Archive for the 'community development' Category

“Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.”

Published May 31, 2010 Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative , collaboration , community , community development , cooperation , cooperative , local food economy 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

Blueberry flowers enduring the drizzle

All you want to do is something good,
So get ready to be ridiculed and misunderstood;
Cos don’t you know that you’re a fucking freak in this world,
In which everybody’s willing to choose swine over pearls.
(Aimee Mann, It’s Not Safe)

The path from spring to summer seems to be meandering through winter this year. This past weekend we were treated to weather pretty much straight out of November’s repertoire, although with uncannily long days instead of the usual five o’clock shadow and shutdown. The plants shiver and wait for better weather, but the slugs are in their element. Eventually, though, the record will stop skipping and we’ll go on with the expected progression into the long hot days of unbroken sunshine: tomato weather.

In the meantime, preparations for summer are in full swing. The 50-Mile Eat-Local Challenge will be celebrating its fifth year this year, and of course we will be presenting another Edible Garden Tour on Sunday August 8, 2010, as the kickoff event of the 50 days of the eat-local challenge. (Feel free to contact me if you would like more information on either of these projects, or if you’d like to get involved as a volunteer.)

Closer in, the board of the Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative is getting ready for our first Annual General Meeting, to be held on Wednesday June 23, 2010, at 7:00 PM at Vancouver Island University in Powell River. The preparations means creating a flurry of documents, getting ready to amend our rules, creating reports on our progress and finances, and generally being ready to stand accountable before our membership as their representatives. The best part of the meeting is that we will elect a new set of directors, who will have a democratic mandate to continue working towards our vision, using our values and principles as a compass.

But what is the cooperative actually doing? What is it for? I can tell that people are confused. I know for a fact that some people who hear that there is a cooperative in the region automatically think that we are planning to start a bulk-food or natural-food store. I’ve had it reported to me on good authority that someone out there believes that we are starting up another feed store, like the old Farmers’ Institute cooperative store which eventually became the Rainbow Valley Pet & Feed  Store after the rancorous breakup of the cooperative.

Obviously there might be some confusion about any new organization, especially one with a slightly cryptic name. People see the words “food” and “cooperative” in close proximity, and naturally they think of a food store. And the word “cooperative” carries other connotations for those who remember the demise of the old feed store. What the heck is a “provisioner”, anyway? It doesn’t help that, as I have learned lately, many people really do not understand what a cooperative is and how it differs from other corporate structures, such as the limited-liability corporation or the not-for-profit society. So one of the challenges for Skookum is to spread the word about the structure and philosophy behind the cooperative movement. We’ll get there, but it’s going to be a long process of teaching and learning together.

The main idea behind the formation of Skookum, which is simple but somewhat abstract, is that we need to kickstart many more experiments in strengthening the local food economy. There are many things going on in the region, but many of them are fundamentally working in isolation when they could be working together better. It is our belief that people want to be able to work better together, to share tangible and intangible goods, and to create things which are more than the sum of their parts. But it’s hard to make that happen; it takes a huge investment of time and energy to meet up with the others who have what you need and need what you have.

Without a structure to make this sort of collective effort possible, though, it simply won’t. I don’t know how many times I’ve been involved in conversations sparkling with great ideas and positive energy; but if those ideas don’t get some kind of nurturing support, they just get filed away, along with all the other wonderful things we could do if we had enough time, or money, or something we never seem to have.

So the essence of Skookum is that it’s designed to be a marketplace of ideas about how we can all work together to produce and preserve more food. We have members so that we can crowdsource solutions and so that we can easily gauge the amount and intensity of interest in any project that we might propose. The more members, the more projects we can sustain and distribute among the membership — also, the more easily we can pay for our projects and other expenses.

At its core, it’s a way to organize and connect together the people in the region most likely to have crazy ideas about getting more local food happening. Like a dating service for local-food freaks and compulsive backyard growers.

Let’s take a simple example. Imagine that I would like to grow chickpeas to support my out-of-control hummus habit, but that I don’t have enough space in my backyard garden for any significant amount. So I put the word out through the membership to see who else would be interested in working together to grow a large amount of chickpeas. Two or three people respond, letting me know that they would be very interested and would help with all the soil preparation, tilling, hoeing, weeding, watering, and harvesting. A few others respond to say that they would be happy to participate as subscribers to the harvest, and would be willing to pay extra to support the labour of the three or four people who will be the main workers.

The organizing team goes forth, finds some land it can beg, borrow, or steal for the purpose of growing a little field of chickpeas. Everyone tosses in some money to buy a good amount of chickpea seed, amendments, and whatever else it needs to get from seed to harvest. The project works on a share basis, meaning that whatever the harvest comes to, it will be divvied into equal shares. Some amount of the final harvest is set aside as a community share which we will donate to an organization that deals with people in need; or else we will sell it as a share and donate the money to that organization. (In case they’d rather have money than chickpeas.)

Built into the cashflow of the project will be some kind of payment or recognition for the labour, expertise, tools, etc. contributed by the members who organize the project and ensure its success. Every successful project, no matter what it does, has at its centre a person or a group of people who take primary responsibility: they make the phone calls, organize the meetings, and deal with the crises. Too often these people’s contributions are passed over. One of Skookum’s strong commitments is to provide fair wages for this critical work, because if we are going to have a functioning local food economy we need to find and nurture the special people who go out and get things done (as opposed to talking about getting things done). They deserve a reward for their valuable gifts of initiative and determination.

So the outcomes of this little chickpea project are:

  • more people know something about how to grow chickpeas;
  • more people have some locally-grown chickpeas;
  • some people got paid or otherwise remunerated for spearheading this project;
  • probably some new connections were formed among members of the cooperative and members of the wider community;
  • some members of the community benefited by receiving chickpeas or some equivalent donation.

Nothing terrifically earth-shattering, but if we get enough of these little projects up and running, achieving some kind of self-perpetuation, returning value to their participants and to the community, then we will be sending a message about the power of cooperative effort. And the best part is that all of this activity will be 100% democratic and accountable. There will be no need to rely on the goodness of those who own the business. The business will be owned and managed by anyone in the community who wants to pitch in. And that is the real magic ingredient here: I do not believe that we will organize our way out of the impasse we’re in by retooling private ownership to give it a greenish veneer. There needs to be a much greater degree of public involvement in the food system, or else we’re going to continue enriching the few who make the decisions which generally do not reflect the interests or the will of the people.

It will take some time before this all becomes clear. In a way, we’re fighting our way out of the murk of bad and increasingly outdated ideology. All we can see are problems, and all solutions seem equally plausible or implausible. So we need to keep trying anything but what the rules of game dictate: cooperation instead of competition; collective ownership and management instead of private capitalization and profit-taking; openness and transparency instead of boardroom decision-making and political railroading; togetherness instead of isolation. If we persist, sooner or later something will work. Trust me.

Rattled by the rush

Published April 19, 2010 Lund to Langdale , Skookum Food Provisioners' Cooperative , Sunshine Coast , Transition , Transition Town Powell River , bioregionalism , community development , food security , food sovereignty , local food economy 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

A tangle of young fennel sprigs

My apologies to those regular readers and subscribers who felt the silence on this end for the last couple of weeks. Tom is on vacation, and I have had one of those periods during which it feels as though everything is happening all at once. Funny how the times when the most is happening are the times when it’s hardest to write about what’s happening.

At any rate: time to catch up.

