Act: Inspiration featured

How Maine Climate Activists Found their Power Potential by Moving Past One-off Protests

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Rob Levin, a Quaker attorney in Portland, Maine, has been concerned about the growing climate crisis for years. Recently, he came to see that using nonviolent direct action could increase his effectiveness on the issue.

Brewing, Local Economies and the Imagination

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One of the most fascinating craft breweries in the UK can be found nestled in a series of arches beneath a railway bridge in Bermondsey in London. For the last 9 years, The Kernel, under the guidance of its founder Evin O’Riordan, have pioneered not just amazing and distinctive beers, but also an approach rooted in connection to place, to a different way of doing business.

We Have what it Takes to Meet the Crisis of our Democracy

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In fending off despair and effectively taking on democracy’s degradation, one insight has helped us a lot: that it’s not the magnitude of a challenge that crushes the human spirit; rather, it’s a sense of futility that does us in. Homo sapiens evolved, after all, as doers and problem solvers.

Why ‘Urban Villages’ are on the Rise around the World

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Among those who focus on sharing and the commons, an urban village is a term that refers to a collaborative way of life — a relatively small, place-based urban community where people cooperate to meet one another’s many needs, be they residential, economic, governmental, or social. In the process, they wind up transforming their own experience of that community.

‘We are Sick of It!’ Where is the European Agrifood Movement?

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A Europe-wide movement is an opportunity to pool resources and learn from each other. Reaching across national and disciplinary borders is a way to reach a critical mass in terms of size, attracting the attention of regional, national and international policymakers to ensure socially and environmentally ambitious reform.

Incredible Edible Todmorden Gives Free Access to Locally Grown Food to Everyone

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The Incredible edible Todmorden movement has turned all the public spaces, from the front yard of a police station to railway stations, into farms filled with edible herbs and vegetables. Locals and tourists pluck fruits and vegetables for free.

Why the Time-Honored White House Protest Needs Defending

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There is a lot for us to do, and unless we have public space — unless we push back against all the ways that politicians at all levels try to privatize, monetize or securitize space — we can’t do the work of building a different kind of society and a different kind of world.

Dark Kitchen: Uncivilising the Table

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This is a series called Dark Kitchen: a set of pieces that will look at and question the culture of food in times of fall. This is a story about food and powerdown. It could seem like a personal story except that it is not: it is a social story about how everything changes when you break the illusions your civilisation is wrapped in.