Sustainable But really !

For the last year Ive become increasingly cross with hearing the word sustainable used in ways that really dont make sense. So after a little bit of thought, and the knowledge that its New Years Day and Im always promising myself Ill blog more here, I thought Id write a bit about what I think sustainable really means.

And maybe I need to explain what leads me to live what I hope is a fairly sustainable life and why.

In 1976, in the middle of that dreadful summer of drought, my mother said to me

"Youll be alive when the oil runs out".

I was 6. I didnt know what that meant but I knew I needed to find out, and so find out I did.

And in my mind that meant, at that age, no cars, no electricity and the need to find alternatives. I remember talking about solar power and wind and water being things that could be used to create power. And I remember thinking that resources were precious, whatever they were, and realising at that early age that Earth wasnt a finite resource if we carried on the way we were.

And then the 1980s happened. The world forgot about the problems and consumerism hit. Thát hard, cold consumerism which seemed so exciting but in actual fact set us on a completely ridiculous road.

Anyway, enough of me. Except to say that all of the above has led me to lead a life where Ive constantly had that tiny phrase in the back of my head, in every thing Ive ever done.

"Youll be alive when the oil runs out".

So what is sustainable?

And actually what is sustainability?

Are they the same?

For me they have to be. A sustainable life is one where you consider your every action, your every purchase. 

Food that travels half way around the world so we can have strawberries at Christmas.

Food distribution systems that mean food grown in the south of the UK, often travels to the Midlands or further, and back, before it lands in stores.

50% of fresh foods ending up in the bin before they even hit the shops.

Cheap clothing being made in sweat shops so we can have more.

Cotton being the crop that worldwide uses the most chemicals than any other.

Continual use of chemicals that have an adverse effect on our pollinators because the companies that make them claim theyre safe.

Monoculture.

Soil degradation

I could go on. 

The point is that none of these things are sustainable. And yet we carry on and ignore the issues. Its just the way it is.

Or is it? Is there another way? 

Well of course there is. And it doesnt have to be about becoming a yoghurt weaver!! 

Its about personal responsibilty and not being afraid to speak up for whats fair and right. Its about having a set of ethics and sticking to them, even when people think youre a bit odd.

But mainly its about having respect not just for the human species but for all the species on the earth and for the earth itself. Its about seeing worth in both people and things and being prepared to pay for that worth. Its about seeing things through, and not just seeing things as a project that probably wont last, but about making sure everything we do has legacy and makes a change. And, and heres the one most people squirm at, its about making sure we all are paid our worth in whatever we do, and not being afraid to state our worth.

And there I will stop.

Happy New Year to you all. And remember, together we can all make a change.

 

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Love for Love Square

Recently I visited Sheffield. I visited because Ron Finley, of Gangsta Gardening fame was visiting Sheffield to give a talk and Nigel Dunnett, of Pictorial Meadows fame, had alerted me to that and I had immediately booked a ticket, as I was also invited to an evening event around Guerrilla/community gardening later on in the week. This gave me the opportunity to spend 3 days in Sheffield finding out what was going on in the community sphere up there. What I didnt know was that Nigel had arranged for me to spend 3 days actually with Ron and the team, visiting several community based projects and meeting some people who in all honesty, have blown my socks off with their commitment not just to particular community projects but to the communities themselves.

Anyway, I digress a tad, and there will be further pieces about the community spaces I visited and how amazed I was by them. The point of this piece is to talk about the visit we took to a patch of land that will become Love Square.

In all cities there are pieces of land that are unseen. They are spaces people use everyday, whilst looking at their mobile phones, listening to music, thinking about a million other things, and they get walked through by people with their heads down, ignoring the environment and the space they are using on a daily basis. Standing on the site that Love Square will be in, an old bus and tram exchange in West Bar, we witnessed just that behaviour. As Ron did a piece to camera, people trundled through, heads down, barely even taking in that someone was filming there, let alone looking at the space they were using, and probably used once or twice every day due to its location as part of a transit route throught the city for pedestrians.

So the plan for Love Square is to create a space where people stop. A space that shows best practise of urban space that otherwise just becomes wilderness. A cafe in a shipping container, gardens, lawns and meadows and Grow Wild Modules filled with meadow planting and trees. A space for people to stop, breathe, socialise, read, be quiet or be loud. But mostly a space that people love and that shows people love back. A space that changes the community.

Working in Bristol on a very similar project, The Bearpit, a sixties sunken roundabout with anti social behaviour issues and a reputation it frankly rarely deserves, I have seen at first hand how this type of change of use can work, if at the moment on a far smaller scale. We recently, alongside the girls at the Bearpit Social cafe, whose home is a shipping container, planted up some bright containers with wild flowers as part of the Grow Wild project. The containers double as seating and within moments of the planting being finished the space was being used by people, sitting, meeting, drinking tea and just being. The Bearpit space is ongoing and will end up with forest garden, urban art and more businesses running from more shipping containers. A space that was avoided becoming a destination, a stop off point, a place that feels love and gives love to its community.

Both these projects are part of Kew and the National Lotterys Grow Wild campaign. The difference is that Love Square needs your vote as it is one of five projects that is in the final to win £120k in order to make its vision become reality. My belief is that in order for us to make city centres feel loved and encourage these spaces to be used and therefore kept well by the groups looking after them, these projects need to be seen as models of best practice. They are bringing biodiversity into the city centres, encouraging people to engage with nature, plants and the natural environment and ensuring that place is accessible to everyone. As more and more of us live in the urban landscape, with an estimated 70% expected to live in cities by 2050, these spaces will become more and more vital, both as green lungs but also as spaces where people can volunteer and garden themselves.

Below is a link to the Love Square site and the link to the vote will be added as soon as its live. Imagine the difference this type of planting and use of space would make to a town or city near you, and please vote for Love Square. It is, quite simply, what the future of our cities should look like.

Ron and Nigel at what will be Love Square

Imagine this land designed into a useable space.

For more info on Love Square and how it will look once the project is complete, here is the link to its webpage. Please take a look and see what an enormous difference this would make to the people of Shefield, but also to us all as we try to change our inner cities from concrete jungles to spaces that are well designed as urban landscapes. And please vote from October 7th-the decision is down to you.
Here is the link to vote

The future of our cities? Lets hope so!!

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