Transition training in Powell River

Last weekend, Transition Town Powell River brought Michelle Colussi to town to lead a group of about 20 people through Transition Training, and I participated in that. The training, which introduces participants to the basics of peak oil, climate change, and the need to adapt to a world of lower consumption of petrochemicals, was spread over one evening and a full day, and was fairly solidly packed with information and techniques for community engagement. One of the good things that happened is that we Powell River Transition types got to meet a couple of people on Texada Island, a couple from Denman Island, and a couple from Courtenay who are interested in getting some of this activity going in their communities.

It was inspiring to see the turnout from Powell River and Texada and to reflect on the fact that we are only Canada’s eighth formally declared Transition Town, after Peterborough (ON), Guelph (ON), Victoria (BC), Dundas (ON), Nelson (BC), Ottawa (ON), and the delightfully-named Cocagne (NB). Quite an honour for such a small town; but like so many similar honours it speaks to the hard work and dedication of a small handful of upstarts and noisemakers. It was nice to feel as though we could learn from the experience of folks in Victoria, where Michelle was coming from, and also pass along some of what we know to folks coming up behind us in Texada, Denman, and Courtenay.

I imagine that everyone who participated in this training came away with a different perspective, having gone in there with different experiences and questions. My takeaway was a renewed sense of how vast will be the work of finding new ways to live well in the face of oncoming and extreme challenges from the climate and the economy. One area we did not really explore is the threat of severe social upheaval from all of these threats and reversals; it’s hard to look into that black hole for long without losing hope. Instead, the Transition movement focuses its energy and attention on positive action, even while acknowledging that we can have no sure insight into the directions the future might take. This is scary stuff, but liberating. And it’s gathering momentum.

Lund to Langdale Part Deux

After a day of unwinding from these two days, I leapt into ‘Lund to Langdale Part Deux’, the follow-up event to the ‘Lund to Langdale‘ get-together back in November 2009 which brought together farmers, foodies, and food activists from the Upper and Lower Sunshine Coast for a day and a half of connecting and learning. That event ended with a commitment from the attendees to continue meeting with the intention of figuring out what it would mean to form a bioregional coalition and start trying to narrow the Jervis Inlet.

With support and organizational mojo from the BC Healthy Living Alliance, specifically the amazing Jamie Myrah, we were lucky enough to have a second opportunity to get together, share information and experiences, and start to really work on the outlines of this coalition: who we are, how we can work together, and what we can do as a ‘whole-coastal’ coalition that we can’t easily do as two separate loose coalitions on either side of the inlet.

And so about twenty-five of us, fairly equally balanced between Upper and Lower Sunshine Coast, came together and brainstormed our way towards a working coalition. I have complained about bad brainstorming experiences in the past, and it can sometimes turn into a random collection of impossible dreams or dead-ends; but the process was very productive this time. Part of the reason for that is that the people in the room were pretty familiar with the terrain and there was a high degree of consensus about what matters, what is feasible, and what we can actually commit to, given our many other commitments.

What did we achieve? We came to a better understanding of what we would gain from having better communication among the food-security and food-sovereignty projects on both halves of the Sunshine Coast. We all learned an awful lot about the huge number of projects and organizations already doing this work, and thought about how we can connect these existing resources together better. We ate well and laughed and got to know one another. We committed to another get-together in November, this time back down on the other side of the coast, specifically Roberts Creek.

One of the exercises we used as a way to illustrate the complexity of the situation was a mapping exercise, where we posted the names of all of the organizations, projects, and groups that we are aware of doing something to support the regional food economy. The resulting picture on the wall was overwhelming: there really is a lot going on, but often the people most likely to know about it are unaware of it all. And of course the public often have no conception of how much is happening under their noses.

Sadly, by the time we meet next, the BC Healthy Living Alliance will have been rolled up and packed away — the funding that enabled them to start so many projects around the province, including the Sliammon Community Garden and the Garden to Table workshop series at the Community Resource Centre in Powell River, was always intended to expire eventually. But with a little luck and a lot of hard work and constant commitment, one of their the lasting legacies will be a fierce and forceful network of food activists from Lund to Langdale, connected together through shared information and stories, collaborating on projects that benefit the Saltery side and the Earls Cove side, and forming a coherent and powerful voice for local food, agriculture, farmers, growers, and all the coming heroes of the relocalization movement.

Thank you, Jamie! Thank you, BC Healthy Living Alliance! And thank you to everyone who came out for this get-together. We meet again in November…

And finally

On April 6, 2010, the BC government granted our application for incorporation as a cooperative. And so the Skookum Food Provisioners’ Cooperative is official. Stay tuned for more news about that.

Serving the community, cooperatively

Published February 9, 2010 community , community development , community service cooperative , cooperative , food security , local food economy 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free. (Photograph by Giovanni Spezzacatena.)

The best place to store your extra food is in your neighbor’s belly.
(African proverb)

Last week I talked about blending entrepreneurial and not-for-profit approaches to filling some of the real gaps in the regional economy, particularly the food economy. The entrepreneurial — or for-profit — approach is a good one when there is a real gap to be filled, where there are needed goods or services not being supplied by existing businesses; and the not-for-profit — or community service — approach excels where there is a gap which might not necessarily be filled by a market-driven approach, either because it is not profitable enough to attract investors or because it is a public good best provided by an association of individuals willing to sacrifice profit to the benefit of the wider community.

Powell River has many not-for-profit corporations serving the community in a variety of ways: The Powell River Association for Community Living (PRACL), Powell River Therapeutic Riding Association, Pebble in the Pond Environmental Society, The Source Club Society, and on and on… what these corporations have in common is that they have chosen to incorporate as not-for-profit societies. There is a common misconception about what it means to be a not-for-profit: it does not mean that “there is no money in it”, or that it is the sort of thing that can only work on the basis of government funding or charitable donations.

The essence of being a not-for-profit corporation is that whatever profits are generated through the activities of the corporation cannot be distributed to the members. In other words, no one can invest money in a not-for-profit with the hope of seeing a profitable return on that money. Instead, a not-for-profit corporation is a legal device for allowing a number of people to come together to achieve goals or transact business that would be difficult for any of them to do on their own, and to do that without the profit motive getting mixed up in what is usually a service to the community.

A not-for-profit corporation can indeed produce a surplus through its operations, in which case it can reinvest that surplus in those operations by purchasing equipment, starting new projects, training its staff, or in any number of other ways that will allow the organization to thrive. And those operations may produce direct economic benefit to the community by paying wages and salaries and by purchasing goods and services from other businesses. What the not-for-profit cannot do is offer dividends or other financial bonuses to its members. The membership of a not-for-profit and all other individuals or corporate partners who contribute money to it recognize that achieving the purposes of the corporation is more important than making a profit on the money they contribute.

They recognize that its status as a provider of a public good is higher than its status as a tool for increasing capital. In other words, they see it as a part of the commons.

A cooperative is a particular kind of association with its own set of provincial laws and regulations, and which operates according to principles which have been evolving since the origins of the cooperative back in the middle of the 19th Century. You may be familiar with a cooperative through membership in the Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), through belonging to our local credit union (the first one in BC), or through belonging to a food cooperative.

Most cooperatives (e.g., MEC, First Credit Union) are for-profit, which means that any surplus they generate through their activities can be returned to members in the form of dividends or patronage returns. Dividends are determined on the basis of the number of shares owned; patronage returns on the basis of the amount of business transacted with the cooperative. (The credit union pays dividends; MEC pays patronage returns.) A for-profit cooperative may also issue investment shares, which allow investors (who are not necessarily members) to put their money into the cooperative in hopes of a return on that capital.

