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The Liminality

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February 16, 2021
Can you feel it? All that potential just waiting to burst into action! There’s a reason it’s called SPRING! Plus the double delight of release from lockdown means that there’s more energy than ever waiting to break out. I’ve been a bit quiet, hibernating, head down, focused on surviving but now I’m ready to start thriving again. A big community climate project is coming together which will work to build back better post-covid. If you’re Cheltenham based and interested to find out more then DM me your email address for an invite to a google meet intro session towards the end of March. Think real action to tackle root causes of environmental and social issues, food security, waste and inequality. Community fridge, Library of Things, solidarity not charity, a hub space for people and planet. Finally got my hands on one of the chunky reclaimed wood plaques going out to salons who pass the @greensaloncollective Accreditation process. I’m really proud of the audit Fry and I have developed, it’s not a tick box exercise or a ‘pay and walk away’ scheme, we really try to get to know salons and give them a human to talk to and help towards holistic sustainability. It’s not just recycling or energy providers, it’s labour practices and diversity, prioritising people and planet. Hair salons are the most amazing spaces for opening up dialogue on these issues, the trust and relationships built mean hairdressers are uniquely placed to be catalysts for real change in people’s lives. Shout out to all the salons and workers going through tough times right now, post-Covid here’s hoping the industry is at the forefront of ‘building back better’. The Green Libertines at @greensaloncollective that I’ve assessed so far have been smashing it. Local Cheltenham folk check out @ellahairandbeauty208 who use @greensaloncollective recycling service. No pictures of my lockdown barnet will be forthcoming! There’s nothing quite like having a virus that originated half way round the world coursing through your veins to remind you how interconnected the world is. How many people must the virus have passed through from the first person infected all the way to me in my sleepy corner of Gloucestershire? Was everyone who got it and passed it on ok? Or were some people less lucky than I was, without people to care for them or a free healthcare service to support them? The saying goes that you are only as healthy as your neighbour, and with a rapidly warming world, and further encroachment and deforestation, the likelihood of having to deal with future illnesses and pandemics rises. Humanity’s health is a reflection of the planet’s health. Those same mutual aid groups that sprung up in communities to help each other get through 2020 will be needed behind this year. The temptation is strong to blame the year for all the bad things it has contained (hands up if you say #2020 at least once a week 🖐🏻) but the truth is that many of 2020’s problems have been brewing for some time (pandemic risk, democracy breakdown, rise of right wing groups, climate breakdown, human rights and racial inequality) and the problem with system breakdown and exponential growth is that these issues won’t just disappear at midnight on the 31st Dec. It’s ok to despair that there’s no easy way out, a new number won’t erase all the problems, we’re in for the long haul in order to fix things, but nothing worth doing was ever easy really. And things can be SO much better. My body gathered it’s resources, identified the problem, all the systems pivoted to defeat the virus, some of which made me feel worse in the short term, but two weeks on I feel better, not totally normal but a little bit more grateful to my bones and blood and a little more thankful to be still breathing. 2020 might have been rough, but, as Arundhati Roy writes, we use it as a portal to something not just write it off as a ‘fluke’ of a bad year, how much stronger could we be? Gather ourselves up, bruised but not broken, and build back better. The moving Gaia installation from @lukejerramartist who I was lucky enough to have choose my words for @ofearthandskylj is currently on show at Gloucester Cathedral. Only astronauts currently get to experience the ‘blue dot’ effect, the psychologically transformative shock of viewing our entire planet as a finite sphere in space. Many astronauts become environmental activists on their return to Earth because the destruction of what they have viewed as a cyclical life support bubble is too much to bear. We really do all live together on a spaceship hurtling through the void, kept alive by 6cm of topsoil and 6km of atmosphere. As Buckminster Fuller said ‘there are no passengers, we are all crew’. 🌍 While most of us won’t get to space (not that I would actually want to, especially not escaping to Mars with Elon Musk thanks very much) it can be difficult not to look at the sky, the sea, or the horizon and not think these things are infinite, that what we do can’t impact any of Earth’s ancient routines. But the sooner we realise this world is a finite system, a closed loop of natural cycles perfected over millennia, the sooner we can start to live sustainably and regeneratively. We are nature. Some things are infinite though, human capacity for change, adaptation, creativity, co-operation and love. Kick back on the things that tell you you aren’t enough, that you must buy to live, that excess and extraction are success. You are enough, we can all have enough, if we’re willing to imagine new ways to live collaboratively and in communion. It’s time to evolve or expire. What’s your choice? There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. Things