Episode 94 - Clare Farrell - Co-creating our collective futures
What does one do when everything in the world feels so unhinged ?
As the planet becomes swamped this week with flooding and hurricanes, climate protest as we know it, in the UK at least, carries an increasingly high chance of arrest and conviction.
Politics even with a new administration feels as stuck, exhausted, divisive and non-participatory as ever.
As the polycrisis intensifies, the systems of governance and ways of organising ourselves become more ossified and brittle, and we can see how woefully unfit for purpose they have become for a complex uncertain future.
Now must be the time to accelerate constructive, people-powered participation, for more of us to begin to practice, rehearse, prototype and birth the new moves and the new systems that will put life at the centre.
Because ask yourself - if we’re not doing it - is it going to happen from the top down - led by Govt, Media and Corporations ?
Do you still trust that putting an X in a box during an election is going to do the job, to tackle all the things that keep you awake at night about the future and the rapidly unravelling and violent present ?
My guest in this episode is active citizen - Clare Farrell.
With a background in sustainability, fashion and more recently climate activism as one of the original Co-founders of Extinction Rebellion.
As a designer her work has expanded beyond clothing and material products and into experience design and participation design, strategic communications and strategies for positive social change.
Clare has been focussing her energies and creativity of late towards constructive forms of social and cultural transformation in the UK.
Manifesting through work with The Humanity Project - a platform focussing on grassroots, participatory democracy via innovative local citizens assemblies
and
with Hard Art Collective - with musician, artist and activist Brian Eno - an artist led ‘feel tank’ exploring how we might weave new cultural contexts that put care and solidarity at the centre.
Clare has a deep love for humanity and a longing to support ways to create a new story and ways forward into an uncertain future, holding love and hard work as the key to our success.
We explore:
Grassroots Democracy and Intersectional Issues
The Power of Collective Imagination
The Role of Non Violent Protest and Civil Disobedience
Legal Systems and the Fight for Justice
The Importance of Disruption in Social Movements
Imaginative Capacity and Hard Art
The Role of Artists in Cultural Change
Participatory Democracy and Cultural Networks
Designing Spaces for Interaction and Engagement in people led change
This is an expansive and informative conversation exploring the roles of nonviolent protest and the legal system with UK climate activism, the innovative potential of citizen assemblies, and the importance of feelings, imagination, and communal processes in fostering cultural and governance changes.
Ultimately to build a connected society based on care, compassion, freedom and love is going to need big numbers of people actively participating in local assemblies and community organizing in the places they live and through the networks and influence they hold.
Citizens not consumers as my friend Jon Alexander puts it.
Becoming Crew on Spaceship Earth as we like to say around here.
Listen on all podcast platforms
LINKS
Play Out Song
Seeds - Olivia Fern feat Carrie Tree