There is also a class of not-for-profit cooperatives, known in BC as ‘community service cooperatives‘. As the for-profit cooperative is to the for-profit corporation, the community service cooperative is to the not-for-profit corporation (society or association). As the name ‘community service cooperative’ suggests, these are often used as a way of providing a service to the community in general, as opposed to cooperatives like MEC and the First Credit Union, which primarily serve the interests of their members. (Although cooperatives, even for-profit ones, often have a very high degree of commitment to community service.)

The legislation defining the community service cooperative came into effect as recently as 2007, and so this model remains to be developed and tested in a variety of different areas and for different purposes. But it offers an appealing combination of the power of cooperative association combined with the ability to provide valuable services to the community as a whole.

Since late November 2009 I have been part of a small team of people learning how cooperatives work and how to get one started. This work picks up on the sorts of thinking that I set out in a couple of posts from back in October 2009: “Why we need a food-security cooperative” and “What can a local food-security cooperative do?“. What we’re looking at are ways to organize people to work together on projects that they might find hard to accomplish on their own — and on projects where there are real economies of scale to be had by pooling labour, time, or money. Examples of this sort of thing can be found in the two posts linked to just above; but a good example would be a commonly-owned fruit crusher and cider press which could be used by members and the general public to convert fruit to cider or wine for the few weeks of the year when the fruit is most abundant. Why should everyone need to own expensive equipment like this? Why not belong to a group which serves common needs without introducing the profit motive?

There is a great deal more to say about the structure and the motivation of a cooperative (coming up in future columns). But for our little initiating group, it is clear that food — of all things — is so fundamental to the life of the individual and of the community that we need to empower people to work for themselves and with one another in order to make more food available locally year-round, as equitably and affordably as possible, and with the least negaitve impacts on the environment. It will help to have an active and activist regional organization which is open to all, dedicated to the creation of a stronger local food economy, driven by the interests and needs of its members, fully accountable to the membership and to the wider community, and obliged by its very nature to place community service above individual profit-making. That’s where we’re heading — and very soon we’ll be asking you to come along with us.

If you want to know more, please feel free to email me. Or you can come out to the upcoming Chamber of Commoners event on Wednesday February 10 and to the fifth annual Seedy Saturday in Powell River on March 13, 2010 at the Powell River Recreation Complex. We’ll be at both of these events to answer questions and hear your wonderful ideas.

Why we need a food-security cooperative

The business of community

Published February 1, 2010 community , community development , cooperative , entrepreneurialism , food security , local food economy , private sector 1 Comment

By David Parkinson

Sand, wood, and stone.

No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
(Alan Watts, 1966, The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, p. 112)

Last week, in “Getting there from here“, I talked about a common problem we can see whenever the talk turns to creating solutions for the challenges of peak oil, climate mayhem, and an economy in turmoil. This conversation is going on all over the place, and when the conversation comes to a halt there are many people thinking about all of this. How are we going to provide more food as transportation becomes more costly? How will we cope with the rising cost of gasoline when we depend so much on it to keep our cars running? How will we heat our homes more efficiently? How will we continue to have a prosperous economy, especially when we are isolated and our primary industry seems to be in terminal decline?

There are some good solutions to some of these challenges, and more coming every day. Some come from the public sector (the government), some from the private sector (the corporations), and some from the grassroots (the people).

Increasingly, it becomes hard to imagine that meaningful solutions to any of the problems we face are going to come from either of the first two places: the public sector, when it is has funds available, cannot always direct those funds towards their best uses at the local scale. This is not to say that government programs are of no value; but the higher the level of government the less it can respond to local needs — and the better it can respond to the needs of the large corporate interests which can afford to pay lobbyists and fund think tanks to drive policy. Also, the longer this depressed economy continues, the less money our various levels of government are going to have at their disposal; funding will likely contract in all areas except essential services, and even there we may feel a pinch.

Last week the City of Powell River hosted a brainstorming session to come up with ideas for how the City and its residents could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of the ideas suggested were along the lines of offering incentives in the form of cash rebates or tax reductions for anyone taking steps to reduce emissions. Representatives of the City felt compelled to point out that it is unlikely that the City will be able to offer any kind of incentives, given the shakiness of the municipal tax base. Similar incentives at the provincial and federal levels are threatened by the downturn in the economy.

As for the private sector… it’s good at coming up with solutions to all kinds of problems. And entrepreneurial approaches to local concerns very often produce the best possible results. In the area of food security, all of our local farms and the people who sell goods through the various little markets are all entrepreneurs. If you want to fill a niche in the local economy, nothing beats a privately-owned and -controlled company: no shareholders telling you what to do, no strings on your investment, no reporting to the government, no answering to voters.

Some of the drawbacks of the entrepreneurial approach are:

  • not everyone wants to assume the risk of ownership and management;
  • it isn’t necessarily answerable to the interests of the community;
  • it can tend to place profit above all other considerations.

If we could overcome these and some other shortcomings, some offshoot of the entrepreneurial approach might be the best way to tackle some of the projects we need to get started in the region: the backyard gardening, car-sharing and ride-sharing, home retrofitting, swap and barter networks, home-based businesses of all types, and all the other pieces of the Transition puzzle.

What we need to develop is a spirit of entrepreneurialism in the region which does not depend on individuals having to do everything themselves, from creating a business plan to raising startup money; which spreads the risks and advantages of ownership more widely among the members of the community; which brings people together in order to addresses their common concerns; which does not need to pursue profit at all costs; and which is democratic and accountable to the community in which it operates.

Like other communities, we’re struggling here. Good things are happening, but we need more of everything. Many of us can see a number of challenges we need to start addressing, and quickly. But we’re blocked: do we form a new not-for-profit to get that work done? That’s a lot of work and takes a lot of time. Do we try to start businesses? That also is a lot of work, and personal risk — and anyway, most people are already busy working at something and don’t have the time to start a new business, especially one which might struggle until reality catches up with vision. We need more projects that are a hybrid between not-for-profit and entrepreneurial, and share the best qualities of both. And we need to get more people excited to start working together; this is the real tough one.

I’m excited to have found one approach which I think fits the bill: the community service cooperative. Next time: what the heck is a community service cooperative?

Getting there from here

Published January 25, 2010 community , community development , food security , local food economy , volunteers 5 Comments

By David Parkinson

Sundog over Malaspina Strait, January 23, 2010

[For A.M., A. T.-B., and the other unsung and undersung heroes and heroines.]

Lately I end up in many conversations that tend in the same direction. Usually, the general topic is something to do with food security in the broad sense: agriculture, gardening, increasing the amount of food we grow and store, that sort of thing. Conversations that proceed from this type of starting point often circle around the gaps, the challenges, the threats, and the shortfalls — of course, we know that plenty is happening out there, and generally lots of it is headed in the right direction, but the progressive mindset is one in which you pay lots of attention to the road ahead; the one that leads to where you’d like to be. And that makes you take stock of the current situation and how it can be made better.

In terms of regional food security, it’s always interesting to see where people think we should be trying to get to. Should we be aiming to feed ourselves entirely from local sources? Well, what about the moderately difficult questions, like how we’re going to raise enough meat, grain, and other staples in the region to feed everyone here? And what about the really hard questions, like the crops and other foodstuffs we simply can’t produce here, such as oranges and bananas?