may be looking a bit grim for the foreseeable, isolation and lockdown seem to be that much harder second time round. The winter is going to present multiple challenges for us all. Organisations who have already had to cope with so much this year will have to continue adapting and shifting, at a time when reserves of energy and goodwill are low. Bolstering resilience across communities (whether these are groups of students, colleagues, friends or neighbours) must be prioritised. What does your organisation need to survive, what do those around you need, what do YOU need? Circles of support and mutual aid built in the first throes of adrenaline and crisis management may be dwindling, simple messaging and offers of support could make all the difference to those who feel they can’t ask anymore. Look for the cracks and be the light when you can, look for light when you’re cracking and let it in. The Liminality is currently working on community resilience projects in Cheltenham, including with mutual aid groups and food banks, so if you are in need at any point please message me and we’ll work something out. Likewise if you need a sounding board for business continuity plans, effective philanthropy or anything else, our virtual door is ALWAYS open. Annually in the UK, around 30,000 deaths are linked to air pollution. (Source: Imperial College London, Public Health England, UK Health Forum study 2018) If poisoned water was killing 30,000 people a year would there be outrage and uproar, the source of the poison found and eliminated? Why is our air different? Especially during a global pandemic which causes respiratory disease, shouldn’t governments be working doubly hard to ensure the air remains safe to breathe? Sources of air pollutants include industry, vehicles, old stoves and agriculture. In the future it will seem bonkers that ICE vehicles drive around pumping out a toxic soup of deadly pollutants. Individual actions to reduce car use are great but make sure you turbo charge your switches by talking to your representatives and supporting the installation of active travel infrastructure (segregated bike lanes for example) and better public transport. It’s already illegal to leave your engine idling or park on pavements but making these actions completely socially unacceptable will also help turn the dial away from car-centric culture and towards clean air and clear pavements for all. EVs are ace but as the saying goes ‘A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.’ (Enrique Penalosa). Think climate change doesn’t affect you, your family or your job? Think again. We all live within systems and are affected by changes and negative feedbacks within them, we are all only as healthy as our neighbours as has been proven by Covid. The good news is that many of the solutions to climate change are mutlisolving ones, meaning that the best solutions also tackle inequality, hunger, disease, justice alongside environmental wins. We have run out of time for silver bullets and tech saviours, now is the time for broad systems change from communities upwards. Many organisations have spent years focused on increasing efficiency, as decreed by shareholder capitalism, whilst ignoring resilience, which it turns out matters more than how efficient you are in the face of threat multipliers like climate change, pandemics and political breakdown. Building personal and organisational resilience is always time well spent, so why not start today? Diagram by the wonderful Beth Sawin, systems thinker extraordinaire. Cartoon @tommysiegel There’s always been, and continues to be, a lot of noise about individual actions on climate change. This is largely because of a concerted effort from large corporations from the 1970s onwards to get consumers to foot the bill for their polluting. None of us is individually responsible for climate breakdown, yet plastics producers and fossil fuel companies (who are often the same company btw) would love to have us believe that our only power is in what we buy or don’t buy. We exist purely as consumers not citizens. We accept that we have no power because someone told us we don’t. And herein lies the rub, our individual actions make no difference at all and at the same time they make all the difference in the world. If you think about individual action only in terms of what you can buy then sustainability very quickly looks white, wealthy, middle class, ‘oh I don’t do politics’, but the minute you start thinking in systems and turbo-charging your actions to include your spheres of power, your voice, your vote, your learning and unlearning, you quickly find that your contribution is totally unique and important. We rapidly need to start thinking critically about what we do because we are habituated to doing it, and what the planet and other people on it require from us. Hold a vision in your mind of what this place could be, and with each action, each task, each response, ask if you are moving towards that vision or away from it. Revisit your old notions of what success looks like, be brave and look at what fulfilled you during the lockdown pause, we cannot afford to go back to normal. It’s not your fault, it’s not fair, but it is your time to do something about it. So what can you do? The team @ofearthandskylj delivered a brilliant socially distanced launch of their fantastic installation across Gloucester yesterday. @lukejerramartist and @jpdlukhh thank you for choosing my words for Robinswood Hill, and for sharing your vision with the people of Gloucester. My words will be on top of Robinswood Hill until October (if they don’t blow away today!) Check out the website link in @ofearthandskylj bio for all the locations and poets.

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