Educational Bioshelters project.
We had an email from Simon at hydroponoics4llife that came into the incredible edible site , and thought what they are doing so brilliant, we asked him if we could print it, we will be keeping intouch with them, and hope to be sharing news and ideas.
here is Simon’s mail
Hi Guys
Heard on the local organic grapevine about the work you have done so far, it’s a fantastic project and I feel it could link in many ways to what we are doing at Hydroponics4life
We have, with the help of Manchester University and Mathew Moss high school, developed an alternative science curriculum with lesson plans based around aquaponics. There has been a lot of enthusiasm from the teachers who are big on children learning by investigation instead of being taught. Various councils have also expressed an interest; they are all about renewable sustainability these days and especially liked the vertical grow possibilities. We have also had correspondences of several emirate states, the south African education minister several MPs and Meps and several celebrities have expressed an interest so we are hoping to get hi profile this year.
Last year we converted a library bus to a hydroponic information centre, travelling the country to raise awareness and we now have a double decker bus we are converting into the world’s first Mobile aquaponic bioshelter with Mathew Moss High school, it is the perfect vehicle (please excuse the pun:-) for teaching pupils teachers and the general public, We have all the various hydroponic techniques demonstrated onboard with a training program and power point presentation enabling anyone to teach the fundamentals of hydroponics.
With the increased awareness we managed to complete our mission to raise 20,000 usd to Build and open a school in Cambodia
So now the world bank is set to match it and we will begin to have a 5 roomed school built with a teacher for a year, electricity, water, satellite internet.
Once we get the school built the idea is to introduce an aquaponics system so we can try to help them achieve self sustainability, with the local (UK) schools to support it with books and information. We now have the support of Manchester university’s biological science dept and by working with them we aim to create a recipe for life for as many projects as possible.
Which leads me to the overall principal of hydroponics4life linking individuals, schools and organizations with projects in the developing world, sharing and developing the techniques and advances in science to make a difference where it is needed most.
Combine that with the ultimate existing renewable resource, education.
That is what we like to call the Recipe4life.
Long term we hope to enable as many of these type of projects to be possible. We are also working towards it being enveloped into the national curriculum.
If you feel we could be of any help to you in any way please don’t hesitate to ask, I feel we have common goals and can see many mutual benefits of working together.
As always all feedback greatly received
Kind regards
Simon Khan
Friday 22 January 2010
Monday 11 January 2010
word of the day - ethicurean
*[eth•i•cu•re•an] : noun : also adj
Someone who seeks out tasty things that are also sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical — SOLE food, for short.
Someone who seeks out tasty things that are also sustainable, organic, local, and/or ethical — SOLE food, for short.
Growing Sustainable Communities
I have been working with Pam on a short booklet on Incredible Edible. It is in first draft form and available but its a big file so email me if you want a copy at admin@iqea.com and I will zip a copy to you
The booklet captures the ideas, methods and plans for the work.
Hope you like it.
Paul
The booklet captures the ideas, methods and plans for the work.
Hope you like it.
Paul
Sunday 3 January 2010
Happy new decade 2010...