OK, so we can set aside the harder and more out-there questions like these. Anyone who’s spent time thinking about it will admit that we have the capacity in the region to grow much more of the food we consume here than we do at present. This is our cue to start brainstorming…

Conversations like this usually produce some good ideas. We could buy a community apple cider press! We could match people with unused land with people who want land to farm!! We could set up a community produce-swap!!! Yes, good ideas; but more and more I am learning that the great hidden cost of implementing ideas like these is the time and energy it takes. Typically that time and energy is being contributed by a small corps of dedicated volunteers— and often by one key person who has drifted into that role, become irreplaceable, and gotten stuck there. Sometimes, as with a black hole, messages from the centre of that project no longer reach the outside world; no light can escape, and it becomes invisible. It can take an effort of will to remember that the project exists and that somewhere at its centre is someone in need of support.

So who’s going to pay for that apple press? Who’s going to house it, maintain it, clean it, find spare parts, let people know about it, and teach them how to use it?

Who’s going to contact all those landowners, develop some rules about how they want their land to be used, advertise to let would-be farmers know there’s land to be had, match them up, track progress, and troubleshoot?

Who’s going to find the space to have the produce swap, find produce growers, make ads and flyers, deal with the health authorities, and devise the rules for how to swap one thing for another?

I don’t ask all of these questions in an effort to make these projects look impossibly complicated; only to point out that underneath even the ‘simplest’ community projects is often a crazy heap of rules, history, traditions, tribal wisdom — call it what you will. And somewhere under that heap is very often the person — and very often it is only one person — who makes the whole rickety contraption work from one moment to the next, with little more than duct tape and a positive attitude.

When I think of scaling up the local food economy, I think about how we’re going to start new projects like these and others, especially when many of the projects currently running are stretched thin, scrambling for reliable volunteers, and parched for the tiny droplets of funding that would help them make it through the year. This sort of institutional exhaustion is pretty widespread and might well get worse if the economy continues to decline, drying up funding from the government, non-profit, and private sectors.

And it’s as the economy declines that the need for these community projects becomes more acute. This is a real conundrum. How can we get better at starting and sustaining grassroots initiatives which serve the needs of the community, including those least able to see to their own needs?

Interestingly, I’m hearing similar answers to these questions starting to pop up more and more frequently, so I’ll write about that for next week.

Fifty miles, fifty days, fifty percent (or more)

Published June 8, 2009 100-mile diet , 50-mile diet , community development , eat-local challenge , food security , local food economy , relocalization 1 Comment

By David Parkinson

It's the time of year when the autumn-planted garlic sends up delicious scapes, and soon the bulbs will be ready to harvest.

It's the time of year when the autumn-planted garlic sends up delicious scapes, and soon the bulbs will be ready to harvest. (Photo taken well within fifty feet of my kitchen.)

This year, we will be celebrating the fourth annual Powell River eat-local challenge, also known as the “50-mile diet”. This event is our very own regional spin on the 100-mile diet, which started out with two Vancouverites named Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, who decided to try to spend an entire year eating only food from within 100 miles of where they lived.

Alisa and J.B.’s main reason for carrying out this experiment was to learn about the ins and outs of eating from sources as close to home as possible. And they certainly learned a lot, experienced some real difficulties and challenges, and in the end wrote a book about the whole thing. In this day and age of increasing sensitivity to the ‘carbon footprint’ of food, one way we can control the fossil fuel consumption of the food we eat is by eating food which is produced close to us. And the idea of spending a period of time devoted to eating local food is catching on in all kinds of places.

Meanwhile, as those two were just getting going on their year of eating locally, Lyn Adamson, the Program Director at Career Link in Powell River, caught onto the idea and decided to start a similar project up here. But, this being Powell River, she had to go and change the formula: since the extra 50 miles doesn’t really get us much more food production, we limit the radius of the foodshed to 50 miles (80 km, more or less). This takes in the entire Upper and Lower Sunshine Coasts, much of the east coast of Vancouver Island from Campbell River down to Nanaimo and inland to about halfway across the island at its furthest point.

The idea is simple: anyone who wants to participate is welcome to do so at their chosen level of participation. The usual ‘entry level’ is 50%, meaning that you will attempt to get half of the food you eat from sources within 50 miles of where you live. Some participants go for 75%, some for 95%, and the real hardcore cases might go for 100%, although that level of commitment is not for the faint of heart. Like most diets, it works better if you can convince the other people in your household to go along with it — no one wants to be eating local potatoes and kale while surrounded by others eating Chilean grapes, Thai mangosteens, and Turkish taffy. That’s just not fair.

The period of the eat-local challenge has traditionally been six weeks, but this year we have decided to step it up a little bit in the interest of getting the numbers to line up. So we’re proposing a 50-day stretch to go with the 50 miles. Right now it looks as though the challenge will begin on Saturday August 9, 2009 and will end on Sunday September 27, 2009, which is the second day of Powell River’s annual Fall Fair.

What do participants get from being part of the eat-local challenge? First of all, they get a sense of how difficult it is to eat even half of our daily intake from nearby farms and gardens. In the summertime, this region produces a considerable amount of vegetables and fruit, but very small amounts of grains, legumes, meat, poultry, dairy products, oils, sweeteners, and other components of a balanced diet. Even getting your hands on local produce is not always simple: some of our grocery stores might carry produce from this region or from within the 50-mile radius on Vancouver Island. You’ll have to get good at asking questions and snooping around. The best place to buy really local food is directly from a farmer or at one of the markets in the region (the Open Air Market just outside of the City of Powell River, or the Texada Farmers’ Market).

Even if you do have good access to one of these markets or to a local farmer’s farm-gate, of course there are many necessities you will have to do without. There is no significant grain production within the 50-mile radius, and that means no bread and no pasta (and no cake! unless it’s potato cake). People talk about the Three Killer C’s: coffee, citrus, and chocolate. Citrus we might just about get away with— I have heard tell that some locals are getting lemon or lime trees to grow in a greenhouse, but if they are you can be sure they’re hoarding the fruit. And no way are we about to have any cacao or coffee plants growing here anytime soon. So either you go without or they fall into the percentage of your intake that can be non-local.

Here’s a good experiment: take a look in your fridge and cupboards and ask yourself for each item you see there:

  • Is this from within 50 miles of here?
  • If not, could it be produced within 50 miles of here?
  • If it could be, is it being produced in sufficient quantities that it could supply the needs of the local population?
  • If not, why not?

These are questions which anyone who has participated in the eat-local challenge has to ask themselves repeatedly for 50 days (and nights). Doing this is an amazingly powerful consciousness-raising tool: once you have examined where all your food comes from, you will have more respect for our local food producers. Quite possibly you will feel a new desire to grow some of your own food, or — if you are growing food already — a commitment to producing more food next year.

In my work as coordinator of some of the local food security efforts, I have talked about the 50-mile challenge with many people in this community and elsewhere. Sometimes people who are aware of the challenges of eating locally will disparage eat-local challenges because, as they say, we already know that we don’t produce enough food locally for everyone’s needs, so why go through this big exercise every year to prove the same point over and over? I think the best answer is: because the eat-local challenge is about more than just proving something which could as easily be expressed in the form of a chart. It’s about:

  • educating individuals about where their food comes from;
  • bringing families and households together in a common project;
  • getting the community thinking and talking about its food production, present and future;
  • creating positive connections in the community among food producers and food consumers, and among people sharing ideas, recipes, and (above all) food;
  • demonstrating to ourselves and to our politicians that there is public interest in eating more local food.

