Mike introduces a masterpiece of joined-up thinking on how to build a fresh way of looking at and living in your community, and then how to build resilience on the three pillars of food resilience, energy resilience, and wellbeing. This is one of those videos that should be the template of best practice in this arena
Video Timeline (min:sec):
00.00 - 01:28 Introduction by Mike Eccles
01:28 - 39:35 Presentation
39:35 - 66:49 (end) Q & A
Presentation:
Meeting Summary:
Quick recap
The Hay Community Resilience Initiative
The team discussed the Hay Community Resilience Initiative, a rural community engagement program focused on food, well-being, and energy, and its progress, including the launch of a new evening real food market and plans for an online supermarket. They also explored strategies for managing seasonal gluts from home-grown produce and the potential of developing an online local food supermarket. Lastly, they discussed the importance of community assemblies in building a grassroots movement and achieving meaningful action, with Mike sharing his personal experience with the Extinction Rebellion.
NEXT STEPS for the Initiative are to:
Work on making assembly resources and materials available for others to use once more support is available.
Continue developing the online local food supermarket initiative.
Launch the Energy and Mental Wellbeing Pillars of the resilience initiative.
To explore ways to add value to excess seasonal produce for the proposed online supermarket (e.g. making chutneys, jams).
Continue training and expanding the group of assembly facilitators.
Further develop connections with other community resilience and sustainability networks. Explore potential collaboration with One Planet Living.
Summary
Screen Sharing, Registrants, and Connections
Graham and Mike discussed the logistics of sharing screens for presentations and the challenges of managing large numbers of registrants for a community initiative. They also engaged in a light-hearted conversation about their personal backgrounds and connections, including Mike's time in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and Liz's move to Banwell, Somerset. The team decided to wait a few more minutes for any latecomers before proceeding.
Hay Resilience Initiative Presentation
Graham welcomed everyone and informed them about the recording of the session. The main topic of discussion was the Hay Community Resilience Initiative, presented by Mike Eccles from Hay on Wye. The initiative is a rural community engagement program with three pillars: food, wellbeing, and energy. The food pillar aims to reduce carbon emissions by promoting locally grown, agro-ecologically produced, food. The wellbeing pillar is focused on a preventative approach to improving mental well-being through community activities and support. The energy pillar involves the creation of a community-owned energy company to reduce emissions and generate redistribution of wealth profit for the community. The initiative was initiated in response to the challenges posed by the climate catastrophe and the desire to build a more resilient community.
Community-Led Library Initiative in Powys
Mike discussed the efforts to save Hay's Public Library in Powys, which had been threatened with closure since 2014. A community interest company called Hay Public Library.org CIC was established to negotiate a renewable five-year commercial contract with Powys County Council to keep the Hay Library open and was agreed and signed on 1 October 2021. The aim was to provide more community involvement in the library and introduce new services, including community assemblies to promote deliberative democracy.
Mike highlighted the company's affiliation with EGIN, a network supporting community-led initiatives in climate resilience, and other related organisations. He emphasised the significant effort required to effectively find & participate in a host of National and Regional groups which were being formed and set-up to address the climate catastrophe. It was important to identify key players in the region, and gain their support for the Hay Community Resilience Initiative as a strategic model which could be rolled out and adapted by rural communities across Wales.
Mike's Future-Oriented Policies and Collaborations
Mike emphasised the importance of future-oriented policies for the country's sustainable development. He discussed his interactions with the Future Generations Commissioner's office in Wales, particularly with the current Commissioner, Derek Walker, and their shared interest in ensuring the well-being of future generations. Mike also highlighted his recent meetings with key figures in food policy and health, including Professor Tim Lang and Marie Brousseau-Navarro, the Deputy Future Generations Commissioner and Director of Health, who showed interest in collaborating on the Initiatives' Wellbeing Pillar assembly, when it is launched. Lastly, he mentioned his recent Food Resilience presentation at the 2024 Hay festival, where he was fortunate enough to find himself co-presenting with Jane Davidson. Jane, when a minister in the Welsh Government, actually wrote and implemented the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act in 2015 which set-up the Future Generations Commissioners Office, and is now tasked with writing a strategy (Wales Net Zero 2035 Climate Challenge) to ensure the country reaches Net Zero by 2050.
Ensuring that the Resilience Initiative is known to people like Derek, Marie, Jane, and others, and that they support it, is crucial to its success and integration into the National Race to Zero strategy.
