generating hope

We live in a world run by profiteers: the rush to make money destroys people and planet with equal disregard. But how would the world look if all businesses existed to promote wellbeing in all its forms? How could we make this work? Re-imagining our relationship to profit with Dr Jennifer Hinton, of Stockholm University and the Post Growth Institute.

What do we do when we feel disempowered, disconnected, alone and afraid? We can throw ourselves more deeply into social media, drink, drugs and deeper disconnection…or we can build rituals with intention, creativity, gratitude and kindness that re-connect us with the web of life. With Isla McLeod, ritualist and shamanic healer.

At our deepest level, we know meat is murder. We are human because for most of our evolutionary history, we have eaten meat and held this tension in ways that gave thanks and treated animals as relations. But in the past decades, we have created hells on earth in our industrialised farming and abattoirs so that eating from them is no longer remotely ethical. How do we resolve the paradox?

“As elders, our job is to die, as eventually we come to live — always in service to life.” How do we do this? How can we pass into our elder years with grace and rage and depth and honouring of who we are, and emerge wiser, and more attuned to our soul’s calling. With Dr Sharon Blackie, author of Hagitude.

How do we connect across our differences and hear pain without attributing blame? Exploring all this and more with Sophie Docker of The Restorative Engagement Forum and Open Edge.

If we are in the dying days of the system, how can we best hold space for the new one to be born? How can the older generations become allies to the young people whose world is emerging around us? How can young people make sense of a senseless world and find belonging. Zineb Mouhyi, co-founder of YouthxYouth talks about being the emergence, empowering today’s young people.

What happens when you follow your dreams of living on the land, in connection to the seasons, to life and death, to the more-than-human world? How does it feel to follow your heart and see what truly makes it sing – and to do it in connection to the land that called to you?

‘What do we have except the possibility to walk a path with heart?’ Dr Thomas Legrand has trained with shamans in Mexico and with Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village in France. His book, ‘The Politics of Being’ brings ancient wisdom and twenty first century science together to develop a compelling story of humanity’s future if we bring the best of ourselves to ourselves and each other in every moment.

BioChar, plant-dyed wool, rare breed sheep and cattle, veg boxes, and a commercial kitchen: all part of building a local regenerative, circular economy providing affordable food to local people. And it happened in the past six months.

What can we do, we who see the climate emergency racing towards us, but feel powerless? What is activism at its core and where do we find the courage to put our principles – and our fear, love and compassion – into action? James Brown, multi-medal winning Paralympian and Climate Activist talks about the nature of courage, action and his sources of hope.

If we have ten years to stop carbon emissions, how can we both rein in the power of the global finance and heal the damage done to the globals south in ways that are meaningful?

What is agro-forestry and how does it differ from Silvo-pasture or Agro-ecology? And when we’ve sorted that out, how is it that trees can become an integral part of our farming landscape, so that we can feed ourselves, while increasing the life, resilience and vibrancy of the soil? With Ben Raskin of Head of Horticulture and Forestry at the Soil Association.