This year I will be part of a team of eager organizers. If you would like to get involved with the fourth annual eat-local challenge, please contact me. We are hoping to kick things off this year with a tour of local productive food gardens, in the hopes that that might inspire people to start growing more food. We have all kinds of ideas about involving local restaurants and grocery stores. We would like to have lots of information going around the community about where the eat-local challengers can find food: weekly emails, blog posts, possibly even a podcast! Potlucks and other opportunities to get together and compare notes and progress. T-shirts. Local art from local artists. Maybe some kind of a celebration at the end, with prizes and a final local food banquet.

We’re blogging! We’re on Facebook! We’re on Twitter! The sky’s the limit, so if you would like to help us celebrate local food and the joys of the relocalized palate, we can use your help. There will be a potluck and brainstorming meeting this Wednesday, June 10, at 5:00 PM at the Community Resource Centre in Powell River (4752 Joyce Ave., just south of Alberni St.).

And if you simply would like to participate, you can sign up here. Once you’re on our email list, stay tuned for updates and information as we get closer to the challenge. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell the neighbours! Let’s make this year’s eat-local challenge the biggest and best yet!

Principles for creating a cooperative local economy

Published May 18, 2009 business , collaboration , collective , community , community development , cooperation , cooperative , economy , permaculture , planning 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

Horsetail

Horsetail, like all plants, finds the right niche and provides needed services to its local ecosystem. It does not force itself into a niche where it has no purpose.

Last week, I introduced the subject of designing cooperative local enterprises as one way to start boosting the resilience of this region. But the one big problem with working cooperatively is that many of us don’t have a lot of experience at working with a team of equals, brainstorming, compromising, and discussing our way from problem to solution. My feeling is that we’re going to have to get better at this, and quickly.

There are plenty of processes and methods out there for working better collaboratively. Many of these can be found in the business section of the bookstore or library, since this is the main place where people have sensed a need for making plans at the level of a community — a corporation or a working team being a community of a special kind. One of the few books of this type that I’ve read is Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging, which Giovanni Spezzacatena discussed briefly back in March. Block’s main idea is that meaningful change at the level of the community can happen only through conversations which open up a space within which ideas and hopes can emerge organically.

A little while ago, I was reading about permaculture, and it occurred to me that there are some real similarities between the Block-style approach to community development and the permaculture approach to creation and restoration of holistic natural systems. Permaculture is a design system developed initially by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. To go into great detail would take us too far afield for this short piece, but to me the core of permaculture is that it takes a systems view of agriculture and the human role in coaxing food from the earth. Rather than impose a technological brute-force solution to food production, as is done in commercial agriculture, the permaculture approach takes advantage of natural processes, using human labour to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative ones. Humans move from being producers who impose their will on the earth to being facilitators of the earth’s natural inclination to be productive in a sustainable fashion.

I was reading about David Holmgren’s twelve principles of permaculture, and it struck me that — just as Peter Block’s principles of community development take a very non-hierarchical approach to unleashing the creative energy of a group of people — permaculture in a similar fashion is about observing and intervening very gently and respectfully into natural systems, with an eye to increasing their outputs for the benefit of humans and the other plants and creatures who participate in those natural systems. I’m always intrigued by theoretical systems or collections of principles which are specific enough to have applications in one area but general enough that they apply to other areas as well. So I decided to try to apply Holmgren’s twelve principles of permaculture design to the domain of community development. (Anyone interested in learning more about how these principles apply to the design of agricultural systems can learn more by starting here on Holmgren’s website.)

I. Observe and interact

Successful community development, meaning the creation of new groups working on new projects to benefit the community, is all about careful observation and interaction. Observation means looking at what the community has and what it needs, thinking about why those needs remain unmet, and looking everywhere for the pieces of the solution, even in unexpected places or marginalized people. Too often the same old people are in charge of the decision-making process, and this leads to an insular and stale process for coming up with solutions and new ideas. It’s critical to tap into the genius and passion of the folks who are usually outsiders to the planning process — unless, of course, you really do want more of the same. And observation means continually trying to see past the surface of the community and understand how things are held together at a more abstract level. Why is there more vandalism there than elsewhere? Why do people hang out in this park but never in that one? Why are so few people riding the bus?

II. Catch and store energy

In the world of permaculture design, this is about making sure that no energy is wasted, whether it comes from the sun, rain, wind, or wherever. Catching it is crucial, as is storing it, since storage means having energy even when it is not still forthcoming from its source. For example, rainwater stored in a pond can be used to drive a waterwheel even during a drought.

For our purposes, this principle is about making sure that, when the right people or resources show up, we need to recognize them, draw them into our project, and ensure that their creative energy is not wasted. This might mean getting better at recognizing talents and abilities in people which we don’t need at present but will need in the future.

III. Obtain a yield

This is a big one for me, because I interpret this principle as stating that no activity should fail to produce some kind of reward or benefit to someone. Basically, this means no free labour. It means that even if volunteers are doing the work, their time and labour must be returned to them somehow. And even a small return is better than nothing.

I’ve been involved in a few planning processes which treated the volunteers from the community in an atrocious manner. And so these volunteers trickled away and the collective energy dissipated. Each time this happens the process loses the input of the community, and the community loses a sense of engagement in the process and whatever comes from it.

No one should be expected to work collaboratively on some project without ongoing rewards for their contribution. Sometimes it’s hard to do this, but this is one of the problems that must be addressed at the very early stages of any planning process. Failure to do so means creating a process which does not engage ongoing support and attract talented and enthusiastic collaborators.

IV. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

This one seems like pretty much a no-brainer, but it’s amazing to me how often a conversation about some new project will go off the rails early on and never recover. We live in a culture which finds it very hard to critically examine ourselves and our work. Everyone wants to celebrate their successes, but no one wants to learn from failure, even though failure is extremely informative. And if you don’t recognize when something is not working, then you can’t correct it. The longer it goes uncorrected, the worse the situation becomes.

A conversation leading towards a new vision or a new enterprise must be able to incorporate feedback at all times. It must be open to criticism from within and without. Everything must remain provisional and open to change as long as possible. Plans and methods will change, especially in the beginning, so we need to be ready to abandon preconceptions and change course quickly.

V. Use and value renewable resources and services

The meaning of this principle is clear enough in the domain of permaculture. In the realm of community development, I take it to be saying that we need to find sources of funding and labour which we can rely on to continue. One-time-only or startup funding is dangerous because — if the planning is not careful — it creates a need for more funding. Soon your community effort is devoting too many of its resources and time towards finding more money, and neglecting its primary mission.

I am not saying that one should never seek or accept outside funding. But too often money is seen as the universal cure-all for what are not really financial problems. Failure to observe one or more of the other principles of community development will likely lead to a situation in which only money can push things forward — because you are working against systems you should be working in concert with, or your volunteers are burning out, or you are wasting money needlessly elsewhere. As much as the planning and implementation can be done on a shoestring, so much the better.

VI. Produce no waste

Waste in the context of collaborative planning and creating new community projects can mean anything from wasted time to wasted labour to wasted good will. It’s not entirely clear how waste in the non-physical sense can be used as the input to some other process, but we should be aware of opportunities to apply our excess resources to other related projects in the community.

VII. Design from patterns to details

When entering into a planning process, it is important to stand as far back from the problem to be tackled, or the enterprise to be created, as is possible. The solution can be sketched out from this very high level before the details are filled in. And because the enterprise is being created through an iterative and ongoing series of conversations, the big picture and the minor details can be constantly revisited and rethought.

