgent than the government’s Pound, the local currency that can only be spent in Lewes, as Jeremy Leggett puts it, “scaleable microcosms of hope”. and shipping lanes of the world to bring the cheap oil we can no longer rely on? Is Transition Plan acknowledges. NASA recently expanded with the issuing of new £5, £10 and However, resilience is not just an outer process: it is also an inner one, to our shops the things we now feel we the way out of poverty really an increasing scientist James Hansen, one of the world’s £20 notes. Stroud and Brixton are set to do the same soon. of becoming more flexible, robust and skilled. Transition initiatives try to need, much of which we would have reliance on the utterly unreliable? Rather leading climate scientists, now argues that The Scottish government is using its Climate promote this through offering skills-sharing, building social networks grown or made ourselves not all that long than communities meeting each other we have already passed the climate tipping Challenge Fund to fund Transition Scotland Support, and creating a shared sense of this being a historic opportunity to build ago. But creating a different way of doing as unskilled, unproductive, dependent point at our current level of 387ppm, when seeing Transition initiatives as a key component of the the world anew. things takes time, resources and proactive and vulnerable settlements, they would the safe level of carbon in the atmosphere is country’s push on climate change (and thanks also Navigating a successful way through climate change and peak oil will and creative design. meet as skilled, abundantly productive, at most 350ppm. While the UK government to that fund, a number of Transition initiatives have require a journey of such bravery, commitment and vision that future Often, climate-change thinking doesn’t self-reliant and resilient communities. It argues that we need to stay below 450ppm, received substantial financial support: for example, generations will doubtless tell stories and sing great songs about it. question the notion that higher rates of is a very different quality of relationship, it is clear that even that is a huge ask. If Transition Forres received £184,000 and has become But as with any journey, having a clear idea of where you are headed consumption lead to individual happiness and one that could be hugely beneficial you were to step outside your front door a real force for local resilience-building). In England, and the resources that you have at your disposal is essential in order to – it focuses rather on low-carbon ways to both. today and ask the first ten people you met Somerset and Leicestershire County Councils have both most skilfully maximise your chances of success. If we leave resilience of making the same consumer goods. In any event, work by people such what your town or city might look like in passed resolutions committing themselves to support thinking out, we may well end up an extremely long way from where Yet as we enter the world of volatile oil as Mike Davis in his book Late Victorian ten years’ time if it began today to cut its local Transition initiatives. What underpins these we initially thought we were headed. prices, resource constraints, and the need Holocausts shows how the impact of emissions by 9% a year starting today, I responses is the idea that meeting our climate emissions to situate ourselves more within the local famine was enormously magnified by imagine most people would say something responsibilities and preparing proactively for the end Rob Hopkins is co-founder of the Transition Network and is the author of The Transition economy than the global one, we will the forced introduction of India into the between the Flintstones and Mad Max! We of the age of cheap oil can either be seen as enormous Handbook. need to link satisfaction and happiness to international money/cash-crop nexus. have a paucity of stories that articulate what crises, or as tremendous opportunities.

14 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 15 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide KEYNOTESKEYNOTES ECONOMICS • JONATHON PORRITT

Easter Islanders lived beyond the means of their 3. The rebirth of America as witnessed environment; their once-abundant civilisation was in the election of President Obama is decimated by their unsustainable use of natural absolutely fundamental. There was no resoures. The islands are yet to recover. This is a solution to the world’s converging crises salutary tale for the rest of humanity. with George Bush in the White House. That doesn’t mean that Obama will de- liver, and it is extremely unwise to heap such expectations on any one person. How much longer can But at least the potential is there, on politicians“ remain in total climate change, on security issues, on nuclear disarmament, on Palestine, on denial about the literal im- a transformed global economy – and it possibility of continuing with just wasn’t there before. Even before the uplift in people’s spir- economic growth as we know its that the election of Obama seemed to it today? bring, there was no shortage of ambitious plans starting to emerge to address the ” so-called triple crunch: the credit crunch, the oil crunch and the climate crunch. state of the environment, this is a cause Perhaps the most impactful of these has of celebration, tempered by the deepest been the Green New deal, published in concern for those worst affected by the June 2008 by a group of progressive uK recession. Capitalism’s dramatic collapse NGOs. But there is as yet no over-arching offers at least some chance of a belated consensus that what is needed is a root- reconciliation between the pursuit of and-branch transformation of capitalism. economic prosperity on the one hand and most of the strategies and specific policy the protection of the life-support systems proposals fall into the category of fixing PHOTOGRAPH: JEREmY WOOdHOuSE/PHOTOLIBRARY on which we all depend on the other. what has gone wrong and then getting We now know the economic boom- back to some of the certainties that ob- times of the last fifteen years or so were tained prior to the credit crunch. 16 house gases. Which means, quite simply, built on a vortex of artifice. during that At its heart, what we need is genuinely 17 that the only available global solution to time, our self-deception knew no bounds. sustainable development, which comes LIVING WITHIN OUR MEANS our economic crisis lies in addressing our Just as house prices do not (and never right down to one all-important chal- sustainability crisis through what is rap- will) go on rising indefinitely over time, lenge: is it possible to conceptualise and If we are to avoid the ultimate recession, the only available global solution lies in idly becoming known as a ‘Green New so our use of finite resources cannot go then operationalise an alternative model deal for the 21st Century’. on expanding indefinitely over time. The of capitalism – one that allows for the designing a sustainable capitalism. Our goal should not be to just come out the If our politicians could focus on this so-called laws of the market never have sustainable management of all the differ- other side of recession as fast as possible with as little damage done as possible, extraordinary opportunity, especially at and never will take precedence over the ent capital assets on which we rely, so that a time when the reputation and standing laws of thermodynamics. Like all outlaws, the yield from those different assets sus- but to build the foundations for a system of wealth creation that simultaneously of the united States have been so power- we’re now being punished for our trans- tains us now as well as in the future? addresses both the climate crunch and the oil crunch. fully enhanced by the election of Barack gressions – and climate change is just the Obama as President, we would have a scariest of the retributions that may be BUT WHO REALLY cares about alterna- unique chance of securing a genuinely visited upon us if we don’t change our tive models of capitalism? As we’ve seen, sustainable future for ourselves and all ways very profoundly and very quickly. “just fix it” appears to be the dominant e’ve been living beyond either crisis unless we understand that the collapse in the global economy and those who come after us. But economic In the face of such persistent acts of mood. The problem is that without an al- our means for a long the ‘living beyond our means’ that has recognise it as precisely the shock to the paradigms do not die easily and this par- self-deception, it’s clear that changing ternative framework we might just be fix- time and now it’s all been going on for decades has led both to system we so desperately needed. ticular paradigm has taken a very firm our ways is proving difficult for human- ing the wrong bits for the wrong reasons, blown up in our faces. massively over-leveraged balance sheets There are two powerful reasons to hold on the collective psyche of the hu- kind. Paradoxically, however, I am more thus guaranteeing the wrong outcomes. TheW shock to the system from the near- and to a massively over-leveraged use of see things in this counter-intuitive way. man species. It will be defended fero- optimistic about the prospects of us do- President Obama has already indicated his collapse of our global banking industry the natural world. Yet it seems to have be- First, instead of treating each crisis as a ciously by a self-serving elite of massively ing this now than I was this time last year, determination to put in place a uS$150 has been traumatic. Even so, it will be as come received wisdom that environmen- stand-alone phenomenon, even the most powerful beneficiaries. for three reasons: billion ‘green jobs’ package, with the nothing compared to the near-imminent tal issues should now be put on the back cursory examination of the underlying 1. The sheer intensity and depth of emphasis on enhancing energy security collapse of the ecological systems on burner, given the ferocity of the econom- causes reveals the same inherent dysfunc- MANY COMMENTATORS HAVE arrived the collapse has blown away years of within the uS through renewables and which we depend. And the two are inti- ic recession. However, I believe that the tionalities within this particular model of at the conclusion that the role of Amer- ideological fantasising about the su- energy efficiency. uK Prime minister mately connected. But in all the intense convergence of these two crises should be capitalism. Second, in the same way that ica as the principal driver of the global periority of deregulated, debt-driven, Gordon Brown is talking about a some- coverage of the economic recession, seen both as the perfect storm warning our capital markets imploded for lack of economy is to all intents and purposes finance-based capitalism. what more modest set of interventions in there’s been surprisingly little reference that it is, and as an astonishing opportu- proper regulation, our carbon-intensive finished. And with it will go the particular 2. The overwhelming evidence about a new stimulus package, some of which to environmental issues. nity to confront and resolve both crises economies are about to implode – so- variant of capitalism that has reigned su- climate change and its rapidly accel- will be geared to today’s low-carbon im- There will be little chance of engineer- without further delay. It seems strange to cially and environmentally – for lack of preme over the last thirty years. For those erating impacts leaves our politicians perative. But most ‘recovery spending’ ing any kind of meaningful response to say this, but maybe we’ll all look back on proper regulation of emissions of green- concerned about both society and the with less and less space to hide. will make things worse from a sustain-

