Hopeful Activism Meets Long-Term Thinking: Reflections from URGE’s Equinox Festival Panel.
Plus Design Declares and Disrupt Design are seeking expressions of interest for their workshop on Circular & EcoDesign and will you join SAS in their cold water campaign this October?
During the Equinox weekend, Alexie Sommer and Ella Doran led a panel discussion and workshop on ‘Hopeful activism and long-term thinking’ at the Equinox Festival at Wasing - one of the many festivals inspired by the vision of fellow URGE member Josh Dugdale.
The panel included Jeremy Whelehan film maker and creator of the Wisdom Keepers platform exploring and transmitting contemporary ancestral wisdom, Nadeem Perera co-founder of Flock Together - a bird watching collective for black and brown communities and Phoenix instigator of the Climate Emergency Centre’s programme running across the UK each sharing their stories and examples of hope in action through their creativity and work.
The conversation explored the actions, adventures, and steps we take both individually and, more importantly, collectively to move toward reason and justice, addressing societal inequalities and ecological crises.
These efforts are often guided by a mix of experience, curiosity, intuition, science, and data. The discussion emphasized moving away from a mindset focused on probability and control, and instead, stepping into spaces of possibility and emergence, where hope has space and room to flourish.
One such example is Design Declares - the activist design community, co instigated by URGE, who are united by a climate emergency declaration and using the tools of the design industry to respond.
When hopeful activism is paired with long-term thinking, it prompts us to look beyond the immediate consequences that affect only ourselves. We begin to envision the future that our children, the young people we care about, and their descendants will inherit. This shift broadens our focus, encouraging us to take responsibility for the world we are shaping for generations to come.
First Nation communities exemplify this mindset with the principle of considering the impacts of seven generations. This philosophy holds that one's actions should be informed by the experiences of the previous seven generations while also considering the consequences for the seven generations that follow. It's a powerful reminder that our decisions today ripple far into the future, urging us to act with both wisdom and foresight.
During the workshop, the audience gathered to share the hopeful actions they felt inspired to take. And were later invited to write these down and hang them in the trees of the surrounding forest.
We closed the session with a group visualization inspired by the brilliant Human Layers Meditation created by Ella Saltmarsh and Hannah Smith for The Long Time Project.
Next step is to bring this session to the boardroom…
Design Declares and Disrupt Design/UnSchool are seeking expressions of interest for their workshop on Circular & EcoDesign.
An advanced, full-day workshop exploring the new ISO circular economy standards, the EU Ecodesign Regulation, and techniques for applying circular and sustainable design to product and process development.
‘Dip a Day brings together ocean activists and water lovers from across the UK, dipping every day in cold water throughout October, to raise vital funds to help protect the wild blue spaces we love..’