It’s not uncommon to find yourself well into some kind of planning process or series of meetings and to realize that at no time has the group had a chance to stand back from the solution they are supposed to be working on so as to name it, comprehend it, and talk about it to one another. This means that there is no genuine consensus among the group as to what they are really doing, and the end result of that is frustration when the unspoken assumptions turn out not to be shared by everyone.

A vision statement is a way of stating the whole pattern from the beginning.

VIII. Integrate rather than segregate

This is the very essence of collaborative work: the notion of pulling effort together to generate synergy. It takes wisdom and careful observation to see how various people and resources can be brought together to create a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, but failing to do so wastes effort and creates frustration.

Processes which are modeled on competitive and individualistic planning tend to pit people against each other, if subtly. As a society, we are not very adept at creating truly open spaces which bring people in and give them the tools they need to excel both as individuals and as members of a collaborative enterprise. We need to work hard at this and create our own models as we go.

IX. Use small and slow solutions

Everyone wants a big bang for the buck right away. But oversized and needlessly ambitious plans can burn people out and create false hopes. It’s better to succeed in small things, to continually re-evaluate and expand from there, than to wear ourselves out reaching for too much right away. Small and slow-building solutions allow for continual feedback and re-evaluation, and make it easier to generate some kind of payback in the early stages of development.

One area where we are seeing this principle applied is in the diverse and fast-growing area of urban agriculture, where many people are working on a small scale to develop techniques for producing food in urban spaces like backyards and abandoned properties. Generally, these begin as one-person operations and are highly experimental at first while the correct set of techniques and procedures is hammered out. Presumably these experimental and low-budget enterprises are generating a corps of technically accomplished urban farmers who can continue to expand their operation, codify the ways or working which make the most sense to their community and climate, and bring more people into their enterprise as needed.

X. Use and value diversity

One way to avoid groupthink is to invite and include a diverse set of people in your planning. Too often, collaborative projects fall into a kind of rut because the same people keep showing up with the same ideas. It’s essential to create a welcoming environment so that people who have not been part of the process can easily find a way in and feel as though they can contribute. A lot of this goes back to creating a process which is critical and self-reflexive, since an uncritical group process does not allow for newcomers whose ideas might seem far out or whose troublesome questions don’t have easy answers.

It’s not easy to keep trying to include the sort of people who might have good reasons for not being involved in the process you’re creating. All the more reason for doing so whenever possible.

XI. Use edges and value the marginal

Holmgren uses the proverb “Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a well-beaten path” to illustrate this principle. In permaculture, edges are of special importance because we often find particularly exuberant and productive ecosystems at the boundaries between two ecological zones. I take this principle, as it applies to collaborative planning for community development, to mean that we should constantly think about hidden places where there might be opportunities for creative new projects at the edges between ‘zones’ in our surroundings. For example, what might flourish on the edge between day-care centres and composting? Between mass transit and education? Between low-cost housing and unemployed people? This principle urges us to look harder at the places we often ignore and to see edges between two connected domains where we might otherwise see them as completely separated from each other.

XII. Creatively use and respond to change

I interpret this principle as similar to Principle IV (“Apply self-regulation and accept feedback”) only on a larger scale, the scale of societal change. We are in a time of increasing turbulence, most of it so far in the economy but more of it to be increasingly in society in general, how we work and live together with our families and with other people, and how we organize ourselves at the community level to provide for our basic and not-so-basic needs and wants. As the systems which define our society undergo these changes, we will need to stay flexible and look for opportunities to provide goods and services in ways that might not have worked well in the past.

I believe that any cooperative effort to create a new project or to change the environment or culture of some place would do well to think about applying principles like these. It’s good to have some kind of mission or vision statement or goals to work towards, but it’s probably more valuable in the long run to have a set of principles which guide the ongoing process of getting from here to there, whatever that might mean. Goals and visions can always be rethought and reworked, but a collaborative process for community development which operates under weak principles or none at all is destined to waste a lot of time and energy.

The cooperative local economy

Published May 11, 2009 business , collaboration , collective , community , community development , cooperation , cooperative , economy , permaculture , planning 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

We use the word 'weed' for plants which interfere with our plans for nature.

We use the word 'weed' for plants which interfere with our plans.

‘Tain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it,
And that’s what gets results.
(Melvin “Sy” Oliver and James “Trummy” Young)

Last week’s column was about creating a stronger local food economy, something which I spend a good deal of time thinking about (and being engaged in). And now that we have a newly-formed Transition effort starting up in Powell River, I hope that we’ll see renewed efforts to start new projects which help move us in the direction of regional self-reliance.

It’s not hard to sit around a table and brainstorm ideas for projects which would help this region adapt to peak oil, climate chaos, and the economic uncertainty that is hitting us now and showing no signs of abating. Car-sharing, carpooling, or ride-sharing networks; backyard gardening cooperatives; municipal composting; local media collectives; neighbourhood potluck and child-minding groups; campaigns to raise awareness of shopping locally; cob-building workshops; micro-hydro and wind power; barter and free exchange networks; and on and on. Ask someone who is hip to the challenges we face and you will get any number of good suggestions of how we can become more resilient, less dependent on fossil fuels and imported goods, and stronger as a community. There is no shortage of good ideas. But so far not a lot of them being implemented.

The more I think about transition planning, the more I believe that we need to see a large number of experimental projects happening. Some will succeed and others will fail. They cannot all be funded by government dollars or money from foundations and charitable organizations. Nor can they all run entirely on the goodwill and time of volunteers. We need to find ways to create small businesses out of these solutions to various problems; but we should also be creating businesses which balance entrepreneurial risk and foresight against a strong commitment to the people and the values of the surrounding community. A local economy which supplies local needs and keeps jobs and wealth in the region will also need to do its part to reduce social inequities and to provide solutions to systemic problems like poverty, food insecurity, insufficient affordable housing, the lack of a living wage, and so on. These problems are the inevitable result of an economy which places profits above all other considerations, and the sooner we stop pretending otherwise the better.

It seems clear to me that the best solutions to the challenges we face will emerge from genuinely collaborative, collectively-designed and -managed, community owned enterprises. Cooperatives provide a good way to create businesses that satisfy needs which individuals find hard to satisfy on their own, and they have the advantage that they are well recognized in provincial and federal business law. But some of the projects we might want to work on are too loose and informal for all of the hoop-jumping and legalities of a formal incorporation. There are no one-size-fits-all structures for getting people to work together so that everyone benefits.

No matter how we formalize an understanding among individuals which involves property, money, labour, rights, obligations, and regulations, we first have to get to the point of working out what it is we’re trying to accomplish and how we intend to go about it. When this is done in order to attract start-up capital it’s called a business plan, and might emerge from a collaborative process of:

  • brainstorming in free-flowing conversation;
  • identifying an unmet need in the community;
  • thinking about how we might harness cooperative energy to solve the problem we identify;
  • solving various problems of start-up costs, dealing with regulations and other legal impediments;
  • enlisting the support of people who need the planned goods/service (potential customers, collaborators, or members of a cooperative);
  • defining how those who contribute their labour and knowledge can be adequately rewarded (whether in the form of money, equity, goods, shares, etc.).