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ability perspective, rather than better. erly reflected in the market price paid governments find themselves with an ask just how much longer politicians can SO, WILL WE do what needs to be done Our goal should not be to just come out for the timber from them. But now that unparalleled opportunity to start imple- remain in total denial about the literal im- to avoid what I’ve called “The ultimate the other side of recession as fast as pos- we’ve come to recognise the full value of menting the kind of practical, low-carbon possibility of continuing with economic Recession”? These few months are go- sible with as little damage done as pos- those all-important services, all we need programmes that have proved so elusive growth as we know it today. The contours ing to be precious beyond belief. If we sible, but to build the foundations for a to do is agree on a price for those services to date. Whatever else a Green New deal of an economy freed from dependence neglect that opportunity, and revert back system of wealth creation that simultane- and make over to the ‘owners’ of those may include, it certainly entails massively on exponential economic growth need to to ‘business as usual, growth at all costs’, ously addresses both the climate crunch forests an equivalent per-hectare payment and urgently ramping up our investments be debated much more vigorously. Per- then it seems clear that our path to a sus- and the oil crunch. Though this is not the to compensate them for the “profits fore- both in energy efficiency (in our homes, sonally, I believe we must retain a com- tainable future will be infinitely more place for any kind of detailed manifesto, gone” for keeping their forests intact. schools, hospitals, offices, factories, shop- mitment to market-based economics, troubled and painful. We have a unique here, in brief, are some key areas where A real head of steam is now building ping malls and all forms of transporta- but those capital markets must be subju- opportunity to deconstruct the illusions political interventions now need to be up around this REdd approach – as is tion) and in renewables (both large-scale gated – in other words, made servant to that underpinned the boom and bust of prioritised, to bring about a new, sustain- the criticism! NGOs are not persuaded – particularly onshore and offshore wind the kind of economy that we now need recent times; to understand that these are able capitalism: that setting up a scheme based on carbon – and micro-generation). This means – rather than be allowed to dominate the the self-same illusions that have precipi- Recapitalisation Strategies. Governments trading or the profit motive will ever re- executing a bold new vision for a low- economy. I would also advocate strict lim- tated today’s near-terminal environmen- are already discussing how to recapital- ally work. They have raised compelling carbon energy system that will include its on leverage ratios, the ‘de-merging’ of tal meltdown; and to use that knowledge ise financial institutions, but we need a concerns regarding land rights, poor making every building a ‘power station’. financial conglomerates, the outlawing of to construct the foundations for a global radically different kind of recapitalisation governance in the countries concerned, The energy efficiency of tens of millions speculative practices, and other strategic economy that will have at least a reason- programme that puts the foundations of corruption, the interests of indigenous of properties will be maximised, as will measures. many would go even further able prospect of steering us through to a our economies (namely, the life-support the use of renewables to generate electric- than this. There’s a growing campaign to secure and sustainable future.

systems that underpin all economic activ- ity. It also means creating and training a strip banks of their right to create credit Since I wrote Capitalism As If The World : NIKREATES/ALAmY PHOTOGRAPH ity) onto a genuinely sustainable footing. ‘carbon army’ of workers to provide the (and then charge interest on it), and to Matters, I’ve been asked endlessly wheth- A charcoal-making smoking kiln. All the devastating problems now associ- We have been living not human resources for a vast environmental return that right to central banks. er I still believe that any capitalist sys- ated with this particular model of deregu- only“ beyond our own means, reconstruction programme. This must also be the best possible time tem could bear the weight of radical driven, debt-burdened ‘growthism’ that lated, debt-driven, capitalism have also So, the positive spin-off from the Green for the uK government to renew its erst- decarbonisation, a deep and lasting re- got us into the current mess. However been at work in our chronic mismanage- but well beyond the means of New deal will be the creation of hun- while commitment to Ecological Tax Re- distribution of wealth, and a dramatic absurd this may be, ‘Living Beyond Our ment of natural capital. We’ve aggressively future generations as well. dreds of thousands of sustainable green form – shifting far more of the burden rebalancing of our relationship with the means’ still seems to have become the drawn down on Nature’s capital assets, jobs – the “double-dividend” – and, as of taxation away from jobs, value added natural world, as well as a new-found central tenet of recovery for a govern- liquidating natural capital to generate ” such, the low-carbon economy is an es- and wealth creation and onto waste, inef- determination to get on top of the prob- ment that has simply lost its way. current income. In the process, Nature’s sential component of economic recovery. ficiency and emissions of CO2. It is also lem of continuing population growth. I believe it is no exaggeration to say that balance sheet is now over-leveraged to an people, and illegal logging. Gordon Brown himself is talking of 4,000 time to think even more radically about my answer is still “Yes”, because I can the destiny of people in the uK will be 18 astonishing extent, creating a burden of This is just one of the planet-scale in- new jobs in this area. non-fiscal mechanisms for reducing see how that particular variant of strictly shaped for many years to come by the de- 19 debt that there is little prospect of paying terventions that need to be brought for- Sustainable Economies. For the last forty wealth disparities. Having sorted out a sustainable capitalism could work. But cisions taken over the course of the next back in this generation. We have not only ward to address the increasingly urgent years, a distinguished but largely ignored minimum wage entitlement for the poor- my optimism on that score diminishes two years. unless we put the imperative been living beyond our own means, but challenge of climate change and the re- cohort of economists have sought to dem- est in the uK, there are now a number of by the year. Short-termism and outright of living within our means absolutely well beyond the means of future genera- capitalisation of Nature’s balance sheet. onstrate to politicians that “the pursuit Labour mPs who want the party to ex- denial remain dominant. at the heart of everything we do to dig tions as well. For years, experts like Lester Brown have of material progress through exponen- plore some kind of maximum wage. As far as the uK government is con- ourselves out of this particular recession, The only appropriate response to this been urging countries to think about re- tial economic growth” was an unattain- As well as personal taxation, this is sure- cerned, there is no serious indicator that then any economic reprieve will be short- is a massive recapitalisation programme capitalisation in different ways, via Earth able goal even when it was first adopted ly the time to re-think the whole ques- it is using the current crisis to rethink the lived and the ultimate recession will be to restore Nature’s balance sheets. One Restoration Budgets, where we stop back in the 1950s, and that it remains as tion of corporate taxes and, in particular, way we live and the way we create wealth upon us. such programme is REdd – Reducing building up unsustainable levels of ‘natu- unattainable as ever today. In a new re- the use of tax havens. This has increased – unless it be in the oblique commentar- Emissions from deforestation and deg- ral debt’ and start restoring natural capi- port from the Sustainable development rapidly over the last few years, with ‘capi- ies of both Ed and david miliband. There Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for radation. The basic idea is a simple one: tal and ecosystem services in ways that Commission (Prosperity without Growth?) tal mobility’ now largely unfettered, and is as yet no sense of relief that it has, in the Future and Chair of the UK Sustainable Develop- the countries that have forests are poor, simultaneously protect the livelihoods of Professor Tim Jackson (Economics Com- some estimates tell us that more than half effect, been liberated from its servitude ment Commission. Living Within Our means and cannot afford (it is argued) not to some of the world’s poorest people. missioner on the SdC) has refreshed this of global trade is routed through tax ha- to the amoral imperatives of free-market is available from www.forumforthefuture.org; develop them. Their full value as carbon A Green New Deal. At the heart of the debate in an extraordinarily compelling vens. This requires unflinching govern- economics. All that seems to matter is get- Prosperity without Growth is available from stores and climate regulators is not prop- Green New deal lies the assumption that and challenging way. One really has to ment leadership. ting back to the same old consumption- www.sd-commission.org.uk