Wales Net Zero 2035 Climate Challenge Update
Mike discussed Jane Davidson's leadership of the Wales Net Zero 2035 Climate Challenge, which aims to set strategic targets, plans and initiatives to ensure that Wales hits net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. He also highlighted the success of their first Food assembly, launching the Food Pillar of the Model. This Assembly attracted over 100 participants and Mike went on to emphasise the importance of using intrinsic value language in marketing and publicity. Lastly, he explained, that in a market town, an initiative to revive the local farmers' market tradition, is an easy 'sell'. Only this time, we would produce food agroecologically, and run the Initiative using a new form of deliberative democracy (Community Assemblies) emphasising the importance of facilitation and training for this process.
Mike's Online Course Experience and Strategy
Mike shared his experience of discovering an online course on a website that his team couldn't afford. He reached out to the course organiser, Sam Kaner - founder of CommunityAtWork.com , and was invited as a guest to the course for free. Sam's generosity enabled him to learn from the authors of the ‘bible for facilitators’ - The Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision-making. Sam's course included a segment on How to Design a Meeting, and this in turn enabled Mike to adapt that design specifically for Community Assemblies - How to Design a Community Assembly. This Template Asset can now be used by anyone wishing to design their own Assembly agenda in the future.
Mike detailed the structure of the design of the Food Assembly, which included educational sessions, breakout sessions for addressing the Assembly question (where the real work takes place), and a final feedback session. He emphasised the importance of the tea and cake breaks for networking and idea generation.
Mike also discussed his strategy for using local newspaper publicity to enhance the perceived importance of their articles - a trick he has used in many past social entrepreneurial campaigns.
Mike's Initiative Progress and Future Plans
Mike reported on the progress of their initiative, which involved data analysis, community engagement, and structure alignment. He shared that 10% of the community showed interest, with 61 feedback forms received, indicating a growing ownership of the project. Mike also mentioned that the Food Assembly has resulted in the launch of an evening market for real food in Hay Castle and revealed plans to start an online supermarket for local growers. He suggested that this could eliminate the need for the Initiative to found and run multiple community supported agricultural businesses (CSAs) to feed the Town. The Assembly has also resulted in the creation of a resource library for others to use as templates in their own communities and a clear document for landowners of the needs required for a CSA to be developed on their land. The Initiative now has a database of skills and resources being offered by the community, from feedback forms, and a list of Community food-growing Action Points for further consideration and development.
The Initiative, Systems Change and Changing the 'Story' we tell Ourselves
Mike presented a community resilience initiative that aims to shift the community's narrative from one of consumers to citizens, with the goal of making the community more resilient in the face of the climate catastrophe. We no longer wish to be thought of as anonymous consumers in Capitalism's all consuming delirium. We are rather Citizens of a community working together positively, creating a sense of Hope, Purpose and Belonging, in an Initiative driven by Kindness. The initiative involves local energy production, food self-sufficiency, preventative mental well-being initiatives, and the introducion of deliberative democracy through community assemblies - new form of democracy for a community. Graham expressed his admiration for the initiative and asked for the sources of the emissions savings Mike mentioned. These come from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park 5-year plan developed by experienced climate specialists and consultants. Mike also mentioned that he was working on making a collection of resources available for others to use and to ensure that others across Wales can replicate and adapt the model for their own communities, but his current workload was a significant obstacle. However it will happen!
Community-Led Sustainable Energy and Food Production
Mike discussed the challenges and strategies of the community-led project focused on sustainable energy and food production. He emphasised the importance of community ownership for the project's success and highlighted the need to balance food and energy production. Community Ownership is not the same as a community agreeing to a large energy business building a Solar or Wind Farm locally - where the global business offers a bribe to that community to prevent local opposition to a planning proposal, or even a share in the profits. Cara expressed interest in linking Hay's project with other community-led solutions including One Planet Living ( https://www.bioregional.com/one-planet-living ) and the one-planet Development (OPD) movement in Wales.
[While the One Planet Living is an international movement into which the Hay Resilience Initiative can fit, the Welsh OPD - https://theoneplanetlife.com/what-is-one-planet- development-in-wales/ - movement in Wales was not designed to feed communities on the scale envisioned by the Hay Resilience Initiative. Having said that, there are less than than 150 OPD people working mostly on two or three acres in Wales at present and everyone involved with an OPD is also a member of The Landworkers Alliance - https://landworkersalliance.org.uk/lwa-cymru/ - which has close connections with the Hay Resilience Initiative.]
Mike agreed to speak at conferences and engage with more organisations to further the Hay Community Resilience Initiative's goals.
