Changing the world – one neighbourhood at a time

With bright coloured headdresses and holding flowers, the procession set off. From young ones in arms through to some over eighty years old, they walked through the neighbourhood in celebration of our relationship with the Earth. When they arrived at the festival site, they were met by the Brigstowe Village Band, arrayed in 19th century, Thomas Hardy-themed, rural outfits and they placed their flowers in a hazel sculpture.

So began our Three Greens Festival, held for the first time on September 25th 2021 in our local park, bedecked with a massive stretch tent, like in African vistas, and straw bales decked around various places of interest. There was a ‘bee garden’ for the young people. There was apple pressing, a wood workshop making trays from hazel and willow. There were wildlife trails around the local area, led by the naturalist, Ed Drewitt, and a wildflower walk with Shaun Waycott of Grow Wilder. The library hosted a nature photography competition and some poetry on a green theme. We had a rich musical programme culminating in an evening concert featuring South American music on the theme of homeland by internationally acclaimed Duo Correa Andrews, who live in the local area.

We may think we know about festival. We have music festivals all over the world, from New Orleans to Glastonbury. We have festivals of literature and the arts like Hay Festival and The Edinburgh Fringe. They attract enormous numbers of people and are justifiably famous. Yet I have come to believe that small neighbourhood festivals, like the one I describe here, may also have an important place in our social landscape, because they can create a particular type of shared imagination and empower ordinary people to respond to the environmental crisis. Here’s how.

This festival had a particular focus. It was held in celebration of our relationship with the Earth. Many ordinary people are deeply concerned about the Earth, but the current spectrum of opportunities to express that concern can feel very negative. They are all about opposition. There are the demos, where we all turn out, making a ritualised threat to the powers that be, in an attempt to force changes in government policy. Then there are the behaviour campaigns that persuade us to stop doing various things. These are all very worthwhile and important, but I sense that what is often missing is the opportunity to do something positive, like maybe people want to  celebrate our relationship with the Earth?

This festival was, of course, very small as an event. We clocked four hundred people on the day, about the same as typical fetes. But there is something very good about being small. It means that the event can genuinely engage with ordinary people in the neighbourhood. These are people who would not go on a demonstration and might not talk about the environment as a ‘crisis’, but they do appreciate nature in their local area. They do want to learn about it and they do want to enjoy that sense of identity, solidarity and positive purpose that comes from a festival.

In many years as an environmental entrepreneur, I have learned the importance of reaching beyond the activist fringe. Back in 2012 we launched a currency in Bristol called the Bristol Pound. It was designed to support local traders and so cut the carbon emissions of the city and it became quite famous. We travelled all over Europe telling the story and gave interviews to media from as far afield as China. Yet the Bristol Pound closed last year. The main reason for its closure was that it had never reached the mainstream. Hundreds of green activists in the city had supported it, but that was not enough to make it viable. The same is true of many green ventures in a city such as Bristol, UK. There is a vibrant community of forward-thinking people here, but the danger is that the same people are involved in everything. City-wide initiatives can guarantee an audience and it feels like a great place to do something innovative. But it is all too easy to ignore the fact that most people are not involved. In contrast, neighbourhood events, like our festival, have a chance of involving new people, reaching through local networks and engaging ordinary people as participants, not simply spectators.

I have a feeling that the tide of social change is turning back to neighbourhoods. The Covid pandemic has encouraged many people to work from home. Those daily commutes no longer look as attractive as they once were. Houses are being refitted to accommodate offices. New rail and road building schemes are looking rather strange. Why would we want to get everywhere that little bit faster, when we can meet much more conveniently over the internet? It is sad to say, but cities are going to have to repurpose themselves. Online shopping is already eroding our retail centres. Yet something positive could arise from all this churn. I believe this could be the moment for the neighbourhood. Human beings need some face-to-face contact. We need a sense of belonging and a place. And it is neighbourhoods above all else that are able to provide this.

George Marshall has spent many years trying to understand why we have been so hesitant to talk about climate change and the environmental crisis. He describes the ‘socially-constructed silence’ that has pervaded our public life until recently. We are moving so slowly. Politicians are now talking but, as Greta Thunberg says, too much of it is just ‘blah, blah, blah, promises for the future, without the necessary, immediate change. I believe that ordinary people are overwhelmed by these things and that is the reason for our silence. Eco-anxiety may be rising deep within us, especially in young people, but we simply cannot see what to do. Any miniscule changes that we might embrace will never be enough. It needs everyone to work together, in every nation and culture, people and language. How can that be?

Now bear with me if I indulge in a little fantasy. How would it be if every neighbourhood on Earth held a regular series of festivals in celebration of their relationship with the Earth? Each culture would express this in ways that suited them and there would be enormous variety, but one thing would be the same and that is the focus on the Earth. Imagine every solstice and equinox, in every season, every harvest, festivals took place to celebrate our relationship our relationship with the Earth. Such festivals might bind us together as human beings all around the world and kindle our imagination towards living in harmony with nature.

The festivals could be coupled with other neighbourhood initiatives focused on the setting apart of land out of the deepest respect for nature and the participation of the community in caring for this land. There will be more about this aspect in articles that follow on this site.

Traditional societies have always known about the importance of festival. Durkheim has shown that festivals and rituals combined to reinforce a sense of shared identity and purpose in the first human communities. Indeed, they may have been a vital part of how human beings learned to create large societies. So, what we are doing here is tapping into an ancient means of human flourishing, one that has been largely forgotten in the modern era. And by focusing festival on our relationship with the Earth, we are explicitly combining as one human community and developing our imagination about the Earth in all its awesome complexity.

It is becoming more and more apparent that something is missing in the human response to the environmental crisis. We have just witnessed COP26, an extraordinary international effort, where nearly two hundred nations combined to try to find a consensus on the way forward. Sadly, it was not the decisive event that the world had hoped for. Piecemeal achievements clouded an embarrassing failure to tackle fossil fuel usage. Humanity lost a battle against itself at COP26.

So what could shift the ground? Where does an answer lie? We are used to blaming politicians, but how about if we think about ourselves, not to indulge in a fit of self-blame, but to ask the big questions about our own imagination? Surely, we can recognise that many of us in the so-called developed world lack any real sense of our relationship with the Earth? We are caught in ways of thinking about ourselves as consumers that are essentially abusive to the human spirit. A large part of our workforce is engrossed in manipulating others to buy something and the algorithms of social media can all too easily lead us toward the shocking and the false. Is it time for us to lift our eyes, to rise up out of the confines of our narrow worldviews and recognise that we are creatures of this Earth, this great and powerful living system on which all life depends? I believe we can do this and that festival can be part of the means by which we do it.

Politicians are not actually as powerful as we might think. One of the reasons that they hesitate to act on the environmental crisis is because they don’t think their people will accept the radical changes required. Yet if the perception of the people changes, everything becomes possible. If the vast majority of people are aware of the deep changes that we need and have come to feel their importance, then the politicians will be free to act and we will move into a new phase of human history.

Chris Sunderland Dec 1st 2021

This is the first of three articles describing simple practices that could change the world. A more thorough justification for this approach can be found in the recently published ebook ‘Imagination is the key – to unlock the environmental crisis’ available here