Middelgrunden is the world’s largest co-operatively owned off shore wind farm, with 20 turbines and a 40MW output. PHOTOGRAPH: NIELS POuLSEN/ECOSCENE

12 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 13 ResurgenceResurgence Writers’ Writers’ Guide Guide ResurgenceResurgence Writers’ Writers’ Guide Guide CONSCIOUSNESSCONSCIOUSNESS NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES • PETER FENWICK

AT DEATH’S DOOR Death is a much more mysterious process than the mere switching-off of life.

ince Raymond Moody began writing about near- hospitals in the uK, six in the uSA, one in France and death experiences in 1972, a large number of one in Austria are taking part in the study. The boards scientific studies in this area have been undertaken. have been so placed that if the patient does leave their The International Association for Near-Death body and look back at it – which is commonly reported StudiesS has just published a book detailing the major to be what happens – then they will see the pattern on research papers and the current scientific understanding the boards and can report this on recovery. This study of the near-death experience (NDE). It is clear that there will continue for the next three years and it will be is a marked cultural component to the NDE and it is also fascinating to discover what light this can shed on the clear that there is no adequate scientific explanation for subject. the experience itself. My colleagues Sue Brayne, Hilary Lovelace and I have Some facts do stand out: those who have an NDE are just completed a study of two hospices, a nursing home altered by it. The initial findings that people became and a palliative care team with the aim of finding the more spiritual, less materialistic, more family orientated frequency of end-of-life experiences. The experiences and less work orientated have been confirmed. It seems are ‘deathbed coincidences’, and also various that after these experiences people are more loving and parapsychological events which occur around the time compassionate. The fundamental questions of why the of death. A deathbed coincidence is the appearance of a NDEs are similar within cultures, and relatively common dying person to a close relative or friend at the moment 20 (10% of the population have been found to have them) of death. The form of the communication depends on the 21 have not been adequately answered. The common mental state of the recipient at the time of the visit. If the scientific explanations – sleep disorders, disordered recipient is awake then they oxygen or carbon-dioxide levels, anaesthesia, drugs, may experience a strong release of endorphins – certainly don’t apply to every feeling that something is NDE, and it is very difficult to argue that they apply to wrong with someone they It is much more as any NDE. So this very important experience has yet to be are close to or, more often, explained scientifically. an inexplicable feeling of though“ life itself is built There is, however, the possibility that those NDEs unease, or even grief, which into the very fabric of which take place during cardiac arrest may give us some they only later discover The Cells of Night, painting by Cecil Collins COuRTESy: TATE IMAGES fundamental clues towards an explanation. About 30% occurred at the time of the universe. of these patients say they leave their bodies during the that person’s death. A few NDE and watch the resuscitation process, usually from people see light which has ” the ceiling. We know that during a cardiac arrest the a special meaning to them, brain is non-functional, so this observation raises the or they get a sense of the person’s presence; occasionally deathbed coincidences in the previous It is not only pendulum clocks: electric cloud seen leaving the body. question of whether mind and brain are separate in a even that they have died and have come to say goodbye. year. The interesting feature of these clocks with an LED display reportedly These phenomena suggest that death way not accepted by contemporary science. These experiences are usually interpreted by those experiences is that they only occur between do the same. Nurses have told us that at is not a simple switching-off of life. It is Last year at the united Nations the AWARE (AWAreness receiving them as being helpful and supportive. people who have a close relationship, or the time of death alarms in the hospice much more as though life itself is built during REsuscitation) project was launched by Sam If the recipient is asleep then the visit from the dying have done so in the past. We have had no will ring, televisions will stop working, into the very fabric of the universe. When Parnia, a medical doctor currently working in New york. person is in the form of a dream, and is usually much more accounts of this happening between casual and other mechanical failures will occur. this fabric is ‘torn’ by the act of dying, This project is studying awareness during resuscitation visual and specific. These dreams are usually described acquaintances. This suggests that the same Animal stories are also common: birds quantum non-local events seem to take from cardiac arrest. To be certain that the NDE is taking as extremely vivid and meaningful and not like a usual mechanism that takes place during mental that come and sit on the hospice window place. Our studies have shown that these place during the resuscitation process when the brain dream. The dying person gives a message that they are all telepathy between those who know each as the person is dying; dogs and cats, events are not uncommon, and further is non-functional, it is essential that those who say they right and that the recipient is not to be worried. Often other well is involved. especially the personal pets of the dying work is required to define the very leave their bodies are able to note some specific piece of the person visited does not know their friend is dying or Other related phenomena occur which person, will also behave strangely, usually wonderful and complex nature of the information which they can report when they recover. even ill, and distance seems to be no barrier to receiving require a broader interpretation. We have howling or barking. Light is sometimes death process itself. To that end, boards with specific patterns on them have the ‘message’. Again, these dreams are found to be helpful had many stories of clocks stopping at the seen surrounding the body at the time been placed in those areas of the hospital where cardiac and supportive. They are relatively common in our study time of their owner’s death, and many of death and there are also accounts of Peter Fenwick is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist and arrests are likely to take place. So far over eighteen as over 55% of the carers had been given accounts of of these cannot then be started again. something resembling a mist, haze or Neurophysiologist.

28 Resurgence No. 256 September/October 2009 Resurgence No. 256 September/October 2009 29 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide ECO-PARENTINGECO-PARENTING

CHILDHOOD • ARIC SIGMAN Mother Nature causes a failure to bond evision viewing that took place years and hear on the screen, treating in- properly with her and to go on to es- before when the adults were children, coming information uncritically. What tablish and maintain a caring relation- irrespective of other factors. surprised him was how quickly this ship thereafter. change happened. To compound matters, the time that EVEN AT THE day’s close, when chil- Further research revealed that our children spend in front of the screen dren should be sleeping, the screen brain’s left hemisphere, which proc- VIDEOPHILIA (TV, DVDs, computers) also directly af- has effects hours later. New research esses information logically and analyti- fects their wellbeing in ways we could has found a significant relationship cally, becomes subdued while we are never have imagined. A formidable between exposure to screen technol- watching television, allowing the right body of medical evidence implicates ogy and sleeping difficulties in differ- hemisphere, which processes informa- television as a primary factor affecting ent age groups ranging from infants tion emotionally and uncritically, to school performance and educational to adults. A study of 2,068 children function unimpeded. Krugman con- outcome. For all age groups, a direct at the Department of Pediatrics at the cluded, “Television is a communica- relationship is emerging between the University of Washington has found tion medium that effortlessly transmits amount of time spent watching tel- that television viewing among infants huge quantities of information not evision and children’s ability to learn and toddlers is linked with irregular thought about at time of exposure,” and perform in school later, irrespec- sleep patterns. The number of hours of a long-winded way of saying that TV tive of the quality of the programmes television watched per day was inde- brainwashes you. watched. pendently associated with both irregu- US National Institutes of Health, lar naptime schedules and irregular THE EFFECTS OF electronic media are Yale University and the California bedtime schedules. Another study of too many to cover here, but it’s clear Pacific Medical Center have just pub- five- to six-year-olds by the University that we must restore a healthy ratio of lished an analysis of 173 studies con- of Helsinki found that both active TV real versus virtual life experience to ducted since 1980 in one of the most viewing and passive TV exposure were our children’s lives. If we exchanged comprehensive assessments to date of related to shorter sleep duration, sleep- even half of the time children spend how exposure to electronic media af- ing disorders, and overall sleep distur- in front of a screen for time spent in fects the physical health of children bances. Moreover, passive exposure to Nature, the world would certainly be and adolescents. Three-quarters of all TV of more than two hours per day was a better place. those studies have found that increased strongly related to sleep disturbances. media viewing is associated with nega- Remember that this amount of screen Aric Sigman is a Fellow of the Royal Society of tive health outcomes. A dose-response time is actually less than the average. Medicine and lectures on the effects of electronic relationship is often found between The implications may be serious. media on childhood psychology. He is author of the number of hours viewed per day Stanford University Medical Center has Remotely Controlled: How Television 22 and physiological effects, again irre- found evidence that a lack of sleep can is Damaging our Lives. 23 spective of the educational quality of significantly alter levels of the hormone what a child watches. melatonin, a powerful antioxidant. Re- In obesity, for example, Harvard re- duced amounts of melatonin may re- searchers reported that beyond merely sult in a greater chance that cell DNA displacing physical activity, TV slows will produce cancer-causing mutations. the metabolism and burns fewer calo- Melatonin is also sleep-promoting. As ries compared with other sedentary it grows dark, melatonin levels rise activities such as sewing, reading, and help facilitate sleep. Researchers Televisions and computers have not only hijacked childhood, but created the writing or driving a car. Another study have reported that when children aged found that children’s resting metabolic six to twelve stayed away from their TV ecological equivalent of an attachment disorder. Separation from Mother Nature rate decreased as average weekly hours sets, computers and video games, their causes a failure to bond properly with and establish a caring relationship for the of TV viewing increased. melatonin production increased by an Watching television also makes us average 30%. It appears that the screen natural world. eat significantly more, even if we are viewing suppresses natural melatonin not physically hungry. A recent US levels, particularly affecting younger study found that even children who children at a pubertal stage when im- watched a below-average amount of portant changes in melatonin’s role television ate roughly the equivalent of take place. S THE SHEER number of recently found. Another study com- serious concern about the ecological an extra meal a day more than those And the story continues. Screen ad- hours children spend in the missioned in 2007 in the UK found implications. “We don’t see how this who watched none. vertising or simply the lifestyles and virtual as opposed to the real that of 1,000 pupils across England, can be good for conservation,” Per- Another study conducted at the values portrayed in screen media are world increases dramatically, one in five never visits the countryside gams said. “We don’t see how future Dunedin School of Medicine, New more readily accepted than if children newA studies are showing how elec- and a further 17% have only visited it generations, with less exploration of Zealand, tracked the television viewing read them in text form. There are some tronic media have directly displaced once or twice. Nature, will be as interested in conser- habits and health of 1,000 children over striking similarities between the act of children’s time spent in Nature and The biologists Oliver Pergams and vation as past generations.” twenty-six years. It found that children watching television and hypnosis. Both their concern over the environment. Patricia Zaradic, authors of the Ameri- We’re witnessing the ecological who watched more than two hours of involve a reduction in activity of the Across the entire industrialised can study mentioned above, pointed to equivalent of an attachment disorder television a day between the ages of brain’s frontal lobes, the parts used for world, the decline in children’s con- “a fundamental shift away from an ap- whereby the child’s separation from five and fifteen developed significant critical analysis and impulse control. tact with Nature has been evidenced. preciation of Nature – biophilia – to health risks many years later: 15% of Herbert Krugman found that within For example, in the US there has been videophilia, the new human tendency cases of raised blood cholesterol, 17% thirty seconds of starting to watch tel- a 25% drop in visits to the countryside to focus on sedentary activities involv- Above: A young child, transfixed by his MP3 player of obesity, and 15% of reduced cardio- evision our brains become less able to Children engrossed in a Nature documentary in the past twenty years, as one study ing electronic media.” They also voiced PHOTOGRAPH: RICH LEGG/ISTOCK PHOTO vascular fitness were linked to the tel- make judgements about what we see PHOTOGRAPH: RENÉ MANSI/ISTOCK PHOTO

