What an Incredible day with live music, talks about how to save the world and lots of fun at the Green Village in Ceres Brunswick.
What an inspiring journey for Degrowth Network Australia in Melbourne, we did have a picnic, talk about ecology, co-housing, alternative transport, Indigenous perspectives, non extractive economies and much more!
What an inspiring weekend, spending it in Ceres and with a great group of exceptional humans, creating for change, doing activism in the areas they are most passionate about and converging in a movement that reshapes the system in which we are involved: A super individualistic society based on consumerism, versus what we experience on Sunday. We did have free food, rescued from Catalyst at Coburg North. Also free clothes, and a Degrowth Library.
We had a sew and mend group. We also had a beautiful table, full of seeds, ready to plant, native species, vegetables, and seedlings, sharing the power of life and the knowledge about them. Then we opened a conversation space, which I organized based on my personal Green Riot project. This time, we covered the food system extensively, in a panel discussion called Bringing food systems back to communities and neighborhoods.
In this space I told my personal story of how I came to Degrowth, Permaculture and why my passion for the food system. Participating in the discussion panel were Henri Muniz, Urban Farmer at Dowms Community Farm, Charlie, uni student and dumpster diver and Adam Bells, volunteer coordinator at Open Table. The conversation led them to talk about food waste, food as medicine, growing food, the reality of industrial farming, how to start a systemic change in this field, and what are our dreams about decentralising food systems. The answers were sharp:
Adam: End industrial farming, excessive waste and packaging.
Charlie: More education about food waste and stop stigmatising people who rescue food.
Henri: Grow your own food, learn, enjoy it and join a local community garden.
We also had a great an intimate space talking about co-housing, and the amazing community of Urban Coup, came a long to tell us a normal Sunday for them, thanks Alex Fernside to inspire us to create our own Urban Coup and why not, to escalate that impact to other areas, like the food systems! In the following picture Alex Fernside, cofounder of Urban Coup.
Also Nick Rose from Sustain Australia, was there, talking about the latest politics involved to change politics and procedures about food chain, and he was interviewing a volunteer about community garden experience in Vancouver.
Amazing Tonie, was talking about Critical Mass, and how we should use more bike and demand a safer infrastructure to stimulate a less dependency from fossil fuel sources.
Before to close the space we did a sharing circle,
where we talked about what was most significant for us on the day, and food security and growing food was one of the most mentioned topics, along with cohousing and all the conflicts around renting and living in share houses, which is why intentional communities appear as a great solution to these situations.
Thanks to everyone who participated that day, for those interested in Degrowth, you are more than welcome to check Anitra Nelsons's books and research about grassroots movements are living degrowth, and I highly recommend Nick Rose books about food and community.
All the pictures here, I took them after my talk, let me know if you want to use them, I would love to be tagged, as the author.
Thanks for this write up. I couldn't attend, but was glad to hear of the event running and wanted to know what had happened.