New sustainability Institute announced

It's with a mixture of excitement and anticipation that I pass on news of the creation of INSPIRE in west Wales to drive change and transformation on sustainability. Exciting times lie ahead - here's the press release:

The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is delighted to announce that its new institute for sustainability- INSPIRE (Institute for Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Efficiency) - will be led by Jane Davidson (currently Minister for Environment and Sustainability in the Welsh Government) in partnership with Peter Davies (Commissioner for Sustainable Futures in Wales) who is already a Professor of Professional Practice at the University, and Andy Middleton (Managing Director TYF).

Last month the University called for expressions of interest from external agencies and individuals involved in sustainability to assist in the development which will be up and running from September.  INSPIRE will support embedding sustainability within the University’s curriculum at all levels as well as engaging with the widest number of organisations to develop sustainable practice across all sectors in Wales and further afield.

Professor Medwin Hughes, Vice Chancellor said, "I am delighted to have been able to secure such high quality individuals to lead the new institute. The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is committed to promoting the sustainability agenda in higher education in Wales and to work with all sectors to actively support the sustainability agenda."

Jane Davidson said, "Sustainability needs to be at the heart of how we do business, we cannot continue to use more resources than our one planet can support. I am privileged to have been invited to lead this new phase of the work at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, particularly in light of its existing partnerships with the further education sector and schools as well as the future merger with Swansea Metropolitan University as part of the creation of the dual sector university in South West Wales”.

Peter Davies added, "I am delighted to be able to play a part in the creation of this new institute in south west Wales, particularly as it provides opportunity to work with partners to develop exemplars of rural sustainability in practice".

Jane Davidson continued “I commend the University of Wales Trinity Saint David for the step it has taken in establishing the institute and am confident that its work will enhance the reputation of the University."

Andy Middleton said "INSPIRE will become a focal point for practical innovation in the areas of sustainability that make real difference to the performance of government, community resilience and long term success of business"

The University received some 50 expressions of interest from organisations and individual who are active in the field of sustainability and INSPIRE will be collaborating with them to develop its portfolio so that it can make a real difference to communities in Wales and beyond.

Professor Hughes concluded “The University sees its role as a catalyst in bringing together agencies and individuals who can transform the lives of individuals and communities, particularly within the region of South West Wales.

Learning from the future

Spending a day working with the champions of sustainability education from 20 colleges across Wales; these are the folks who are embedding real change into the workplace, and this post captures the ideas - heads of environmental education, business and many other work areas.

Short presentations from Pembrokeshire College and Yale College underpinned the impoetance of good monitoring and reporting of what happens so that the people taking action know what's happening. Yale created a 'green handprint' to stamp on projects where good practice is happening - they've developed a Moodle site with resources and embedded ESDGC into environmental management - using real information from building management systems etc as part of day to day work. The harder stuff, they're finding are topics such as resolving the loss of money from selling Coke to the reduction in plastic waste and dietary opportunities that would develop as a result. "We're also crossing the learning-teaching issue and are going to be working on paper next - realising it's a systems approach that's needed". Learning projects are what gets the students involved.

Gobal exchange programmes have developed using the College's international offices, so that students are now starting to run projects for themselves - one of the best indications that things are starting to work.

climate change is difficult because it's not in our nature to do favours for people who are not born yet.

Understanding relevance and complexity are two of the most important areas - one exercise asked students to cut out articles on climate, wealth SD and other issues and stick onto a flip chart and make the links between the articles on the flip charts with string to see where the connections lie. To understand Fair Trade, give away chocolate according the rules of the 'chocolate game' - the supermarkets get 10 squares, the farmers get one etc.

Eco footprinting exercises are working well - CAT's 'Where's the Impact?" is one good way of communicating this - understanding where the ingredients of my Kinder Egg comes from - plastic - cocoa - milk - sugar - aluminium - and then work out the connections between those products and personal action and choices.

Newsnight date confirmed

Newsnight's economics editor Paul Mason visited Pembrokeshire to interview me and fellow eco thinkers Gareth Banks from furniture maker OrangeBox, Kevin Bird from low impact campsite Trellyn, and Chris Cavanagh, now General Manager at TYF, previously MD at howies.

Paul was interested in how successful businesses balance economics, environment and society and interviewed us on ways that we had managed (or not) to integrate this into our businesses.

The feature on TYF / St Davids goes out on this Tuesday evening on BBC1 at 10.30.

Comments appreciated.

Any businesses out there who interested in the connection between biomimicry, profitability and a sustainable future will be interested in our forthcoming project with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

Do change

Here's a flavour of what's in store for the Do Lectures 2010 participants - an edited version of the intro I gave at the 2009 event. The issues are the same, just a bit more urgent. If there's one event that you attend in the next five years, I'd make it this one. www.dolectures.com

Do Lectures 2009 from Andy Middleton on Vimeo.

Food Security - feeding on good ideas

Next Friday sees the launch of a new combined research project that's been exciting us here for some time. The project's start was at the Hay on Earth food workshop in May last year, when we brought together aronud 65 leading food thinkers to consider the practical challenges of moving towards food sustainability and security at a national level.

Largely as a result of synchronicity and serendipity, one of the attendees was Dr John Fagan, who was in the process of setting up EOS - the Earth Open Source Institute. The Do Programme, borne out of the Do Lectures, was already running as a six month action learning project to investigate and develop new ways of teaching sustainability in workplaces and schools, so it was a natural extension that the idea of launching a more detailed food security project came about. We're lucky to have three enthusiastic researchers from Quebec, Chile and Wales embarking on the journey with us, supported by a great 'mastermind' group including all those you'd want - policy makers to practitioners.

Our goal is to map out the objectives needed for Wales to be self sufficient in food essentials within 20 years. If you've got an interest in sustainable food production, processing, marketing or management and would like to join in the fun, drop us a line, and help develop the project ready to for Hay in 5 months' time.