16 Resurgence No. 254 May/June 2009 Resurgence No. 254 May/June 2009 17 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide BIOCULTURALBIOCULTURAL DIVERSITYDIVERSITY T U VA • ANGELA ROBSON traditions were those of a backward people. But I am produce. We need to increase our own productivity and happiest when we are moving. A simpler life is best. I thereby create jobs.” want my grandchildren to grow up knowing about their Planned activities include improving the quality of culture – to respect older people and to worship the traditional breeds of livestock, reintroducing abandoned spirits of Nature.” traditions such as felt-making for clothing and yurts, But Tuvans now face a new dilemma. The area is rich in and the restoration of local crafts, and improving access minerals such as iron ore, bauxite, coal, gold and cobalt. to local and regional markets. External support will be There is the potential to start a very profitable mining provided in the form of advice and micro-finance. industry. Plans to build a railway to service the mining “This project is so needed and relevant right now in industry and create jobs are under way but opinion is Tuva,” says Kadygo. “Traditionally, Tuvan people are very deeply divided. Those in favour say it could create jobs hard-working. They are used to providing everything and lead to the eventual construction of a passenger for themselves. So we believe that this project will allow railway, which could open up the country to tourism. local economies to develop as small businesses grow up, Critics, including the Minister of Labour, are sceptical and our hope is that people will return to their traditions and believe the potential for corruption is huge. In understanding that, with hard work, they can improve addition, the proposed train route would go through their lives.” one of the most famous burial grounds in Siberia, dating Oxfam and WWF’s work will also provide protection back to ancient times. to rare species such as the snow leopard and the argali The Tuvans’ respect for Nature means they are wild sheep, with a view to taking some pressure off circumspect about developing a mining economy. wild resources through improved economic prospects. Acutely aware of their position as custodians of one of Activities will include involving local communities in the great natural wildernesses, they believe that if they national park planning and development, training and are encouraged to forget and undervalue their own supporting national park staff to offer better protection culture and environment, then their traditions and core and conservation of wildlife. values – which are already under threat – could be lost. “This project will build more sustainable livelihoods Dalana Kadygo is the Tuvan co-ordinator of a new for rural people, and improve the local economy and joint project by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Russia the value of agricultural produce,” says Nicholas Colloff, and Oxfam, which aims to promote new and sensitive country director for Oxfam Russia. patterns of economic development in Tuva whilst “The challenge will be integrating rural sustainable protecting traditional ways of life. development with conservation, but if we develop a “Many of Tuva’s goods are now imported,” says vibrant model for this in Tuva, WWF Russia will replicate 24 Kadygo. “Our chickens come from the US and our this work in many remote, impoverished parts of Russia 25 Tuvans ride horses and gather for a wrestling festival close to the Mongolian border on Lake Tere Khol - the beginning of the Gobi Desert can be seen in the background milk from the Netherlands. Imagine this for us Tuvans where Indigenous people live precarious existences.” who pride ourselves on being an agricultural society! All these imported products are replacing traditional Angela Robson is a writer and BBC broadcaster.

The challenge BALANCING ACT “will be integrating Since the demise of the Soviet Union, there has been a resurgence rural sustainable of cultural life in Tuva, but there is now a new divide between the old development with conservation. nomadic ways and the lure of a more contemporary lifestyle. ” – Nicholas Colloff he sun is setting on Sacred Mountain, close to the in the world, it is also home to endangered species such (Oxfam Russia) border with Mongolia, in southernmost Tuva, one as the snow leopard and the mountain ibex. of the least-known regions in Siberia. In a rocky Since the demise of the Soviet Union there has been a alcove inside the mountain, a group of female resurgence of cultural life in Tuva. Nomadic lifestyles and shamansT conduct a traditional ceremony. One woman, migration patterns have returned and shamanism and clothed in long furs and a headdress made from the Buddhism are once again flourishing. Interdependence feathers of predatory birds, offers food to fire spirits. Behind with Nature is deeply ingrained in the Tuvan psyche her, another shaman ties prayer flags to a tree – white to and fundamental to the Tuvan way of thinking. There symbolise air; green and yellow for earth and water. is a strong tradition of respect for natural places: every Ringed by 2,000-metre-plus mountains and far from person has an ee, a master or spirit guardian. the major trade routes, Tuva’s ancient civilisation has Saya Chopuy, who now lives with her family, sheep remained largely intact. A vast expanse, which includes and cattle in a yurt homestead in the Erzin Kozhuun

some of the most remote and unspoiled natural beauty district, says, “We were told during Soviet times that our BOOKS KATE PHOTOGRAPHS: Female shamans gather at Sacred Mountain to perform a ritual, making offerings to the spirits

48 Resurgence No. 258 January/February 2010 Resurgence No. 258 January/February 2010 49 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY

