BSc in Outdoor Learning & Sustainability

The University of Glamorgan, Wales, UK are just about to start a new BSc degree that brings together the best elements of learning through adventure and the outdoors with hands on learning around sustainability.

The course website describes the content "Topics include the multi-faceted nature of outdoor learning, sustainability and global citizenship, human communication theory, transformational learning, transition towns, sustainable personal growth, health and well-being, climate change, ecological footprints, partnership building, community regeneration, sustainable food production, social and cultural change processes, critical reflection and action, sustainable transport and construction, and renewable energy systems. It also covers pertinent technical skills to interact with the outdoors in a safe and comfortable manner"

Kim Polistina, the Senior Lecturer who has led the design of the course, and will head up the teaching team, is a very grounded, capable teacher who deeply understands the need for a new paradiggm of developing understanding sustainability using the outdoors and nature as teacher and mentor.

Further details are available here.

Holistic Economics

Fraser Durham put together this neat little film whilst on a holisitic economics course at Schumacher College in the UK. The excellent speakers it features give an excellent insight into why we need to do things differently, and offer pathways to get there. Schumacher is also hosting the biomimicry workshop that I'm teaching on next month - contact the college for more information.

Holistic Eco-Nomics from Fraser Durham on Vimeo.

Cool moves

Schumacher College is a cradle of innovation and inspiration that has inspired countless actions on climate and sustainability. In addition to the energy that shines from the courses and workshops that run at the College, an incredible range of people congregate there to share learning, ideas and time with like minded others. Whilst facilitating a course there a few years back, I met with David Hirst, who at the time was developing a simple, powerful device to switch off fridges when the electricity grid experienced a spike. It's take a few years for David to get the support that was needed, and I was delighted today to see an article in The Guardian which highlighted the results that are now appearing:

"Some good scientific modelling work has been done on this, which suggests that if each of the three million domestic fridges sold in the UK every year were fitted with this technology (known as 'dynamic demand'), then the equivalent electrical response of all these units would be 35 megawatts – the size of a small wind farm. If, however, all of the UK's 40 million fridges were eventually replaced with dynamic demand units, then the response level would rise to between 728 and 1,174 megawatts – a level that RLtec claims would make an entire spinning reserve power plant obsolete". Congratulations, David. You're a Doer.

Down to the wire

Working with government can be the most frustrating thing in the world, or the most inspiring. Today was the latter; I spent a while in conversation with Simon Bilsborough, the brains behind much of the best climate policy and action that is coming out of the Welsh Assembly Government; it's a high standard that he has to follow as Wales leads the world in areas ranging from CO2 reduction targets to built environment standards. We spent time talking about the first day of Hay on Earth, when the First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, and Minister for Environment & Sustainability, Jane Davidson, will be launching Wales' new Sustainability Plan. Apart from spending a couple of hours facilitating a process to get large organisations working out how to do things differently, and change much, much faster, we're going to building content on a wire timeline over the four days - putting 'smart' actions and real dates onto the line so that the urgency and need for action becomes clear and compelling to all who see and contribute to it. Simon was fully behind the plan, and could immediately see how it could gel action;  he is a doer of the first degree, and inspiring to work with as a result. Hay will be even more fun than I was expecting a day ago.

Bending gravity

It takes practice to do things at an exceptional level. Practice, courage guts and persistence. And getting up more times than we fall over. The YouTube video of street rider Danny MacAskill shows all of these. Anyone complaining that we can't find a way to solve our climate and sustainability crisis because of a lack of resources should look at the way that Danny finds a use for the most mundanem unexpected pieces of concrete and steel and transforms them into launch pads for leaps of imagination, man and bike. Maybe we need to take a lesson, and jump out of the tracks that we've been riding in for a little too long.