Managing Seasonal Gluts and Citizen Assemblies
Stuart and Mike discussed strategies for managing seasonal gluts from home-grown produce, including the use of pollytunnels and adding value through chutneys and other items. They also explored the potential of developing an online local food supermarket. A biodiversity audit was raised as an issue for future discussion.
The conversation then shifted to People's Assemblies and Citizen's Assemblies, with Mike sharing his experience with the Extinction Rebellion and their successful campaigns. He emphasised the importance of community assemblies in building a grassroots movement and achieving meaningful action. The training of facilitators for these assemblies was also discussed.
The conversation ended with Mike agreeing to share his email with the group and Graham announcing that the key points would be posted on a wiki for future reference.
Further reading:
Chat:
01:00:54 Penny Q - Weymouth: Extinction Rebellion are facilitating a big peoples assembly in Windsor Great Park on Saturday. https://extinctionrebellion.uk/massembly/
01:10:31 Amanda Davis: Quick question please... How do we start with a biodiversity audit? Would like to apply for funds for this, as parish council capacity is exhausted. Who might undertake it?
01:12:34 Garry Ford - Corsham Town Council: Are you looking at community orchards?
01:13:09 Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: My local foodbank takes surplus allotment produce from the Allotment Association
01:13:16 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: Reacted to "One Planet Living by..." with 👍
01:13:44 Peter Anderson: Replying to "{4318DBC5-DDD1-4366-A9AD-CD8A258CBEB1}.png"
Yes, this is One Planet Living - not adopted by Welsh Gov as far as I'm aware.
01:14:30 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: If you are close to Somerset please come to the Land Alive conference in November being organised by Sustainable Food Somerset https://www.landalive.co.uk/
01:15:31 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: Also Transition Network has lots of resources to support community leadership in climate resilience. https://transitionnetwork.org/
01:15:50 Jacky Lawrence, Napton PC, Warwickshire Low Carbon Network, NEAT: There's a climate assembly in Stratford next week covering food, energy, transport, biodiversity & river health, adaptation etc. Climate Assembly September 2024 | Stratford-on-Avon District Council
01:18:08 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: There is also George Marshal who wrote Carbon Detox and founded Climate Outreach https://climateoutreach.org/ highly recommend.
01:18:13 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: Reacted to "There's a climate as..." with 👍
01:18:22 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: Reacted to "My local foodbank ta..." with 👍
01:19:19 David Morgan-Jones (Ewshot PC): Many thanks for an excellent talk and fascinating discussion.
01:20:45 Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: I have to go down but thank you for a fascinating talk about a fascinating project.
01:20:47 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: Replying to "{4318DBC5-DDD1-4366-A9AD-CD8A258CBEB1}.png"
01:22:08 Peter Anderson: Is Mike happy to share his email?
01:22:18 Wendy Thomson: Thank you! Another very interesting presentation. Food for thought!
01:22:23 Sarah whitelaw: EXCLLENT SESSION .. THANKS MIKE !!! muh food for thought … Sx
01:23:36 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: Thanks Miek and all!
01:23:44 Cara Naden Environment Somerset Council: *Mike!
01:23:48 Mike E - Hay Resilience: mike.eccles@haypubliclibrary.org
01:24:04 Peter Anderson: It was applause :-)
Really Useful Stuff: (thanks to chrischurch@cooptel.net for this)
The October 12th 2024 ‘Meet Your MP’ day of action on the climate crisis is moving forward fast. It is now known as the ‘Common Grounds’ day and being organised by the Climate Coalition (linking over 100 national bodies). They are asking people and groups all over the UK to set up meetings with their MPs to urge the need for rapid and serious action on climate change.
In the pack above they suggest three key themes / messages (slides 15,16,17) – do check these out. They are setting up a range of online working groups (I am on the coordinating group) – these include: Political Group; Narrative and story group; Media and comms group; Mobilising, organising and capacity building group; Outreach group; Website and tech group; Delivery Group. See this if you are interested:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfIRPPEO_jqi9zY5snK_TH3nGoGLOKLuvUwYLE2bNg5ySkq3w/viewform
[The Coalition suggests that we adopt the story-led approach as a tool to inspire action (including from your MP!)]
AI summary:
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: But in the meantime let me do my party
trick with
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: the Gdpr stuff. So please be aware that
we are recording this session, and if you would rather not be recorded. This is a very
good time to switch everything off
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: that may or may not be useful to you
later.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: And everything gets put up on the wiki
for your reference later on.