There will always be individuals with an entrepreneurial bent who are talented at identifying business opportunities and figuring out how to apply money and resources to a problem in order to find a solution which will return a profit on money invested. But as for the rest of us, we might have to get involved in cooperative business ventures with other people. And this means having to collaborate effectively, to learn how to weigh different alternatives and figure out what is possible and what is impossible, to figure out what the steps are in solving a problem and which are of a higher priority than which others, and so on.

Lately, I am witnessing a number of processes which are intended to be collaborative and cooperative. For the most part, they are not succeeding as they might. In some cases, they are downright counterproductive. Why is this? As a society, we are pretty good at identifying what we want to do, but we often struggle with how to go about accomplishing the goals we identify. (What we want to do is very often stupid or pointless or toxic, but the goal is at least clear.) Entrepreneurial management strikes me as fairly uncomplicated: do whatever it takes within the limits of the law (more or less) to make your money make more money. All other considerations are subordinate to the prime directive, profit. But cooperative management and business development entail other considerations, since they reflect a community of interests and often have a socially responsible orientation; e.g., the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.

We’re going to have to become better at working collaboratively in many ways as we adjust to the post-peak economy in which more of our needs will need to be met locally. I want to work together with other people to cobble together appropriate solutions to problems in the local market, and I want people to receive proper pay for their contributions to meeting the needs of the community. I want to be able to participate in cooperative decision-making in the common interest. I want to be part of starting up enterprises which can support the local economy, train and employ people in useful and necessary activities, and generate wealth which remains in the community. I imagine that many others feel the same way, but don’t know how to start collaborating (and on what?).

In next week’s conclusion of this piece, I will sketch out how we might learn a thing or twelve from David Holmgren’s principles of permaculture about creating an effective collaborative design and planning process which we can use for starting cooperatives and other small businesses in the region.

Producerism

Published April 27, 2009 audio , community , community development , community radio , freedom , media , podcasts , subversion , teach-in , workshop 2 Comments

By David Parkinson

Washing line

Clothes on a line, clouds forming overhead. Brought to you by the verb "be" and the adverbs "here" and "now".

Everything was a lie, everything stank, everything stank of lies, everything feigned meaning and happiness and beauty, and yet everything was decaying while nobody acknowledged the fact.
(Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha)

… what is real is you and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, and your fears. And we are told no. We’re unimportant, we’re peripheral, get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that, and then you’re a player. You don’t even want to play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. Where is that at?
(Terrence McKenna, Q&A session of “What Science Forgot”)

Last Tuesday evening, about twenty people met at the Unitarian Hall in Powell River to have a conversation about starting a local media collective. As I’ve discussed in a couple of recent posts, much of this conversation was inspired by the current fragile condition of our local community radio station, CJMP FM.

The people who showed up for this conversation brought a lot of positive energy and creativity with them. Some wanted to talk about keeping CJMP FM on the air. Others, myself among them, were particularly interested in exploring other options made possible by newer technology: blogging, podcasts, vodcasts, mixed media on the internet, etc. The exciting outcome of the evening is that we decided to form a media collective, to continue meeting and working together, and to focus for now on two areas of work:

  1. Continue to explore ways of keeping community radio alive and well in our region;
  2. Learn some new skills, starting with podcasting.

There is now a group of people meeting and working on [1]. For [2], I undertook to learn what I could about podcasting, and to offer that information back to the community in the form of a free ‘teach-in’, by which I mean a workshop of sorts, but one that is more about colleagues exploring a subject cooperatively than it is about an ‘expert’ delivering information to a receptive audience of ‘novices’. If anyone out there is interested in participating in this teach-in, it will be at 7:00 PM on Wednesday May 13 at the Community Resource Centre (4752 Joyce Ave. Powell River), after the monthly Kale Force potluck and conversation. All are welcome.

I’m very excited by the possibility of getting more local people actively creating media of all kinds, especially media which focus on our particular concerns or on the lives of the people who live here. If we can get a functioning community radio station going again, that’ll be great — community radio is designed specifically to give a voice to the people and ideas excluded from commercial radio.

But what excites me most about podcasting and other new internet-based ways of communicating is that there are very low barriers and low costs to getting started and keeping going. This means that it can be done very much in the do-it-yourself spirit of other insurgent media like broadsheet printing, chapbooks, zines, graffiti, and indie film and music. And when something can be done cheaply and easily, it can have, as Frank Zappa used to proudly boast, “no commercial potential”.

In my opinion, the most valuable things in this world have no commercial potential, even though we live in a society which is hellbent on attaching monetary value to everything possible and ignoring what cannot be so valued. A grove of trees at the water’s edge, sheltering birds and other wildlife, adding beauty to the landscape, providing living proof of the miracle of all life… or raw timber to be trucked off to build something flimsy and ugly? A clear and pure stream, home to fish, insects and amphibians which provide food for other creatures, nourishing plants and trees, irrigating farmland and giving drinking water to humans… or something to shove into plastic bottles for a quick buck? Media and human communication for the purpose of giving expression to to their creators and bringing joy to those who experience it… or as a carrier of advertisements and frivolous nonsense?

In each case, there is a way of looking at something and seeing it as an end in itself — or as a means to the fulfillment of the highest human values — and another way of seeing it as a means to some lesser end, as something to be produced or consumed in the interests of making a living. Obviously I am not saying that no one should make a living or that there is no place for commerce; but we live in a time when we are forgetting that there is anything but commerce. Every piece of our world with the least amount of commercial potential has been claimed, colonized, strip-mined, drawn down, and left desolate. The common areas of the natural world have been fenced in, sold off, and converted to money. Forests, lakes, streams, watersheds, air, salmon stocks, soil… all have been commoditized and control over them has been taken away from the people and given over to special interests.

More and more we accept that this is the way things are and should be. More and more we acquiesce in the destruction of meaningful and important parts of our world. We need to hone our skills in pushing back against this. We must train ourselves to see a swindle when one goes down in front of us, and to have the language with which to call it what it is. We need to claim our right to engage in frivolous action leading to no financial gain. We need to commit gratuitous acts of humanity all over the place, and stop listening to the voices in our heads and elsewhere which urge us to play it safe, think of potential corporate sponsors, don’t rock the boat, say what they expect to hear.

Every time we pull a punch we run the risk of forgetting what we really meant to say in the first place. And even to demand the right to create media which are free from extraneous influences sounds somehow subversive. Remember that ‘subversive’ is defined only in contrast to a surrounding mindset or worldview which gathers much of its strength from being able to resist questioning and the harsh glare of attention and critical thinking. Much of what passes for the mindset and worldview of this culture does not bear much scrutiny. That’s precisely why it needs scrutiny. We need to be consumers less, and start becoming producers. Less the victims of pointless and destructive consumerism, and more the creators of a new producerism.

In case you’re thinking that I am advocating art or media with an overt political content, I should be more clear. I don’t really care much about the content of the media we intend to create under the aegis of this media collective. Some people might be drawn to produce works of a more journalistic nature, confronting the myths of our society or taking on the powerful interests. Others might want to record the rushing streams and the wind in the trees. Others might want to talk with the elders of our community to capture and preserve their knowledge, experience, and wisdom. To me, it’s all great. It’s all important. And it’s all vitally needed. More important than the content of our media will be its nature and the conditions under which it is produced:

  • complete artistic freedom;
  • no deference to interests other than those which the artist/reporter/producer brings to the project;
  • as an offering, a gift to our community;
  • a commitment to capturing what it is like to be human and alive in this place at this time.