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PIONEERS • AMANDA PISANI nutrient-rich soil first thought to be volcanic deposits are now known trees. It’s also about reducing poverty, even about to be the result of thousands of years of deliberate composting. Swathes peacemaking.” Barasch observes that the diminution of Pioneers of the ‘wild jungle’ were actually agroforestry projects! natural resources in equatorial regions forces groups to “I was excited by the idea that humans have long lived in a co-creative compete for fertile land. “Desperation breeds conflict relationship with the natural world. Through the right practices – I call and war. The genocide in Rwanda was not just over it ‘regenerative ecology’– it is possible to re-green enormous areas of ethnic differences, but also over scarce arable land and barren land around the world with relatively minimal resources: seeds, water resources. If we plant trees that help recharge education, community labour, a little capital and lots of caring.” aquifers, increase biodiversity and encourage sustainable Green Barasch decided to start the Green World Campaign (GWC), to food production, we’re also resolving potential conflicts. provide simple, direct ways for people to work together to reforest the I sometimes think of the whole thing as just ‘green Earth and help combat climate change. Founded in 2006, GWC is now compassion.’” Compassion a growing nonprofit organisation whose goal is to plant millions of trees, restoring the ecology and economy of the world’s poorest places. arasch is excited by the little-understood process Bsome scientists call ‘emergence’. “When I put my arasch says the slogan that occurred to him –“It’s amazing what one career on hold, my friends were a little worried that I was Bseed can grow”– has become a kind of animating principle. “The doing nothing. But I told them that I was practising not- “Start with a seed,” says Marc Barasch, first seed was resolving to just start at my kitchen table, to do one small doing, the Taoist strategy of allowing things to unfold, of thing followed by another, to adopt an ethos of openness to who or trusting that patterns emerge from seeming randomness. founder of The Green World Campaign, what might show up.” He was gratified when help materialised, often What seems to be nothing germinates something. through unexpected synchronicities. A philanthropist friend agreed to “Look at a seed: you have to wonder how anything who is pioneering simple and direct ways to act as nonprofit fiscal sponsor. A digital designer from Japan volunteered could possibly emerge from this tiny dot of inert matter to create an elegant website. A retiree from the World Bank started buried in the dirt. But a seed is not so much a physical reforest the Earth. donating time, as did the former manager of an anti-malaria project in object as it is the germ of an idea. It’s the information West Africa. An Indian satellite company began advising Barasch on geospatial monitoring of tree growth. “ t’s amazing what one seed can grow.” With the seed of an idea, Barasch relates how he was once handed a plane ticket Marc Barasch has started a global campaign to help ‘re-green’ to Ethiopia to observe some early pilot projects that the It’s not just about trees. It’s also about the planet. And while the growing manifestation of his vision is Campaign had funded. He stopped off en route in London, reducing“ poverty, even about peacemaking. impressive, his unconventional method of starting an innovative where he was offered housing by a friend of a friend who Iphilanthropic organisation is even more so. turned out to be a environmentalist member of the British ” When I first spoke with him in the spring of 2005, he had recently nobility. Ensconced for a week in a marchioness’s town house, Barasch contained in the seed that mobilises elements in the soil 28 published his fourth major book in an acclaimed series on wholeness, entitled learned from his host about an Ethiopian group that helped Indigenous to join the dance that produces these towering living 29 The Compassionate Life. In the course of his research, he sought out people who forest people to restore their ecosystem. When he was in Addis Ababa, structures. I think that for a person, or an organisation, had made extraordinarily deep commitments of service to others. “I was he looked up the group, and soon they became charter members of the to function like a seed, requires not just action but being struck”, he says, “by the joy they took in living from the heart.” Green World Campaign. receptive to the universe’s inherent intelligence. When his mother developed a terminal illness in the midst of his “I’ve been choosing projects that take a genuinely holistic approach,” “If we trust that there is something within each of book tour, it accelerated his own personal change. “My mom was a real Barasch says. “This particular group, MELCA (Movement for Ecological us, within each situation, that already knows how to giver,” he says. “In her final days, I realised that I’d searched the world Learning and Community Action), turned out to be a hub of the African unfold itself, that just needs light and nourishment, we for examples of altruism, but I’d had one at the breakfast table as I was Biodiversity Network. They strengthen forest peoples’ ability to be potentiate almost magical creative forces. growing up.” His mother had left him with a small inheritance, enough natural stewards of the land, encourage elders to teach schoolchildren “The poet Rilke once addressed God in this way: ‘As a to live for a year, and he “felt moved to use it to ‘give back to the world’, traditional knowledge, create maps of sacred sites and rare species, and tiny seed, you sleep in what is small; and in the vast, you as a way of honouring my mother and the people that I had met along help protect Indigenous land rights. They also partner with villages to vastly yield yourself.’ The planet has arrived at an epochal my path.” plant trees in sustainable ways. Our pilot projects with them and other crossroads, a tipping point. Maybe we are all seeds being Barasch began what he thought of as an experiment: “I decided groups planted 100,000 trees in Ethiopia.” summoned to awake and ‘vastly yield ourselves’. To start I’d treat this juncture in my life as a blank canvas, sketch an intention Not long after Barasch returned, he happened to go to a party at the small, right where we are, but dream big. I see the Green to achieve some good, and let life paint it in.” He took a hiatus from environmentalist Paul Hawken’s house and met associates of a Mexican World Campaign as a way to plant a seed of spirit in the writing, making a practice of answering invitations without asking too organisation called Naturalia, which was working in surprisingly similar soil of the world. From my own experience, once that many questions, just to see where they would lead. A day before he ways. “Naturalia was helping villages of the native peoples to restore seed is planted and cared for, it’s not unrealistic to expect was to return home from a trip to Los Angeles, a philanthropist friend their local ecology through tree-planting. They were getting schoolkids something marvellous to come up.” invited him to meet some people who had been planting trees in the involved, protecting biodiversity, and mobilising the public to replant developing world. Barasch found himself fascinated by a presentation on the hills around Mexico City.” They, too, viewed their work as putting For more information visit www.greenworld.org agroforestry, a system of planting trees and crops together, dating back spiritual principles into practice, and were, in effect, a mirror image of to the ancient Mayans. This synergistic method, he learned, produces MELCA half a world away. Marc Ian Barasch has written an award-winning series of books on a wealth of benefits, not only for the soil and the local communities “I felt I was discovering a self-emergent movement. I saw how the wholeness: The Healing Path; Remarkable Recovery; Healing that depend on it, but also for the planet as a whole: each tree planted GWC could help form a network of people who were combining Dreams; and The Compassionate Life. He created the Emmy- sequesters a ton of carbon in its lifetime. holistic concepts with hands-on ways to help people and planet.” winning environmental special One Child, One Voice, broadcast It is an age-old practice. “The first Western visitors to the Amazon”, Barasch’s approach is an extension of the definition of compassion he through CNN’s global affiliates to an audience of two billion people. Barasch notes, “didn’t recognise that these Indigenous systems were suggests in his book: “realising that everything is inextricably connected even agriculture. Instead of cleared fields planted in neat rows, here were to everything else, and being willing to act on that knowledge”. Amanda Pisani is former Editor-in-Chief of Science of Mind trees, crops and herbs grown together in natural accord. Vast deposits of This is reflected in his own integral approach: “It’s not just about magazine and is now a freelance writer and editor.

Marc speaking in LA PHOTOGRAPH: KSENIYA FEDOROVA

62 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 63 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide REGULARS

NATURE WRITING • J O H N M O AT John Moat introduces the intimate writing of Peter Please, whose meditations on an “ordinary” place Nature writing extend our own knowledge of the living world.

A white orchid in the meadow at Clattinger Farm PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY STEVE COVEY/FLICKR

