End of Suburbia

Many of you will probably have already picked up that the documentary End of Suburbia is now available free to view on YouTube. I'm sure you'd rather watch it there, so the above is just a promo trailer.

I personally am now rather looking forward to the sequel Escape from Suburbia. But I'd much rather see a UK based documentary looking at these issues and possible solutions. If we're going to take thinking locally and bottom-up action seriously, local media is also essential.


The Ecovillage film being made by Undercurrents which I mentioned a couple of posts back is one example of this (a promo extract of this is viewable above), but I think we need a mixed ecology, offering many different options and ideas.

Design for sustainable Living - Now!

This weekend I completed my Permaculture Design Course, a fantastic experience. I met some really great people – those teaching on the course, people we met on various visits (including OrganicLea, Growing Communities, Wholewoods, Soteriologic) and those fellow travellers attending. I’d like to send out a big thank you to everybody, many new friendships have been formed over the last few weeks, and long may they continue.

I did the course with Naturewise in North London, and I highly recommend them. They are running more courses in 2007:


Introductory Weekends:

"provide a taste of what permaculture has to offer you and others both in theory and practice"

Holland Park 27/28 January

Hornsey Rise 31 March/1 April

Hornsey Rise 28/29 April

Hornsey Rise 26/27 May

Hornsey Rise 30 June/1 July

Hornsey Rise 25/26 August

Full Accredited Permaculture Design Course:

7 alternate weekends starting 1/2 September 2007

I feel that the alternate weekend approach is much more successful than the "2 weeks away" approach which is how many other PDC courses run. It is certainly easier to fit into working life, but it also provides time for reflection and for ideas to bed down, for new queries and confusions to be raised and answered.

For more information and to book places you should contact the wonderful Nicole:

08454582871 or samsara1964 [at] hotmail [dot] com.

Also you can check the Naturewise site to get a better sense of activities and the Naturewise vision.

Climate Change March

Just had my pictures from the Climate Change March processed. Above is the American Embassy, where it all began with speeches by George Monbiot, Caroline Lucas, Zach Goldsmith et al.


Here are the marchers leaving Grosvenor Square, through the tiny corner exit.


A bubble rising over Picadilly Circus.

Watched from the sky, by the ever vigilant authorities!

Life in the Round

Hot on the heels of my talk about “inhabited geometry” it was great to see these pictures of Tony Wrench’s roundhouse at Brithdir Mawr, which the ever alert Keith alerted me to. They are part of a series on housing and ways of life in the UK, so make a synchronous follow on from my recent musings.

Keith, Helen and I are were privileged to meet Tony and visit his roundhouse early this year during our Permaculture Introductory Course with Angie Polkey. I didn’t notice it until we were about 6 feet away, so take it from me – it blends in with its surroundings!

The photos on the BBC site are great and really communicate something of the magic of the place, they certainly bring back good memories.

Tony is involved with the Lammas project which intends to create a safe, low-impact settlement in West Wales. The alternative media outlet Undercurrents have been following developments at Lammas, and you can see video coverage of how things are going with the Ecovillage on their site. The footage is planned to reappear in a DVD launched next year called Living in the Future, about self builders and eco-villagers.

My attempt to engage with Web 2.0

The 5 Questions

I’ve been reading a fair bit of Derrick Jensen’s work recently (as have my compadres Mark and Keith). It has been an interesting mind bath, that’s taken off some dirty thinking I’d missed earlier and revealed some sores that are sensitive to the hot water of his thought.

Keith has had some interesting thoughts on Jensen and his attitudes towards religion (is his tarring of all faiths with one brush a weakness in his usual incisive analysis?), and of course the question of violence is an ever present one. Jeff Vail’s “Derrick Jensen vs. the Dalai Lama” is a good starting point for that discussion.

A comment from Keith on the availability or no of video showing Jensen (we feel the need to see someone, to hear them) sent me off to find the above clip on YouTube/GooTube, and this and this on it’s daddy Google Video. The GooTube clip has Jensen asking you 5 questions and is part of the series put out by Dropping Knowledge.

Also some audio of Jensen available here.