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Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: Apologies for not being really with you
just now, but I am now.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Alright! Well, that gives me the clue.
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Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: Just haven't.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: And then.
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Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: I just had an urgent email at the same time as
I logged in.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Well, let me say a very pointed good
afternoon to everybody.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Nice to see you all, and thank you for
showing up.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: and in case I forget later next week
we are going to be talking about
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: biosphere reserves
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: with Chris.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: So you might wish to come to that.
If biosphere reserves is a topic that fascinates you today. However, we have a much
more pragmatic and natural thing. So let me introduce. Well, I don't think you need
any introduction. Mike Eccles from Hay is going to chat to us today, and Mike, the
floor is yours. Please.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Right? Okay. Well, I'm going to talk to you about the hay
resilience initiative and what it is and how it's
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: started. And
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: I need to actually share my screen to share things here,
whether that makes it possible for me to do that
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And if I share that.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Yeah. That's good. Started.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Is it? Is it working?
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Well, yes, we are. Yep.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: You can see it.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Yes, we're on your presentation.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Okay. Great. Well.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Maybe just switch to sideshow mode,
but otherwise you're fine.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Okay. So here we go.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Okay. So everybody's still there.
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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration: Yes, and we see you.
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Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: Yep.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Right? Okay, so
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: so that's a picture of hey? And why? And
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: with the black mountains behind me when I took the picture.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and we've got about 2.5,000 people in actually in play, and
probably another 2.5,000 around the outside of it.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Various different villages.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And the initiative is a
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: it's a rural community engagement program. So it's using
deliberative democracy that's community assemblies as real
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Democratic vehicles to take powerful action
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: on those issues over which we have or wish to gain agency.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: It's made up of 3 pillars.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the 1st one that we started with was food.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So the question is, why did we choose food? Because
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: we can do our part to significantly reduce our carbon
emissions where we can achieve a a 22% cut in emissions arising from food consumption.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: In other words, how it is grown, it's local, and it's grown
Agro ecologically.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and we can actually contribute to 31% cut in non Co. 2
emissions arising from land use by not buying food from where we buy it from at the
moment we actually reduce the amount of Co 2 emissions.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And that's because of the resulting habitat restoration.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: land use change
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and sustainable farming practices.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So the second pillar
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: has to do with wellbeing. And
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the most important thing about this
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: is it's driven by kindness so that you have a values based
model.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: which is something which people do respond to.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And the intention in this particular model is to change the
culture.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: all around mental well-being in this particular period.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Hello. In other words.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: we want to create an environment where it is okay not to be
okay.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And the assembly will think tank and suggest a series of
preventative measures which we can then implement as and when we want to.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And the objective is to catch ourselves. If we're feeling
depressed
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: before we need Nhs help and to redirect our state of mind
into various forms of community activity and support.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: The idea is that we are facing the future. We're not on
our own.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: but we are together as families, as neighbours and as a
community.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and the 3rd pillar has to do with energy
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: now, energy will. If if we run our own energy company and
do it right.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: We will
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: have a 51% cut in emissions rising from the energy uses as
a result of energy efficiency.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: a shift away from fossil fuels to heat and power, home
services and businesses.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the generation of profit after breaking them is reached in 4 to 5 years, and that profit is then available to the community, to redistribute wealth and to fund further kind of actions. EG. Help with insulation, help with heat pumps, reduce the price of food further.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: or reduce the cost of energy further.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and the idea is to ensure that those people at the who are
least well off in our community do not have to choose between eating and eating as they have had to do
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: in the past.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Now the actual that's the entire model itself. So you'll see
that.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: What this all arose out of, hey, public library, and that
was because Paris County Council wanted to close our library down
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and had been trying to do that since 2,014
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and an organization called Howells
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: aptly named Hay and wide library supporters. There were
400 over 400 of them.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Work just pressured to keep the library open.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and it was a political game every year.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and in 2,019 it looked as though they seriously were going
to close the thing down.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and I was asked to go down to a meeting, because I've got a
bit of a reputation.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: We're getting involved in things like this.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and we discussed it through and decided that what we should
do is to actually make Paris County Council our friends rather than our enemy.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: that we should understand how difficult the decisions were
that they were having to make.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and that none of us in the room with any sense at all would
be a county councillor in Paris. Given the financial circumstances they had to deal
with effectively, they were trying to supply the same amount of services with
something like a 40% drop in the amount of income that they had to do it in.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And you know, it's an impossible situation. Of course, we
didn't believe they should be cutting libraries because we believe in libraries, but
they have to cut something. And so we thought that if we had a different approach.