eter Please tells us that he backsides of baby elephants. I see old winter’s shell, in a torpor. I often wonder he was a storyteller in schools, museums way, as fixed as any badger on its nightly I like the way the worlds cross over if we 30 was influenced, above all, familiars, the yellow swarming fly, not in how seasonal or self-induced this is. I and woodlands. He has been made an foraging. I stopped at the pool in the elbow let them – the childish with the formal; 31 by W. H. Hudson, whom he vast numbers but in ones and twos, sandy find it hard to loosen this pen, let down Honorary Bard by the Druidic Gorsedd of two fields, by the five-bar gate, the the poet with the expert; insects and cities; describes as “that great traveller- in the sun and hoppers on land. The jet- this winter’s drawbridge. I am still frozen of Caer Baddon. He has written novels, cattle trough, the end of the field where the sceptic and the campaigner; knowing naturalist,P the quintessential traveller black fuselage, shiny and big against the with little to give or feel. I am hundreds and the remarkable Holine trilogy, journals the fritillaries grow, and other places. They and not knowing and not caring if we fail. in little things. He was always in search yellow pollen fields, must be the picture- of years old at the moment. I don’t know of his wandering and travel. And most had different moods and elements, and I These strange juxtapositions bring back of the ordinary – such as birdsong, old winged fly (Sepsis fulgens); they walk like what’s happening in my life. The insects recently Clattinger, which is a… well, let recorded them in my journals. I made a the familiar to view. hawthorn trees, city and rural peoples – ants paddling their wings. Still shiny are only interested in the flowers, none him tell you: history of places that people pass by, and “So this is a playful book of poetic yet through his vision helped to give back green-bottles, washed-out “Clattinger is so ordinary, I say to likewise of my responses. I liked this time sketches, my own sign/sing/nature of to us an aesthetic for the commonplace.” house flies, dreary dung others. Every day of the week you would out, but I won’t say from the real world. Nature, of twenty-six new words to record A Nature Writer isn’t someone who flies, a tiny ichneumon, A Nature Writer isn’t someone pass it by; a few flat fields, some enclosure There was a lot here more real than that. what I found. There just aren’t enough writes about Nature, but someone who, a striking solitary bee who“ writes about Nature, but hedgerows, a few big trees. There is “And what did I find? The fool in me, words to describe the inside moments of by making accessible to us a first-time all slink or hobble into nothing to attract your attention. This for sure. I buttered no parsnips. I fed the our lives – yet all the time I have been experience of the living world in its view. Hoverflies, broad- someone who, by making accessible jewel is not given easily. child that loved to meander, not follow looking at the real world, what’s in front being, extends our territory. He or she, headed, fat wafer bodies to us a first-time experience of the “I, like others, had seen the green- signposts. I remembered the joy of of me. The graffiti is developed from my always by way of a unique heart-register, with horse-riding legs, winged orchids in their thousands. I discovery, like seeing the way a grass-blade handwriting, illegible even to myself. I draws the receptive reader into the present work methodically at each living world in its being, extends our had never seen anything like it. I kept speared dew drops, the smallest at the exaggerated it until it had a life of its own. and ever-new presence of Nature. That catkin; the honey bees territory. going back. I went in every season, in top, the fattest at the bottom; identifying Instamori – the little death between moults, said, I don’t know any writer more able frantically fill their honey the rain, the fog, when the grass was insects such as the sunfly with its totemic the space between. This feels like one of than Please to convey us into the stillness, bags. I notice the solitary ” scrubbed clean and the flowers were yellow stripes. I liked my private, hidden those moments.” the breathing imminence of what may bee again, more rufous, quick flying in venture into the woody interior of Salix only a memory. Although it is carefully world and by some transmission I liked sometimes be a quite extraordinary a straight line. An independent character. caprea ‘Pendula’. When the clouds come, managed, Clattinger Farm (SSSI) is one of the hidden meanings I found in Nature. Clattinger: An Alphabet of Signs from Nature byway of the land – fermenting the This is the opening of the insect year only the yellow swarming flies remain.” the few wildlines where nothing is sown “I felt wonderfully foolish doing by Peter Please is available from commonplace into experience we will when salix is in flower, as ivy is the door (Upton Cheney, 21st March 1992) or planted. Here everything has arrived absolutely nothing. I was alone in my www.peteralfredplease.co.uk never forget. For instance: which closes it in winter. by chance. Not like the fields of wheat world and this heightened the sense of “Frantic burrowing of insects make me “A two-spot ladybird closely resembles lease worked in English and Scottish and mustard grass which have to pay my uniqueness, my right to exist, yet John Moat is a poet, painter and writer. His most stop by this strange weeping salix. The the nutty sheaves of the catkins. The Pjournalism before training as an their way. paradoxically all the while I felt myself to be recent book, The Best (Including Quite hefty baseline of a queen bumblebee says dung fly is nut brown, brackish green as organic gardener at Findhorn in the mid- “I went alone with my journal. I walked attached by invisible strings to everything the Worst) of Didymus, is available for that the nectar is flowing. The bumblebees a country gentleman with short brown seventies. Then he worked for a while in the margins of these fields perhaps two that I could see – roots and snipe and oak – purchase at £7.99 from www.resurgence.org are almost as big as catkins and have the corduroys. I, alone, still feel tight in my therapeutic gardening. During the 1990s dozen times, every time going the same and that meant that I could never be alone. www.johnmoat.co.uk

58 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 59 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide REGULARS A SENSE OF PLACE • JAMES EVERETT KIBLER hand-tooled leather bindings, faded ink signatures and the nemesis of the commodifiers. Committing oneself pencilled annotations strive to tell stories, and often to a well-loved place is one of the oldest covenants succeed. I gather the books together. Some were pillaged of civilised people. It is a primary enemy of so-called in 1865. Others at sister plantations were dispersed in progress as defined by the materialists of industry, and of that and various other ways. I bring them home. promoters, marketers, and other such hucksters. In letters and snippets of diaries, ledgers and bills of purchase and sale, in wills and inventories for probate, in agricultural censuses, in interviews with the oldest survivors on the land, in iron-enclosed grave plots deep in thick forests, in crumbled moss-covered brick mounds that mark old home sites, the picture slowly emerges of who and what we were. It is the record of my kin on the land and of their neighbours and community. It is a story assembled out of fragments into a base strong and solid enough to build upon and sustain those who dwell thereupon. Like the worn stones of Irish round towers, the story speaks sense of place of foundations, solid building blocks to lay in courses as the stonemasons do in the stonecutter’s art.

e rightfully speak so often today of sustainability in a world of finite and diminishing resources, W Greenwich Barn PHOTOGRAPH: JILL ENFIELD but few sound the need to anchor the world in stories of well-loved places that have their own way of sustaining. Stability is the essence of their design. ate was indeed right: the task of the civilised To love a place well, one has to know it well: its history, Tintelligence is perpetual salvage. If the planet is to its flora and fauna, both the certainties and caprices of its continue to sustain us, that must be a primary mission seasons, its deep traditions, the land in night and day and embarked upon quietly but resolutely. To be civilised the creatures that move there, often silently and unseen. is to focus attention on the smallest dooryard things White Room PHOTOGRAPH: JILL ENFIELD Patient and slow observation is a key to that knowing, of home, to defend them against greed, exploitation close-seeing and careful rumination upon it. To know and abuse, to cherish them, sacrifice for them, and 32 that place well, one has to live there over a long duration, hopefully pass them on to the succeeding generation 33 preferably of generations. unbroken and perhaps even strengthened against future fracturings. ne of the besetting sins of the day is alienation, Creating a heaven on Perpetual Salvage Odisconnection from community, land, place and Earth is too big a task for the tradition. Another is the isolation that results. These both finite mind of mortal man, To be civilised is to focus lead to fragmentation of the individual psyche into shards but as far as it is possible attention“ on the smallest Patience and slow observation are key to knowing a place well. reminiscent of the splintered china pieces I find under it will first be a matter of foot. But one of the words not often mentioned in the revering and protecting the dooryard things of home... And to know a place well and to love it is the basis of sustainability. malaise called Modernism is ‘deracination’. Perhaps we all smallest dooryard things. take rootlessness so much for granted that we move at In my opinion, it will most ” a whim as a matter of course without even thinking. It certainly not be a product of the pavers of the world, the has become a defining feature of modern life. Everything real-estate developers, industry, chambers of commerce, llen Tate, that famous ‘fugitive-agrarian’, wrote times that was the basis for a sister plantation’s evening seems to be in frantic motion or on wheels, even our government think-tanks, and big plans, big ideas, big in 1948 that the task of the civilised intelligence entertainments on the pianoforte, harp and guitar. I houses. We pick up and relocate capriciously, going where outlays of cash, and big and bigger schemes. is perpetual salvage. I have found that the culture know from letters extant in the family who lived there the more lucrative job is or where the most economically Abstraction is the arch-enemy of dooryard things. The of the American South, tattered though it may that in February 1865 the delicate pianoforte was kicked advantageous retirement site happens to be. old-fashioned rose that Great-grandmother planted at beA by a war on its own soil that claimed more lives by to pieces and the mother-of-pearl-inlaid Spanish guitar Wendell Berry, that wise essayist-novelist-poet of the back door never ceases to surprise each spring after percentage than the societies engaged in the world wars, that played these notes was dashed by soldiers against Kentucky, who tills the soil in the county of his birth and a bleak winter with its modest pastels and fragrance. Its still exhibits its vestiges most literally beneath my feet. I a tree. The musical instruments were cruelly destroyed knows his place about as well as human can, has defined faithful coming over the years bears its own testimony that live and write in a two-centuries-old plantation house in before the eyes of the women of the house. ‘abuse’ for us in the most telling way – abuse, whether abstractionists can never fathom. Its fragile petals put all their the county of my birth in South Carolina. There, shards My home once had its own pianoforte, and no doubt of people, resources or land. “Use without love is abuse,” bad big ideas to shame. It is heaven on Earth enough for me. of the past rise to the top of the soil in broken pearl-ware the same melodies sounded there. As I brought the he declares. The wise saying of the ancient Greeks is pertinent here and pieces, feather-edged china, transfer-ware dishes, bits and volume home, its pages yielded more than music when Deracination, which prevents an intimate knowledge might bear repeating in this restless time: “As deep our roots pieces of glass that served in their time and still come to a young friend resurrected the songs on her harp and of place, leads inexorably to abuse of people, resources in Earth, so high our branches to the sky.” remind us of the hands that touched them and the dramas hummed the melodies no doubt unheard for a century and place. Staying put on the land more often than not these people lived out. and a half. has the opposite effect; that is why it is not encouraged James Everett Kibler is the author of Our Fathers’ Fields, winner Just last week I reclaimed from an antique dealer a Books from the library at the great house, scattered by the powers that be. It makes abuse more difficult and of the Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for Nonfiction and the well-used collection of sheet music from antebellum now for so many years, turn up here and there. Their prevents commodification for quick profit. Tradition is Southern Heritage Society’s Literary Achievement Award.

