These are the four main projects which Alan is currently active on. Allies and helpers very welcome!
A. Food Security: Many of the best experts expect serious food shortages and price inflation in the next few years. For an excellent, detailed assessment of the UK outlook and responses needed at all levels from households to national Government, see Tim Lang’s report for the National Preparedness Commission, and related website.
Alan is working with the Our Food Trust and others to increase food security in Wales, where both national and local governments are responding actively to this issue. Our work addresses these issues across Wales, with a main focus on Powys. Overall the two main aims are:
- Substantially increase local food production: especially fresh vegetables and fruit, when Wales is currently even more import-dependent than the UK overall. A first major step is the pilot demonstration project at Sarn Farm: three horticulture smallholdings created from a small farm on a long lease from Powys County Council.
- Raise community resilience on food security: work on this issue is in an exploration phase with a range of local stakeholders: the aims include encouraging communities to develop Food Resilience Plans, to create the capacity to eat communally, and to teach the skills to cook fresh, seasonal, affordable meals. One of our potential partners is Cegin y Bobl in Carmarthenshire.
For more information on Alan’s other work on this topic, including the Growing through Climate Change report which he commissioned, see the Food & Farming section of this website, and his blog posts.
B. Community Places: Alan is working with a few others to explore early-stage visions for places which would help people find fellowship, direction, and soul resilience in a world of rising turbulence. Places which are dedicated to a vision and lovingly stewarded by a community can be a deep catalyst for groups and individuals.
- The Deep Roots Community Imagine a core community of 6-8 people, living and growing food at a rural location in mid-Wales, with a shared, inclusive approach to integrate spirit with land and everyday life. The core community would be joined by small residential groups staying for a weekend to a week, and by a few apprentices staying for a few weeks to a few months. The underlying aim would be for the place, the community, and connection with the land to enable people to find their meaning, purpose, and soul resilience. Celtic Christianity has deep, old roots in mid-Wales, and this community would draw on these roots to nourish heart and soul amid the confusion of our times. See more here.
- Eco-hamlets Garden hamlets would be a great way to help meet several urgent needs: for more local food production, for affordable housing, and to offer meaning, work and homes to young people who despair about the current situation. Imagine a community of 10-30 people, with 10-30 acres of land enabling them to grow much of their food, and also to grow fast-rotation biomass for heating. It could use Tiny Homes, which are a more ecological and comfortable equivalent of mobile homes, and this could make planning permission a lot easier. See more here.
If you’d like to get involved in taking this forward, contact Alan Heeks.
Underlying these initiatives is a view that the climate crisis is at root a spiritual crisis, which asks us to look deeply at the meaning and purpose of our lives and work. See more in the Soul Resilience section of this website.
C. Community Climate Resilience: Strengthening local communities will be crucial in the years ahead, to help us all to live with increasing levels of disruption, e.g. to food supplies, utilities, weather patterns, and probably social cohesion. SoF can offer a range of insights and processes, drawn from our pilot projects an1d research, to help communities: see summary here. Our current focus is a major new project led by the Network for Social change, in which Alan is one of the core team.
Community Climate Resilience Project
This project aims to increase substantially the capacity of local communities across the UK to sustain themselves and adapt in the face of mounting disruption from climate change and other sources. Our plan is designed to achieve proof of concept for a number of initiatives early on, and to share them on a much wider scale in Years 2 and 3, helped by other funders. Strengthening social infrastructure can make a huge difference in times of crisis, as documented in Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell and Adam Greenfield’s more recent Lifehouse.
We recognise that the scale of the climate crisis, and other systemic issues such as social and economic injustice, cannot be rectified by any project, but it looks clear that strengthening the social infrastructure of local communities is one of the most effective interventions which is realistically achievable.
For a project summary click here.
D. Giving youth hope: understanding and action
Context
It’s clear that teenagers and young adults are carrying high levels of distress and despair about the climate crisis and future outlook. This is a thinks piece, suggesting questions to explore through in-person conversations with young people, with the aim of then trialling initiatives shaped by their views of what would help them.
Informal research
The questions below could be used in conversations, as a form of focus group. The aim is qualitative guidance, not quantified research.
The invitation could be: “I’d like to ask you to join a small group to discuss how you handle distress about the climate crisis and future outlook, and what would help you”.
Questions
- Do you feel distressed about the climate crisis?
- How do you handle this distress?
- Do you have any ideas of what would help you to handle this distress better?
- If you’re looking for help with climate distress, where would you look? E.g. friends, social media, podcasts, websites, older people…
- Some people see climate distress as partly a spiritual crisis, because it can leave us questioning the purpose of our life, and feeling hopeless about the future. Do you share this view?
- If you wanted to explore a spiritual or soul response to the climate crisis, where would you look? If you did a web search, what words would you use?
- A group of older adults are thinking about a project to help young people find spiritual resilience as a response to the climate crisis. Do you think this is worth doing?
- What form do you think a project like this should take? For example, would it be good to offer podcasts, a website with resources, workshops online or in person, or a book?
If you’d like to comment, set up a conversation, or offer help to set up an initiative, please email Alan.