Incredible people, incredible places - radical hope
In December 2009 I was travelling and talking about incredible edible to people in China, Hong Kong, and Australia. Despite the distances between these places, and the difference in cultural traditions,the greatest impression from my trip is one of similarity of people, and their ambitions. People in each place I visited are eager and searching for new ways to enhance the quality of their lives, and instead of this being defined simply through the production of more commodities, there was a great deal of discussion taking place in China and Australia on how improvement of life can move hand in hand with improvement of the environment. To do this, people I spoke with were interested in small-scale change which effected their lives directly, leaving the bigger change things (the polluting factories of China, the problems of water extraction by the wine industry in Australia) to agencies who were better equipped to deal with them - but at the same time worried that those who could lead on this probably would not. This concern with the small scale and the local was a defining issue for me. It makes sense to look to what your own personal activity might do to help frame a new way of thinking, acting, and doing daily life. It was inspiring to connect so easily with this universal interest and connection with the ideas and the practicalities of engaging in activity in a small way to modify and temper the massively destructive effects of industrialisation, of individual lifestyle, and to nurture community. I was struck as I met with a whole range of people how many of them are a) clearly concerned and disturbed by the effect they are witnessing of the ways that they are living b) how keen they are to begin to do something about it c) how powerful and motivating the hope for a better future can be. The connection with people's belief in possibility for change despite difficult circumstances was a good tonic for me, as the evidence on the ground in many of the places I visited was often of the destructive, rather than constructive effects, of human community. Whether it be downtown Beijing and Shanghai where the air quality was to say the least making it difficult some days to breathe, to the parched earth in the outskirts of Adelaide where climate change in the form of exceptionally high temperatures and drought has become a daily struggle to live a normal life. The gentle pursuit of groups of people who are striving to see ways forward that are less destructive, more harmonious with the land, and are committed to self-organisation seems to have an appeal across ideological and political borders, and there was plenty of evidence of efforts to make a difference. In China, there were many examples I saw of different forms of micro-economy which people were exploring to provide community examples of development without ecological damage, this ranged from the factory manager who was designing micro-hydroponic systems for use in tower blocks, to the communities of schools in north China who were sharing ideas and practice in community agriculture. In Australia, one school I visited was in the middle of a complete overhaul of its building and facilities and the plan is to create a community cafe, with community allotments and vineyard, olive trees and water capture which in turn will form a substantial piece of their curriculum for the future (coincidentally, the Australian parliament was throwing out its carbon trading bill while I was in Canberra, corporate Australia seemed a long way of the discussions that were happening on the ground.) It was fascinating to share ideas with the teachers and students who were proud of their efforts to begin this work together, their imaginative approaches, interest in other ways of doing familiar things and simple human scale approaches was a real connection between what we have been doing in incredible edible and what other friends are doing elsewhere. At the same time, there was a background sense of worry and concern and urgency, people were really reaching out for solutions. In Adelaide people were very worried about the rapid change in temperature and the speed with which the moisture in the land had evaporated - while I was in the city the temperature rose a full 8degrees warmer to 45oc, hotter than any previous average monthly record by 8oc. This was so intensely hot that it changes the way people go about daily life - summer plans in Adelaide were to move to opening the doctors surgeries from 6pm through until the early hours of the morning so that people can travel without worrying about heat exhaustion, to concerns over every drop of water being used in the buildings - for example the schools were building composting toilets and had water capture tanks.
So what was my overriding impression of the trip? I had seen some quite disturbing and challenging situations in both China and Australia. What surprised me was the connector of poverty, in quite different economic environments, from the poverty of both city living in Shanghai of the old lady recycling cardboard to make a small living, to the subsistence poverty of the countryside around Hangzhou where peasant farmers still work small scraps of land to grow their food, to the water poverty that is now a serious problem in south Australia and will no doubt lead to a radical redesign of how to live in such environments if the climate predictions are remotely accurate. But out of such poverty comes creative ambition and an amazing drive for betterment. This need not be the bleak picture we have of a future dystopia which is so often featured in the blockbuster movies that seem to plague our cultural vision of where we go next. Instead, I saw intelligent, caring, thinking people who were in their own ways beginning to fashion ways forward that recognised and responded to the environment around them in more sensitive and thoughtful ways. I think their ideas might best be called 'radical hope' - where we might usefully ask ourselves 'for what might we hope?' - I think the trip has clearly demonstrated to me that there are clear limits to human existence - some of the places in China were the most challenging environments I have ever encountered in terms of day to day living. But this is not to aim a criticism at any one place, any one nation, it is a universal challenge for every person on the planet to begin to ask the question of themselves. Indeed, it is to suggest that perhaps we need to ask the genral question of our civilisation which in many ways appears to be at the tipping point of complete collapse, for what may we hope?