48 Resurgence No. 256 September/October 2009 Resurgence No. 256 September/October 2009 49 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide REGULARS SLOW TRAVEL • STEPHANIE STRONG

have me signed up in theory. I love to travel Of course, all of this, safe on land AS THe WATeRS around us turned from but of late I had been feeling disenchanted in Devon, had been the theory. Now, slate grey to deep blue, we approached with what travel does to the planet. I was on this steel colossus facing the open the long, hot coast. The warm breeze suffering from a bad case of carbon guilt, ocean, I was staring into the face of was now a constant. Dolphins came and my long-haul days were looking theory put into practice. Along with to race the bow of the ship in pods of numbered. four other passengers and twenty-seven twenty or more, and in the distance So when the opportunity came up to Swedish sailors, I was at the start of an the black backs of whales surfaced and fulfil a lifelong dream to go to Africa, adventure that would take me from the dived. Before me lay a coast that had naturally I leapt at it – but this time I grey docks of Tilbury, London, all the way seen colonialism, slavery, Islam and wondered if it were possible to get there round the top-western corner of France Christianity, missionaries, tradesmen, without the carbon footprint to match. I and down through the Bay of Biscay, to armies and nomads, all trekking across had dreamed of going to Africa ever since finally hug close and journey around the the long, dusty, yellow dunes to the slow travel I was a child, even going to university to magnificent, shimmering coast of Africa. scudding tides of the Atlantic. study the exotic continent for three years It was scheduled to take two weeks and, With Africa now close enough to without ever having seen it. Now, finally, in the changing climate of late April, touch, we took in some port-stops PHOTOGRAPH: ROBERT HARDING PICTURE LIBRARY LTD/ALAMY HARDING PICTURE LIBRARY ROBERT PHOTOGRAPH: after ten years of anticipation, my chance would take me from the end of the cold – a brilliant doorway to the shining had arrived. I planned to do voluntary northern winter to the end of the hot, dry continent. In Dakar, the broken spires of service in Northern Ghana, planting summer of West Africa. mosques mingled with shabby markets. trees and learning about Dagaare culture. Once we were out alone on the ocean, In Cotonou, giant snails the size of Inspired by the writings of Malidoma the sense of having entered a different my hand crawled through pyramids Patrice Somé, I was interested in a culture world was all-embracing. The space was of wicker baskets, and voodoo stalls that placed trees as the highest form of dizzying, infinite. It stretched out before teetered under the weight of the heads of consciousness, followed by animals, crocodiles, snakes and monkeys. In followed, of course, by humans. Lagos, we sailed downriver into the Humans, naturally, came lowest on Slow Travel is travel for the heart of the city, seeing the reflection the evolutionary rung. Now here was travel“ connoisseur. of our giant white ship on gleaming a culture to learn from. skyscrapers on the right, whilst tiny Research came to my rescue, and ” fishermen waved to us from their the site www.seat61.com. Cargo boats still us, in the distance grey storms sweeping coracles and island huts on our left. take the long-haul trip round Europe and heavily from one side to another, only Later at night, I swam in phosphorescent 34 down to the coast of West Africa. Here was to reveal great shining patches of light waters that mirrored the stars above 35 the chance to actually feel the transition that beckoned like the Elysian fields. us, and afterwards watched my stark from the northern latitudes to the tropics, Other days, cloud-shadows would race moonshadow painted on the deck, felt to witness the changing ocean and wildlife, each other to paint turquoise and indigo the warm breeze blowing over me, and to see the coastlines of countries along the shadows, patchworked and jigsawed, listened to the mysterious sound of way. To go from the north to the south by in endless racing brushstrokes. Though silence. Above me, stars were scattered boat was the way travellers had arrived each day was different, the ocean across the sky like a flung handful of in Africa for thousands of years. It was seemed oblivious to our enormous metal sparkling water droplets. Beneath them, the kind of journey of which one of my megalith. Through the vast expanse of standing on the gently swaying deck of Where the desert meets the Atlantic ocean – Skeleton Coast Park, Namibia heroes, Chatwin, Brody or Theroux, would sky, only flocks of birds accompanied us, the Grande Argentina, I could almost feel the be proud. Of course, short of walking, heading, like me, across unknown waters world turning. swimming or riding a horse, getting from to distant lands. When we arrived in Accra, Ghana, I eaving London at night, the cool breeze A to Z anywhere nowadays comes with a felt the adventure that lay before me with brushing my cheeks, it was almost carbon footprint, and the slow boat was I WAITeD exCITeDlY for the first sight growing anticipation and excitement, Limpossible to imagine the searing heat no different. At least by travelling as a of land. It is one of the peculiarities of but also not a little sadness. Although I of Africa that waited for me at the other passenger, I reasoned, I would be hitching travelling by sea, though, that I felt Africa was thrilled to see Africa, I wasn’t sure I Sahara’s end of the voyage. It was late May, and I a lift – a barnacle to the freighter’s whale. before I saw it. As we sailed out of the Bay was quite ready to leave my sea adventure was standing on the deck of a 57,000-ton of Biscay, a week after leaving Europe, a behind. It had given me the opportunity freighter bound for Ghana. Thirteen storeys BY NOW, THOUGH, something else was warm wind came first, followed by a subtle to truly arrive, with all parts of myself, up, and I was higher on a boat than I had growing inside of me that had begun to changing scent on the breeze, of spices, not just a suitcase and a mind left behind Eternal ever been in a building. The lights and dark covertly overtake the ethics of my journey. of sand, a distant awareness of impossible in England. Slow Travel, I had found, shapes of the Docklands drifted past silently, Simply put, something about the idea of heat. I was out on the deck, but could not is what real travel is all about – being the only noise the occasional shattering boom Slow Travel had enchanted me. Going by stop the irresistible urge of my body to present, feeling alive, and most of all, of the ship’s horn reverberating through the boat, train, camel or donkey spoke to me turn eastwards to identify the source. There allowing yourself enough time to fall in Mirror emptiness of the Thames. of old-fashioned travel, of romance. More on the horizon rose up a single yellow love with difference, every moment. Slow Travel was something of a new concept than just carbon reduction, Slow Travel shimmering line that forever gouged itself “At least by travelling as a passenger, I to me, and on hearing about it deep in the is a philosophy, a way of life, a way of into my imagination. It was the Sahara – as Stephanie Strong travelled to Ghana with reasoned, I would be hitching a lift wilds of Devon a few months before, I had laying yourself open to the unexpected. seen from the sea – a baking, eternal mirror Grimaldi Freighters. Further information on swilled it round like a new wine, tasting it, Slow Travel, it increasingly seemed to me, it was possible to see from many miles away. international travel by freighter can be found at – a barnacle to the freighter’s whale.” testing it out. Of course, it didn’t take much to is travel for the travel connoisseur. I breathed in my first sight of Africa. www.seat61.com

