GreenTalk
Filmed live at the Arnolfini in Bristol, GreenTalk 2011 showcased a series of short inspirational talks from eleven different speakers setting out some big ideas on the challenges, responses and solutions to these issues.
Talks ranged from six to twelve minutes and were described as ‘passionate’, ‘inspirational’ and ‘revolutionary’ by those in the audience.
Alice and Amy (Playing Out)
Amy Rose has developed a passion for the use of residential street ass a space for creative and social activity. Growing up in New England she has great memories of playing along the river bank and on the railroad tracks with other neighbourhood children.
Alice Ferguson is an environmental consultant and community activist with a strong interest in children’s independent mobility and free play. She grew up in Bristol and can remember her whole street coming together to lay cobblestones together.
Bristol neighbours Alice and Amy started the Playing Out project initially by organising sessions on their own street. It has grown into a community interest company working to promote safe play for children on the streets where they live.
Hannah Smith (COIN)
Hannah Smith manages Defending Rights for Climate Outreach and Information Network. She coordinates the UK Climate Change and Migration Coalition (UKCCMC) and works with refugees and migrants on climate change issues. She is lead author of the report Forced Migration and Climate Change: the challenge for refugee and environmental NGOs is the UK.
COIN is a UK charity dedicated to educating the public aboutclimate change with the aim to facilitate the process by which people: overcome denial about climate change; act collectively to cut greenhouse gas emissions; and offer democratic legitimacy to elected leaders to negotiate successfully for strong regulation at a national and international level.
Arthur Potts Dawson (The People’s Supermarket)
Arthur Potts Dawson, 39, is a talented chef, restauranteur, cookery writer and social entrepreneur. His newest business venture, The People’s Supermarket, opened in June 2010 and is a not-for- profit co-operative social enterprise. Jamie Oliver recently described Arthur as “the original green chef”.
Arthur trained with the Roux brothers and has gone on to work alongside industry ‘greats’ including Rose Gray & Ruth Rodgers at The River Cafe, Rowley Leigh at Kensington Place, Hugh Fernley-Wittingstall and Pierre Khoffman. He relaunched Cecconi’s restaurant and worked as executive head chef for Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Restaurant.
Arthur created two restaurants described as ‘sustainably aware urban restaurants’, Acorn House and the Water House. Arthur’s latest restaurant project is an organic ‘pop-up’, Mrs Paisley’s Lashings, profits go to organic education projects in London schools.
The People’s Supermarket is a not-for-profit co- operative social enterprise. It is a unique business model, with it’s member/owners working voluntarily. The aim is to keep costs low and good food cheap. The People’s Kitchen, within the supermarket, is also producing delicious food for sale in the supermarket.
Anne Pettifor (PRIME)
Ann Pettifor is Director of PRIME (Policy Research in Macroeconomics) an economic think-tank that promotes understanding of the nature of credit, and its role in determining macroeconomic outcomes.
Ann’s overriding concern is with monetary policy, and in particular, the rate of interest. Unlike most orthodox economists she regards the high rates of interest charged to borrowers as causal to the ongoing financial crisis. As a Keynesian, she argues strongly for ‘tight but cheap money’.
Ann’s special interests include a) the architecture of the international financial system and its impact on sovereign debt and domestic monetary and fiscal policy and b) the challenges posed to economic policy by the twin threats of peak oil and climate change.
Tim Chatterton (UWE, Bristol)
Tim’s work deals with the wide sustainability agenda, at the point where research meets policy. He has a background in both social and physical sciences, and over 15 years’ experience of working closely with local and nation governments in the UK and abroad. He recently completed a 12-month Social Science Policy Placement Fellowship based in the Department for Energy and Climate Change on ‘Energy Behaviours’.
He has been involved extensively with both national and local government in the UK and abroad, including a recent 12-month fellowship based in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. He is also a trustee of the UK Public Health Association.
His work concerns the fact that meeting today’s environmental and health challenges will mean needing to go far beyond an agenda of individual ‘behaviour change’. In the same way that societal and environmental influences increase the chances of certain people becoming obese, similar factors also push people to towards resource and carbon intensive lifestyles. In order to meet the current challenges we will need to go well beyond individual change, and we may even need to change our view of what it means to be an ‘individual’.
Richard Dunne (Head – Ashley Primary School)
Richard Dunne is Head of Ashley Primary School in Walton-on-Thames. The school is a national leader in terms of best sustainable energy practice.
In 2009 the school won the acclaimed Ashden Award for Sustainable energy with the whole school community working together to bring the climate change motive into everything they do.
Richard’s work with the school on energy conservation was inspired by a visit to Antarctica 4 years ago where he was part of a team that set up an education base there run on renewable energy with the simple message if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere!
But the school’s sustainability focus covers much more than just energy. It is core to the school’s purpose and permeates through every topic of learning in every year group. Most importantly, the children at the school lead much of the learning around issues of sustainability. It is their ideas and their stories that are shaping the future they want to see.
Adrian Campbell (LOW2NO, Helsinki)
Adrian Campbell has been working on sustainable building projects for over 20 years. He has a broad range of experience that reflects this long insight into the topic and its genesis of meaning within the construction industry.
He currently leads the engineering design on one of Europe’s most exciting low carbon city block projects, called Low2No in Helsinki. This incorporates a truly broad appreciation of carbon and its position within sustainability thinking including , new economics evaluations that include carbon, advanced integrated solar technologies and importantly the influence of buildings on user consumption.
Adrian’s previous experience includes a wide role from advising on city regeneration in Doha to designing very low cost schools passive schools in Malawi. He advised the Engineering Council of the UK’s on their principals of sustainability and was one of the key authors of Arup’s own approach to sustainable building design.
Dawn Keyes (Lancaster Housing)
Dawn joined Lancaster Cohousing in the summer of 2009, and will be making the final transition to Lancaster from her home in the Derbyshire Peak District this September.
Initially drawn to the ideal location of the project on the banks of the River Lune, having worked with, and come to know her cohousing colleagues over the last couple of years she now feels that she has ‘come home’ in every sense of the word.
Dawn worked as a primary school teacher in Nottingham before training to practice as a homeopath which she has been doing for the last 16 years. She also owns and manages a therapy centre having held a long term interest in health and what it means to lead a healthy lifestyle.
Dawn also teaches homeopathy, NLP and related subjects at home and abroad.
John Gapper (Brighton & Hove DC)
In 1965 John Gapper realised that native British butterflies on the edge of the South Downs were in serious decline. Drawing on 47 years of experience John will explain how he set about collecting, cultivating, and planting indigenous wildflowers for the benefit of insects and butterflies, how for part of that time he had to work in secret, and what impact creating species rich havens from inhospitable spaces in our towns and cities can have on insects and people.
John Gapper began his working life as an apprentice for Brighton Corporation Parks Department in 1958. Since then his work as a horticulturist has taken him to every area of Brighton and every aspect of horticulture from planting the arboretum at Stanmer Park to landscaping the A27 bypass.
It was his work with the landscape architect at the Department of Transport which helped to stimulate his interest in the propagation of wildflowers, which he has now been doing for the last 35 years.
