Last year we were invited to contribute a chapter to the forthcoming book, Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices, to be published by Routledge later this year. Although, let’s not count on anything like that occurring.
We called our chapter, ‘Replacing growth with belonging economies: a neopeasant response’. We completed it in November.
Due to the times we’re living we offer it here as a film. It’s our most significant collaborative writing project since our book, The Art of Free Travel. (If you’re a subscriber and reading this in your inbox, you won’t see the below video, so here’s a link to it).
Replacing growth with belonging economies
Lived, written and spoken by Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman
Text editing by Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards
Sound by Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman (assisted by Jordan Osmond)
Video editing and seven drawings by Patrick Jones (the second, third and fourth are in collaboration with David Holmgren)
Photographs and footage by Artist as Family, David Jablonka, Nina Sahraoui, Mara Ripani, Michelle Dunn, Thomas Dorleans, Michal Krawczyk, Giulia Lepori, Nicholas Walton-Healey, Ponch Hawkes, Gab Connole, Zac Imhoof, Anthony Petrucci, Jordan Osmond, Jason Workman, Ian Robertson and David Holmgren
Soundtrack: A place of simple feeding – a poem-recipe by Patrick Jones, arranged and performed by Anthony Petrucci
Gift Ecology Films
Shared under a creative commons license/non-commercial
an Artist as Family home production
Please let us know about your own transition from hypertechnocivility
In March of this year, Jordan and Antoinette from Happen Films came and spent a few days with us to talk ideas, share food and labours, and film us going about our daily makings. The result is this beautiful short video, Creatures of Place.
If you are reading this in your inbox, you will need to click through to our blog to view it. And if you haven’t seen their films, we highly recommend you check them out.
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In other news:
* For those interested in seeing up close how we live you can now book for one of our spring house and garden tours.
*And for those wanting to hear the audio version of Patrick’s re:)Fermenting culture you can now listen by clicking on the ‘pop out’ on the sidebar, or listen to it on our YouTube channel.
*Thanks to everybody who applied for our first three Permaculture Living Courses (PLCs). We received over 50 applications, which were all inspiring to read. This has made selecting just 9 people (for the three courses) very challenging. We’ll introduce them to you after the winter break.
For those of you who are out of the loop, Jono is a 25 year old from Newcastle who is facing up to ten years in prison and a $765,000 fine for sending a press release highlighting ANZ’s role in funding the Whitehaven open cut coal mine in north-west NSW. The mine threatens community health and food producing land at Maules Creek, and the health and survival of Koala populations in the Leard State Forest.
We reckon we’re in pretty good company too:
Vandana Shiva
The photo of AaF above was taken by our dear friend Rasha Tayeh. Rasha is, among many things, a documentary filmmaker whose most recent work is The Growing Food Project, a short doco that explores some of Melbourne’s urban agriculture practices and community food initiatives, where people are coming together to build local, fair and sustainable food systems. The film features Patrick’s award winning poem Step by Step.
The film’s premiere is on Wednesday 20th Nov at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) at 7pm.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion of food activists inviting the audience to discuss the benefits of supporting local food systems.
And while on the topic of Patrick’s poetry, a huge congratulations are in order:
Patrick has just completed four years of doctoral research. In a nutshell, Walking for food: regaining permapoesis is:
a biographical thesis that investigates how we might transition to fairer, more just and sustainable communities. It draws on Indigenous knowledges and permaculture modelling in the attempt to demonstrate achievable societal change from the household and community economies out. The thesis contends that modern living is inherently damaging; and on such a scale that personal accountability is degraded. The ecological and social consequences of this are clearly evident, and the thesis challenges us to transition to radically different forms of living where permanent making replaces disposability, and personal accountability is once again performed.
If you’re interested in receiving a PDF of the final draft, please contact us.
And while we’re on the topic of positive and inspiring activists, Perth based singer songwriter Charlie Mgee, AKA Formidable Vegetable Sound System, recently visited the Hepburn Shire during the Swiss Italian Festa where he played a fabulous set of some of his songs from his album, Permaculture: A Rhymer’s Manual.
Charlie’s album focuses on bringing simple concepts of sustainability into the spotlight using the power of music, rhyme and humour to convey the permaculture principles in fresh ways to new audiences. If you get a chance to see Charlie play, we highly recommend you grab it.
And, while on the topic of grabbing: there has been much handlebar grabbing in these here parts as the departure date for our adventure draws near – 6 days!! We have been spotted all over the place as we ride with our panniers fully loaded on practice rides from starboard to port.
If we don’t get a chance to post again for a while, see you on our way up the continent!
Liam wanted to see what a typical week for Artist as Family entails, and what constitutes ‘work’, according to us. Here’s a short vid that snapshots our social warming adventures.
