Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Berlin’s creative culture is under tremendous pressure as real estate speculators from around the globe buy up apartment buildings. But a culture of resistance and grassroots revitalization is putting a brake on gentrification, helping to protect the residents’ right to their city.
In 1975, five penniless friends began restoring an old spinning mill in an attempt to revive the local wool industry. Today, the coop Ardelaine and its partners employ about 50 workers.
Quebec’s social economy (also translated as “solidarity economy”) extends far beyond the province’s two major cities, and includes manufacturing, agricultural cooperatives, daycare centers, homecare services, affordable housing, social service initiatives, food co-ops, ecotourism, arts programs, public markets, media, and funeral homes.
The Toronto Tool Library in Ontario, Canada, is a model tool lending program. With four locations and a variety of workshops and community events, it is a pioneer of the lending and sharing movement.
Forty years ago, the rulers of the West made not one, but several Devil’s bargains. Despite the suspicious smell of sulfur in the air, they thought they would get away with them.
What could you catalyse where you live that would act in the same way? How could your community, your place, tell a story about what the future could be, a story that burns in bright colours? Because goodness knows we need those.
The Ecological Land Co-operative (ELC) was set up to address the lack of affordable sites for ecological land-based livelihoods. A life on the land is a dream for many, but one in which the barriers are high, and the ELC recognised that this needed to be addressed.
At the Mutual Aid Network, we have developed a new type of networked cooperative — one that, among other things, lets people find talented collaborators for personal, neighborhood-wide, or even city-wide projects.
How did a man like Donald J. Trump get to be president? And how on earth can his dangerous agenda be fought? For those burning questions, a forthcoming book described as “the toolkit for shock resistance” could well be an indispensable resource.
CCS is an educational program that organizes award-winning seminar series, focusing on culture, nature, sustainable organic agriculture, and traditional cuisine. Since its founding, the program has hosted more than 3,000 students, teachers, researchers, and journalists. These seminars include visits to historic sites, discussions with local producers, and cooking lessons.
But how do you save a coral reef? Here’s one way: cultivate it, harvest it, regrow it. Garden it! Austin Bowden-Kerby is a coral gardener.
The challenge now is to create local to global economies that ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials – from food and housing to healthcare and political voice – while safeguarding Earth’s life-giving systems, from a stable climate and fertile soils to healthy oceans and a protective ozone layer.