To produce art and document our world under these conditions is already subversive. It will create the aura of genuine authenticity which commercial media and false art lack. Authenticity cannot be manufactured, and people are starting to crave it as a reaction against the artificiality and dead-endedness of our world.

**** * *—* * / * —* —** * — **** / — **** * / *** * *—* —— ——— —*

If you’re interested in being on the contact list for our new (as yet unnamed) media collective, drop me a line.

Like the phoenix coming back from the ashes

Published April 6, 2009 audio , community , community development , community radio , media , podcasts , print , radio , video 4 Comments

By David Parkinson

Stark branches of a mulberry tree at the demonstration garden in Powell River stand against the blue sky of early spring

Stark branches of a mulberry tree at the demonstration garden in Powell River stand against the blue sky of early spring

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
(Attributed to Buckminster Fuller.)

In last week’s column (“The decline and fall of community radio”), I discussed some of the challenges behind the struggle to keep our local community radio station (CJMP FM) on the air. This effort continues up to the time of writing. As long as there is a signal at 90.1 FM, we can continue to hope. Once we lose that signal, it will take a great deal of will and work to bring community radio back.

But whether or not we manage to save our local community radio station, I am becoming much more hopeful lately about the possibilities of genuine grassroots media. Here’s why.

1. We have the stories

I was recently listening to the radio program This American Life, which was covering the impact of the current economic downturn on regular Americans. It was incredible radio: slow-moving enough to contain the details that tell the story; compassionate, intelligent, funny, and sad. And it occurred to me that here we are, in the midst of some very important changes in this region and worldwide: the mill is in decline, the forestry industry is in crisis, and the fate of the local economy is uncertain. Like other regions, we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to continue functioning in the face of a global economic recession. Where are the documents of this time? Why are we not recording the thoughts and impressions of the people who live in this region? What are people experiencing as we move into times of such great uncertainty?

And even if we weren’t living through exciting times, shouldn’t we be creating an archive of the stories and memories of the people — especially the elders — in the region, who have so much to say about where we have been, how we got here, and where we are going? This sort of oral history project is exactly the sort of thing that is perfectly suited to radio as a medium. Print is not quite right, because you need a lot of time to let the stories unfold and many people do not have the time or patience to read so much. Video and film are not quite right either, because story-telling is mainly an auditory thing: you can sit in the dark if you want, and the sound of the voices and the stories they are telling are enough to hold your attention. You don’t need the distraction of visuals to get the message.

I’m convinced that everyone has a story worth telling and hearing. But the commercial media, with their need to attract advertisers and hold a paying audience, cannot often afford to stretch out and report those stories. We are surrounded by people who have no voice in the commercial media. They are neither glamorous nor important nor accomplished in the ways which we consider worth reporting on. And yet these are our friends, neighbours, and fellow citizens. How can we let ourselves believe that their stories are not worth telling, not worth hearing?

2. We have the technology

Traditionally, the capital and operating costs needed to get up and running for print publication or broadcasting were so high that only those with plenty of money could get started. And even though it is now easier to get started in publishing with relatively little capital, the ongoing operating costs are such that it is a constant task to get money from purchasers, subscribers, and advertisers. Printing paper copies costs a lot of money. Radio and television broadcasting require considerable costs in equipment and maintenance. Reporters and DJs cost plenty.

The commercial media are classic examples of economies of scarcity. A newspaper can only carry so many articles. A radio or TV station has only so much time set aside for the views of the community. There is a layer of expertise and editorial control between the potential contributor and the audience. Don’t believe me? Submit an article to the local newspaper. Send a song you recorded to the local commercial radio station. Try to get your video on TV. Because you are just a member of the public, no one will feel obliged to give you an audience.

Enter the internet. Nowadays, it is possible to start a blog like this one for free or very close to it. No printing press, relatively little technical expertise, no paper costs, and no shipping. No workshop, no studio, no typewriters or mixing board, no transmission tower. No rent, no insurance, no lawyers. If I hadn’t paid for the domain name, this blog would have had a startup cost of precisely $0.00 (excluding my labour, which I contributed freely and gladly). Likewise, to begin an audio or video podcasting project would cost very little: mainly some gear and the time it takes to film or record, edit, and upload the finished product to the internet. You can buy a decent digital sound recorder now for a hundred dollars; sound quality approaching professional levels is yours for under $500.

There are free platforms for blogging. (WordPress, which we use, is one of them. There are many more.) There is software freely available for sound and video editing. Archiving sound and video files is free or very close to it. Once on the internet, these files can be accessed by anyone in the world who has access to the internet. If need be, they can be transferred to media such as compact disc or DVD so that they can be heard or watched in any context.

And we can do all of this with no restrictions on content except the ones which regulate freedom of speech and common decency. We do not need to defer to the gatekeepers of the commercial media, the ones who determine whether their readers, listeners, viewers, or (most importantly) advertisers will want to see what we have to say. We can bypass them altogether. Liberation!

3. We can build our audience

This is what I have been thinking while we wait to find out whether CJMP FM is going to survive — and if so in what form. I’ve been thinking that I need to find means of expression which are as independent as they can possibly be. The older I get, the more I chafe under arbitrary control.

I believe that there are people out there who are as dissatisfied as I am with the state of the commercial media. I don’t blame the media; they are doing the best they can under conditions which are not conducive to free and open expression. They are trapped in an economy of scarcity, and their operating costs are continually rising. When I look at TV, which is very rarely now, I can scarcely believe that what I’m looking at is happening on this planet. Likewise commercial radio and much of the print media. It says nothing to me about my life.

And to be very clear: I’m not complaining about the lack of counterbalancing political opinion from the left end of the political spectrum (which is anyway a ridiculous oversimplification, but that’s a story for another time). I’m talking about the fact that the commercial media very often remove the humanity from the stories they tell simply because of the constraints they operate under. Stories need to fit space and time limits, need to have some kind of narrative arc or moral, and need to conform to the opinions and mindset of the largest possible section of the population. In other words, these stories have to behave like nothing in real life.

We need to create an audience for stories which are like real stories: too long, too short, rambling, open-ended, pointless, contrary, upsetting, or just plain weird. Because that is what life is really like. And for too long we have had to put up with media which try to convince us that life is neat and tidy and by the way please buy this box of cereal. Life is about so much more. I demand more. You should too.

4. A call to action

So, let’s recap. Free (or inexpensive) software and gear (computers, cameras, audio recorders) means that we can create media products of high quality with relatively little technical expertise. We can publish these works to a global audience thanks to the internet. We are not hampered by arbitrary or absurd restrictions on format or content. We can follow our passion to find the stories we care about. We can use these tools to tell the real stories which are going on around us all the time, and we can share those stories easily, freely, with anyone who wants to read, hear, or see them. We can do this fast and cheap.

And here’s the kicker: by doing this — by engaging in guerrilla story-telling outside the confines of the commercial media — we can connect together a group of local artists, reporters, documentarians, and musicians who want to use the new media tools to tell the story of a community. And by telling these stories, we will strengthen the community. People will be able to hear and see themselves in the stories of the region. They will be caught up in stories told by people they know, stories they never heard because they weren’t ‘fit to print’ or ‘ready for prime time’. We can be part of creating a culture of honouring all of the stories and all of the people who make our region what it is.

So if any of this interests you, please come out for a public meeting on Tuesday April 21 at 7:00 PM at the Unitarian Hall in The People’s Republic of Cranberry (Powell River). We’ll be talking about how to kick-start a collective of like-minded media guerrillas and start telling the stories we want to tell by whatever means available. See you there.

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