And what was the lesson from my trip, of course I turn homewards and reflect on what we have done here in our project so far with the guidance of other world views. From the people I met and from the inspiring ways they are dealing with the already present and damaging effects of climate change and a struggling ecosystem it is clear to me that we need to ask what makes future goodness? What will help us to understand a different future? What do we do when we have so few appropriate concepts through which to understand a viable alternative future? This is what Incredible Edible offers people, it opens up the possibility for people to come together and to do things which really can establish the beginnings of a new solution. But it needs much further reimagination for us to begin to see ourselves as a serious development - we have some of the characteristics of a new direction, we emerge from a challenging situation, we struggle, sometimes against the odds, we are in danger however of people interpreting our efforts through other lenses and I think we are also in danger of providing partial answers. Amidst the ruins of the old ways of living are some of the possibilities of a new vision, carrying with it new ways of living which can provide useful stepping stones for us towards a different future. But as my trip has so strongly reminded me, as people, we are almost universally anchored in the modern industrialised world, as a result we have lost both identity and we are assimilated deeply into the new order of consumerism which is engineered into the core of modern living. To unpack and realign this is a huge challenge, it is something that questions how we exist, how we relate, how we engage with and connect with other people and the world around us, it somehow challenges us to maintain and create a connection from a pre-modern to a post-modern world, a serious consideration if we are to create a new orthodoxy, a new way of being which is more benign.
Our hope is therefore radical, it questions and critically rejects the existing order of things, but in doing this it must provide some of the hope through practice and example - some of that hope comes from seeing possible futures and Incredible edible offers a little of that, some comes through sadness and concern which I have touched during this trip, a feeling amongst people of many nations that something is not right - and hope that we, as sentient, loving beings, are capable of doing something about that situation and overcome the destructive force of determinism. Our hope is in the education of our lives, connecting to an as yet undisclosed future.
In December 2009 I was travelling and talking about incredible edible to people in China, Hong Kong, and Australia. Despite the distances between these places, and the difference in cultural traditions,the greatest impression from my trip is one of similarity of people, and their ambitions. People in each place I visited are eager and searching for new ways to enhance the quality of their lives, and instead of this being defined simply through the production of more commodities, there was a great deal of discussion taking place in China and Australia on how improvement of life can move hand in hand with improvement of the environment. To do this, people I spoke with were interested in small-scale change which effected their lives directly, leaving the bigger change things (the polluting factories of China, the problems of water extraction by the wine industry in Australia) to agencies who were better equipped to deal with them - but at the same time worried that those who could lead on this probably would not. This concern with the small scale and the local was a defining issue for me. It makes sense to look to what your own personal activity might do to help frame a new way of thinking, acting, and doing daily life. It was inspiring to connect so easily with this universal interest and connection with the ideas and the practicalities of engaging in activity in a small way to modify and temper the massively destructive effects of industrialisation, of individual lifestyle, and to nurture community. I was struck as I met with a whole range of people how many of them are a) clearly concerned and disturbed by the effect they are witnessing of the ways that they are living b) how keen they are to begin to do something about it c) how powerful and motivating the hope for a better future can be. The connection with people's belief in possibility for change despite difficult circumstances was a good tonic for me, as the evidence on the ground in many of the places I visited was often of the destructive, rather than constructive effects, of human community. Whether it be downtown Beijing and Shanghai where the air quality was to say the least making it difficult some days to breathe, to the parched earth in the outskirts of Adelaide where climate change in the form of exceptionally high temperatures and drought has become a daily struggle to live a normal life. The gentle pursuit of groups of people who are striving to see ways forward that are less destructive, more harmonious with the land, and are committed to self-organisation seems to have an appeal across ideological and political borders, and there was plenty of evidence of efforts to make a difference. In China, there were many examples I saw of different forms of micro-economy which people were exploring to provide community examples of development without ecological damage, this ranged from the factory manager who was designing micro-hydroponic systems for use in tower blocks, to the communities of schools in north China who were sharing ideas and practice in community agriculture. In Australia, one school I visited was in the middle of a complete overhaul of its building and facilities and the plan is to create a community cafe, with community allotments and vineyard, olive trees and water capture which in turn will form a substantial piece of their curriculum for the future (coincidentally, the Australian parliament was throwing out its carbon trading bill while I was in Canberra, corporate Australia seemed a long way of the discussions that were happening on the ground.) It was fascinating to share ideas with the teachers and students who were proud of their efforts to begin this work together, their imaginative approaches, interest in other ways of doing familiar things and simple human scale approaches was a real connection between what we have been doing in incredible edible and what other friends are doing elsewhere. At the same time, there was a background sense of worry and concern and urgency, people were really reaching out for solutions. In Adelaide people were very worried about the rapid change in temperature and the speed with which the moisture in the land had evaporated - while I was in the city the temperature rose a full 8degrees warmer to 45oc, hotter than any previous average monthly record by 8oc. This was so intensely hot that it changes the way people go about daily life - summer plans in Adelaide were to move to opening the doctors surgeries from 6pm through until the early hours of the morning so that people can travel without worrying about heat exhaustion, to concerns over every drop of water being used in the buildings - for example the schools were building composting toilets and had water capture tanks.