We could set up a community interest company, which is called Hey, public library.org.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And we could negotiate a 5 year commercial contract with them.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: If we had a 5 year commercial contract we would be able to
get more involved in the library and what it did for us, and we would also be able to
set up new public library services, and one that we wanted to set up was a service to
run community assemblies, so that we introduced a deliberative democracy into the
heart of our community. Another way of doing politics, in effect.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and you can see that you know you've got the. And you've got
the 3 assemblies at the bottom running the 3 different pillars, and it's all held
together by a cooperative
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and a resilience communication team.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: But before we even began
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: doing this
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: we had to create a facilitators team
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and we had to train facilitators.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So that was
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the next thing. What do we need to be able to do?
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: The runoff has to send you?
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Well, the 1st thing we had to do was to visit local farmers
and talk to them and bring them in.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Visit every horticultural business in the area already
growing food and talk to them.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: visit all the retailers and businesses associated with food
delivery.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: That's greengrocers, restaurants, etc, so that they didn't
feel threatened by what was going on.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Visit the organization organisers of the Hay Food bank and
find out more about how that works visit the organization of 0 waste hay initiative.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: They collect food from the local supermarket and give it out
3 times a week
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and meet the users of the Food Bank and the users of 0 waste,
and ensure that we got some of them to come along to this assembly, so that we have
their voices as well as the voices of the rest of us.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and also we had to meet with Paris local mental health
professionals to talk about the the mental wellbeing pillar, and find and meet and
join every agency working in the food and energy sector in our region.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: these are the people that we
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: got involved with when we started.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: climate. Humbury had
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: decided along with Banner Banner.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: There were 6 of us in in the room, and we decided to set up
race for 0.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: For
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: at least Paris.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and it has now been set up for the whole of Wales.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So we want. We work directly with Banana, Bonia National
Park to help set up race to 0 in Wales
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: we joined the Powys County Council stakeholders group that
started off
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: in complete chaos. And now there are some really really good
people in there, and the thing is coordination, so that we coordinate
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: a banner of the Ponyard National Park with Paris County
Council the Park is in Powys, but they're 2 separate authorities.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: we had to entice Paris County Council in to use race to 0 as
their framework.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: We also joined an organization which isn't 1 here called egg
in.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and egging was set up in in Wales as a sort of network of
everybody who's doing anything at community level in climate, resilience of one sort
or another.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and it has. It gives you access to
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: a consultant or mentor.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Who then helps you develop the business plan? Who, then, has
you to be able to apply for an egg in Grant, which is a 15 grand grant which you can
use for whatever you
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: apply for
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And then there are the other organizations that that were
involved, the Marty's Wheels, food and Farming group, the Old Wales Food and Farming
group, the South Pass food Partnership, our food, 1,200 langasup green valleys, energy
group and community energy. Wales.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: all of that takes a lot of of work because you've got to go
to a huge number of meetings. You've got to get to know who the Movers and Shakers
are in your region, because it's 1 thing to do something which is fantastic, and there
will also let people doing things in the way of of community activities. But there is
very little
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: which actually put pulls the whole thing together into some
sort of strategic organization, so that one strategy fits into another strategy which
eventually gets the whole country to where it wants to get to by
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: 2050.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: What have we achieved in 7 months by way of national support?