52 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 53 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide ARTST H E& ACRAFTS R T S WORLD MUSIC • M A R K K I D E L Music and Place 36 37 Has the dislocation of ‘world’ music from its context in community and place led to multicultural mediocrity? PHOTOGRAPH: TRevOR eALeS TRevOR PHOTOGRAPH: Siyaya perform at WOMAD 2008 n the late 1970s, when rock music I recall the thrill of first sampling us admitting that we were a little bored much to choose from but the quality was often get the audience to sing or dance and jewellery, as well as books and CDs. had become a little too pompous ethnomusicological recordings on the with rock and that it was African or Asian superb: from the miraculous Dagar Brothers along and there was undeniable charm in for its own good, the adventurous French label Ocora and then hearing music that really excited us. We were by no of India to the tempestuous Drummers of the proceedings – albeit imbued with a HOWEVER MUCH I value and enjoy aficionado had, broadly speaking, the Master Musicians of Jajouka when means alone, and when this conversation Burundi and from The Beat to Les Musiciens touch of self-consciousness and the naive WOMAD and similar festivals, I have felt Itwo ways out: the do-it-yourself three- they were brought to the UK in 1980 and others grew, a few years later, into du Nil. At each subsequent festival, artistic excitement aroused by exotic novelty. uncomfortable, at times, being there. chord frenzy of punk – an energy- by pioneering promoter Rikki Stein. It WOMAD (World of Music and Dance), the director Thomas Brooman came up with WOMAD followed the example of It is a weird kind of malaise, not least fuelled retreat from over-sophistication was as if we were being exposed, as we first British festival devoted to music from delights to blast our ears open: Youssou camping-based rural festivals, re-creating as it is mixed up with real excitement, and commercialism – or the exploration sat entranced at the feet of these master around the world, there was no doubting N’Dour one year, the Bhundu Boys another for a weekend the feel of a village. The ethnic a kind of guilt perhaps and all kinds of of music from other cultures. Not that technicians of Moroccan musical healing, that this was a new movement, which and the show-stopping virtuosity of Nusrat market at WOMAD was always a crucial other complicated feelings. I had first felt Balinese gamelan, Sufi qawwali singing or the to the ancient taproots of the music we had would soon adopt the somewhat clumsy Fateh Ali Khan, to name but a few. element of the event, providing guilt-free something of this unease when I travelled soukous rhythms of dance music from Zaire grown up with: jazz, blues and rock. label of ‘world music’. From the start the festival took education and ‘culturally correct’ shopping therapy to Morocco in 1982, just before WOMAD were as simple as they first appeared, but I remember bumping into Peter Gabriel At the first WOMAD festival at Shepton very seriously: there were workshops in for mostly anti-consumerist festival- was created, in search of sounds to rival there was a freshness there that appealed to at a Talking Heads concert in London Mallet in 1982, the organisers had booked which artists put their music in context or goers. There were unusual imported the brilliance of the Musicians of Jajouka. the jaded ears of a generation. at the end of the seventies and both of acts with insatiable eagerness. There was too talked about their instruments. They would clothes and fabrics, musical instruments I wrote about this trip in Resurgence, a

42 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 Resurgence No. 255 July/August 2009 43 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide ARTST H E& ACRAFTS R T S

to his evident dark humour. He is working during a period the rich and the poor. It is in such works that Banksy when the public in general feel alienated from elected seems to be most effective. We are needled into a state of representatives and discontented with many aspects of alertness, of shame even. the establishment. Banksy has sparked the traces of their The ironic, idyllic paintings of beach play on the dissidence. He provokes smiles at a bleak time. segregation wall in Palestine, like the edgiest work Banksy has made in cities, seem to me to be the strongest work. anksy originally seemed to be challenging the If we are moved when confronted by our unconscious Bconventions of the art world, but the editions of acceptance of malevolent change, whether it is the bullish spray-painted stencilled canvases, the approval of Damien tactics of the Israelis or the slide to a surveillance society Hirst, who has collected his work, and the scramble in Britain, then Banksy has succeeded. If part of what art by the ‘fashionable set’ to scoop it up point more and can do is to make us consider the world differently, then more to Banksy’s acceptance of some aspects of these these works are powerful in that sense. conventions. If Banksy is to hold on to the radical ground It could be argued that the humour of other works he once commanded, he needs to keep undertaking risky might lead his fans to the more serious imagery but I think interventions on our streets. they lead to dilution. The vast pink ‘BORING’ sprayed by The street-art movement is well over thirty years old; fire extinguisher over one of the blank façades of the indeed, forms of graffiti can be found as drawings and Southbank Centre by the Thames in London is pretty writing from Roman times onwards. In 1979 John much as dull as Banksy gets. It’s a modernist building Fekner stencilled the Pulaski Bridge in New York City that gained that kind of comment from its inception, so with the slogan ‘Wheels Over Indian Trails’, making an apart from reflecting a popular view, the act of doing it acute reference to the marginalised and dispossessed is itself a bit of a yawn. Indigenous people. London saw the Free George Davis campaign use painted slogans in the same decade anksy has caught the public mood. People are to huge effect as tall buildings were scaled to bring Bdelighted by his gift of a major exhibition to the city injustice to notice. In Paris Blek le Rat continues to stencil of Bristol. In his best work he stirs things up, unsettles consciousness-raising images on the streets, as he has us and exposes. But he has become an organisation, and done since 1981. the danger of that is in the risk of losing a sense of clarity Banksy is quick to acknowledge Blek le Rat’s influence, and the edge of radical quality. but his own ambitions have moved him towards the mainstream. There is a sense that the co-operation with Andy Christian is a writer and art consultant. galleries, the prints, the merchandise and the move 38 to humorous gallery installations are a distraction. 39 Works by Banksy Something about the idea of the sale of ‘street art’ and the evidence of a productive and protective organisation STREET ART • ANDY CHRISTIAN around Banksy is unsettling. The Bristol show was called Banksy versus Bristol Museum – but there was no evidence of struggle. This was Banksy in the museum with all their help and co-operation. Paintings by ‘A Local Artist’ were substituted in rows of Has the commodification of Banksy’s BANKSY conventional rural landscapes, and the ‘Local Artist’ had added burnt-out cars to rather badly painted pastiche landscapes. Other well-known works were wittily art taken the edge off his work? ‘adjusted’ but the inclination was for sensation rather than subtlety. Unarguably visitors were drawn to look at ubversive, witty, cultish, street-wise, satirical, chatted with their neighbours in the line. They were other works as they engaged in the game of ‘hunt the activist: these among others are words that seek there sharing a common curiosity. This was a museum Banksy’ but I was left feeling that many of his offerings to define the artist called Banksy. He delights in queue like no other: waiting to see the work of a graffiti were a bit light-weight. denying descriptions of himself just as he ducks artist lauded by critics and exhibiting work in a place Caged models of animals delighted children and some attemptsS at establishing his identity. What is undeniable is where not so long ago he would have smuggled it in and adults. A hen watched as her chicken-nugget chicks that he has created a cultural chemistry that has engaged placed it on illicit display. pecked at a dish; witty at best but hardly something to the public: up to 6,000 people each day queued for three Banksy was probably relishing it all. But was this make a complex sculpture about. Similarly, a leopard- hours or more to get into his exhibition in the Bristol exhibition compromising the principles of street art? It skin coat wagged its tail from its perch on a branch. They City Museum and Art Gallery, this summer. was certainly a long way from the sharp ‘stencil art’ made left no mystery, raised no really new issues, and work on His audience ranged from parents with infants to by the lone urban guerrilla graffiti artist he once was, a single level. It felt like entertainment, even if it was of people well into their senior years; local residents giving rise to the question of whether his ‘anonymity’ is a waspish kind. coming to celebrate this ‘son of their city’, and those merely part of a deliberate stance to enhance the mystery. In the aisles of the ground floor, casts of famous statues magnetised from afar by his mythology. There were It would be all too easy to romanticise Banksy’s work. had been replaced by altered works. Michelangelo’s David whole family groups whose teenagers are normally I think he has been both lucky and canny. Because his had become a suicide bomber, and others had been disengaged as they obsessively text friends, but in this stencilled images usually first appear on the street, people turned into a compulsive shopper and a bag lady. There enormous queue teenage eyes were engaged as they are attracted to his daring, to his illegal interventions and were acute reminders of the widening gap between

50 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 Resurgence No. 257 November/December 2009 51 Resurgence Writers’ Guide Resurgence Writers’ Guide at the heart of earth, art and spirit

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