So what was my overriding impression of the trip? I had seen some quite disturbing and challenging situations in both China and Australia. What surprised me was the connector of poverty, in quite different economic environments, from the poverty of both city living in Shanghai of the old lady recycling cardboard to make a small living, to the subsistence poverty of the countryside around Hangzhou where peasant farmers still work small scraps of land to grow their food, to the water poverty that is now a serious problem in south Australia and will no doubt lead to a radical redesign of how to live in such environments if the climate predictions are remotely accurate. But out of such poverty comes creative ambition and an amazing drive for betterment. This need not be the bleak picture we have of a future dystopia which is so often featured in the blockbuster movies that seem to plague our cultural vision of where we go next. Instead, I saw intelligent, caring, thinking people who were in their own ways beginning to fashion ways forward that recognised and responded to the environment around them in more sensitive and thoughtful ways. I think their ideas might best be called 'radical hope' - where we might usefully ask ourselves 'for what might we hope?' - I think the trip has clearly demonstrated to me that there are clear limits to human existence - some of the places in China were the most challenging environments I have ever encountered in terms of day to day living. But this is not to aim a criticism at any one place, any one nation, it is a universal challenge for every person on the planet to begin to ask the question of themselves. Indeed, it is to suggest that perhaps we need to ask the genral question of our civilisation which in many ways appears to be at the tipping point of complete collapse, for what may we hope?
And what was the lesson from my trip, of course I turn homewards and reflect on what we have done here in our project so far with the guidance of other world views. From the people I met and from the inspiring ways they are dealing with the already present and damaging effects of climate change and a struggling ecosystem it is clear to me that we need to ask what makes future goodness? What will help us to understand a different future? What do we do when we have so few appropriate concepts through which to understand a viable alternative future? This is what Incredible Edible offers people, it opens up the possibility for people to come together and to do things which really can establish the beginnings of a new solution. But it needs much further reimagination for us to begin to see ourselves as a serious development - we have some of the characteristics of a new direction, we emerge from a challenging situation, we struggle, sometimes against the odds, we are in danger however of people interpreting our efforts through other lenses and I think we are also in danger of providing partial answers. Amidst the ruins of the old ways of living are some of the possibilities of a new vision, carrying with it new ways of living which can provide useful stepping stones for us towards a different future. But as my trip has so strongly reminded me, as people, we are almost universally anchored in the modern industrialised world, as a result we have lost both identity and we are assimilated deeply into the new order of consumerism which is engineered into the core of modern living. To unpack and realign this is a huge challenge, it is something that questions how we exist, how we relate, how we engage with and connect with other people and the world around us, it somehow challenges us to maintain and create a connection from a pre-modern to a post-modern world, a serious consideration if we are to create a new orthodoxy, a new way of being which is more benign.
Our hope is therefore radical, it questions and critically rejects the existing order of things, but in doing this it must provide some of the hope through practice and example - some of that hope comes from seeing possible futures and Incredible edible offers a little of that, some comes through sadness and concern which I have touched during this trip, a feeling amongst people of many nations that something is not right - and hope that we, as sentient, loving beings, are capable of doing something about that situation and overcome the destructive force of determinism. Our hope is in the education of our lives, connecting to an as yet undisclosed future.
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