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Now, in Wales we have the future Generations Commissioner's
office.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: This was set up in 2015
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: by somebody called Jane Davidson, who was
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: a a minister in the government at the time.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and it created a Commissioner for future generations, a
Deputy Commissioner
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and a whole team of staff.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and their job
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: was to look after the interests of future generations in
anything that the Welsh Government did.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: which meant that
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: if any bill was being introduced into the Welsh Government,
or any Minister, was about to launch a policy of some sort or another
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: that they had to be notified, and their comments had to be
looked at.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: they have no power
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and a massive amount of influence.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: In that. The politicians, all of them, from all the different
parties, really respect this organization because it is a mechanism by which we in
Wales are able to turn our short term political 5 year period into a long-term
political system
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: by ensuring that the long term is always considered in
everything that we do.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So my 1st
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: person to get to was Derek Walker, the Commissioner.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and I happened to be with an event that he turned up to in
257
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the hay festival not this year, but last year.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and this guy came in. I didn't know who he was, and everybody
was sort of
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: falling around him, so I thought, Well, I better go and find
out who he is. So when he was leaving
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: I went out there and had a chit chat with him, and asked him
who he was to tell me who he was, to which I applied, because the previous
Commissioner, the 1st one was somebody called Sophie Howard. So I said to him, You
don't look like Sophie Howe to me. But he had just taken over from her.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and so I gave him an idea of what we were doing, and he said,
Well, if you need some help, get in touch when you're ready. So
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: That was my 1st ability to do that is, since come on board
and put us in touch with
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: various movers and shakers that we need to get all of this
off the ground.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: so that we have some of the best funders and the best
support people.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: We get a direct introduction to them.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: If the Commissioner rings you up and says, Will you come to a
meeting? You do
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And so that was extremely helpful.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: The so the the second person that I needed to hit. I didn't
even know existed
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: but I went to a food shops event in the Senate where
Professor Tim lang
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: from London University. He is the country's expert on food
policy. Oh, and, by the way, we don't have a food policy in any of the 3 countries,
any of the 4 countries of the United Kingdom
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: it's all left to the supermarkets. So we are going to get
into trouble as the supermarket supply chains start to break down which they will, as
climate change gets worse, and they already are
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: breaking down in certain areas.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Professor Tim Lang came to talk about a policy for Wales.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Representatives came from each of the parties in the Senate,
and also a number of people who were already interested in the field
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: In the afternoon there was workshops, and one of them
happened to be on health, and I thought, Well, that's interesting. I think I'll join
that one because I've done a lot of food stuff.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And I found myself sitting next to this individual.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and Marie
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: told me that she was Deputy Commissioner and Director of
Health.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and when I gave a relief that told what they were doing,
she said, I absolutely want to come to your well-being
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: assembly
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and anything I could do to help
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: get in touch. So that was a great boon as well.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And finally, in the Hay festival this year I was asked to do
a presentation of the workshop on resilience and food resilience.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and it was a 2 h workshop.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Normally, the way it works is somebody do a presentation? And
then the the workshop leader, Andy Middleton, would run the workshop
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: for the next rest of the 2 h.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and when I got down there they said, Oh, you'll be
co-presenting. Oh, gosh! I'm wondering who I'm co-presenting with.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and lo and behold.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: this was with whom I was going to co-present.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So I was able to get our model
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: absolutely in front of Jane Davidson.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Jane Davison not only set up the the future Generations
Commissioner's office
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: by creating the wellbeing future generations act in 2,015,
but she has now been tasked by the Welsh Government to lead a commission in effect.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: which is called the Wales net 0 35 climate challenge. And the
climate challenge is this.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Wales is not going to reach net 0 by 2,050
300
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: we don't know how much longer after that it's likely to reach
at the moment. The trajectory is, it is not going to get better.
301
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So Jane Davidson is working out what needs to be done by
2035 for us to get there by 2050,
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and that will cover every single aspect of the climate
challenge. So it's an enormous task.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and I'm hoping that what we're doing will be a small
footnote in her report, which apparently is coming out next month.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: at the Hay festival
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: I went to 2 other events at which she was speaking.
307
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and both of those. As a result of our meeting she mentioned
what we were doing, and said that this is the sort of thing that needs to be rolled
out across Wales.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Now, our initiative is really for rural. So it doesn't cover
everything. We're going to need to do lots and lots of different things and lots and
lots of different sectors to make all this work.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: that basically is is where we are on on the national and
regional level.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And now I'm going to talk a bit about running assemblies. So
I'm going to be talking about marketing the question of the assembly, facilitating it,
designing it
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: a a trick I learned about publicity for future use. The
metrics we use to measure our success, the follow through we have to do in the
achievements we've reached so far.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So that's basically
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: what I'm going to do to the next section.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: So marketing our 1st assembly
316
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the messaging is really important.
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: And
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: I was on a learning curve here because I didn't know about any
of this stuff.
319
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: But climate camera ran a a session on intrinsic value, language
and extrinsic value language. So I began to understand that
320
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: the nature of the words that you use are very important when
we're doing publicity, and I know this is all part of copy license, but it's more than
it's more than that.
321
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: If you use intrinsic value language, you would appeal to the
emotions of people.
322
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: This is why Brexit happened in this country.
323
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and if you use open sentences instead of closed sentences, it
makes it a great
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: deal of difference. So, having designed this thing and done the
copywriting, I
325
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: chucked it all out to my
326
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: facilitators. There are 40 in that group
327
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: and ask them
328
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: to
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Mike E - Hay Resilience: Take it apart and make suggestions about how we could improve
