Normality is the new norm. Sleeping (except Monday night), waking up in the morning, and starting Friday’s with a morning walk up to my favourite spot in the gardens on Montjuic. This week Emma (our Boodaville Barcelona volunteer) came for the first time, and soon I’d be happy to open it up for more people from the neighbourhood who want to join. It’s a silent walk up (which counts as a meditation) then stretching and bathing in the warm sun. Then a moment to share observations. I’m feeling great for it, which is lucky because I have an insane amount of real work to do. 

real work

There are two things that feel like real work right now. One is the continuing battle to get permissions for doing activities at Boodaville Finca near Caseres. I’m talking to 5 different people about what to do next, and 3 different “ingenieras agronimas” have differing opinions on how the process is going. Except the one I actually want to talk to hasn’t replied to confirm the meeting. To me it feels like the “ayuntamiento” are just going to keep asking for more and more paperwork, and it’s the same info copied and pasted with different titles. 

The second huge, time-consuming task is writing a funding application for around 20k from the City Council for “Action on Climate Change”. The whole project is based on applying Doughnut Economics. I thought it up yesterday and have to send it in a few days. So as long as they see the link between Doughnut Economics and climate change mitigation then we are in with a chance – and the event in June 2022 with Kate Raworth was part of the “Acció Clima” day so hopefully we’re all good there.

You may wonder, “But why? Why did you decide to write a funding application in four days over the weekend?”. It’s a good question. I’m just asking myself.. 

The key person here is Silvia. I had an idea to do a project months ago. I asked different people if they wanted to collaborate including; the Spanish version of the Doughnut Economics Action Lab, the Eco groups in Poble Sec and the permaculture community in Catalunya, but noone stepped up. Then I asked a mum from Kira’s school, who lives across the street – the one who has expressed interest in compost toilets in the past, and more importantly the one who is so organised that she created a whatsapp group to make sure her childrens clothes get re-used. We have benefited greatly from this.. 90% of Kira’s clothes come from her! It also helps that she is currently unemployed. So just as I was backing away from giving this a go, there was a huge input of energy. You can’t go against the tide when somone has stepped up! And I did have a fantastic morning walk. So the other projects I should be doing will have to wait a week and I will soon be entirely consumed by forms, preparing budgets and planning. Do you want to know the basic idea? ok, here goes.. 

Phase 1 : “The Donut is coming to Poble Sec” several introductory talks will be offered with a wide and diverse reach – businesses and organisations, families, community groups, workers, marginalised groups, young people. 

Phase 2 : Formation of a Donut Action Group for a series of workshops exploring how to put the donut into action. 

Phase 3 : Working with 3 organisations that want to act and completeing 3 “Doughnut Deals” based on a framework from DEAL. These organisations will make changes and act towards the goal of “thriving in balance” and step away from “economic growth at all costs”. 

Easy right? I’m sure the council will deeply appreciate the integration of uncertainty in this project, which allows for emergent properties from the complex dynamic system of a city neighbourhood. (Or maybe they would prefer it if we just push people to recycle more.)

And my joke for today is that “it’s great to see the UK is adopting a De-Growth strategy” Well no, of course they are not. It could have been a strategy.. I thought they missed a trick there to “spin” the lack of growth as a planned policy. But of course what they actually have is neither growth nor anything close to the ecological objectives of de-growth. They just have a catastrophoic mess. 

the homeward bound podcast

My discovery of this was a fun mish mash of connections: I called James local handyman and poet down in Valderrobres to ask advice on the permissions problem. During the chat he told me that he once got published in Dark Mountain, a project I remember as being amazing, although I haven’t seen it for years. Then he invited me to an online event via Shindig with the founder Dougald Hine. The shindig platform was way too modern and complicated for either of us and wouldn’t load at all. I think you need way more than 2Gb of RAM for that kind of video chat while floating around in a Prezi event. Anyway I saw he was doing a podcast with Ed Gillespie who I love! And actually it was Jon Richardsons and Ed Gillespies other podcast The Futurenauts which is where I first heard Kate Raworth speaking several years ago. 

I’ve noticed that I live for connections. 

Thanks to the “The Great Humbling” I’ve concisely caught up on what George Monbiot is up to with his synthetic meat solutions, and also been reminded how amazing Vandana Shiva is. Her movie will feature in all our courses this year! 

I wonder if the whole point of George and the fake meat is that while, in our world, there are people who want to take the black mirror, running machine, technological solutions path and others who are grounded in the holistic design of natural ecosystems including humans approach, in the REAL world there are loads of people who don’t even know they have to change. And shouting from the rooftops that the future for meat is fake, synthetic meat grown in labs is a great way to get people to realise that there is actually a problem. 

Well, I recommend you listen to it!

boodaville barcelona

Today we will be sharing the Ecosocial Info Point suggestions and questions on our instagram story as usual, but might stay inside because it’s rather cold. This evening we are taking part in the #ESSBCN30 event “La Febrereda” and we’re planning to share our objectives for March soon. 

boodaville caseres

We’ve had some great applications from young people who want to volunteer with us later this year, we’ve had snow in the food forest, and the builder is ghosting me. How do you get the roof fixed? I love the builder he’s been a key part of our project for over ten years, helping out with all sorts of things and I consider him a good friend. So what to do when he says “I’ll come next week” every week for 5 months? The last message was a sad voice note from me telling him that we have people coming round next week and if it rains we will all get wet inside. No reply. 

To see all the opportunities we have this year see last weeks blog post, and we will soon publish a new post with all the dates / application forms and everything you need.