Action & Advocacy

I’ve organised and participated in a number of environmental community projects over the years, some of which I’ve collected below. If you’re interested in any of these then feel free to get in touch and ask questions!

Ongoing:

#ScientistsForFuture & Researchers Desk: Since moving to Sweden I’ve been engaging with #ScientistsForFuture in my personal capacity as a climate scientist in support of the #FridaysForFuture school climate strikers, including attending some of the Friday strikes to show support and signing open letters to Science and Dagens Nyheter stating that the concerns and demands of the climate school strikers are justified. I’ve also been doing more science outreach connected to this, such as attending the Researchers Desk at some of the Friday events and starting a Fact-Check series at climatetippingpoints.info as a resource and friendly corrective for the upsurge in new activist movements like Extinction Rebellion and similar.

Past:

Transition Southampton (founding member; also Transition Ashtead) & in particular TREEmendous Southampton – bulk-buying wholesale fruit trees to populate Southampton’s ‘virtual orchard’. The latter is not currently running, but we ran for several years and distributed hundreds of fruit trees and bushes across the city to create a “virtual orchard” citywide.

Environmental Rock – a yearly green music festival at The Hobbit pub in Southampton attracting 500+ people; I was Chairperson and Stalls/Publicity Co-ordinator for many years. Still going every Spring.

Green Action Southampton – student green group; my tenure (President, Secretary, and Treasurer at various points) included various projects like The Growing Project (designing & building a permaculture community garden for one of homelessness charity The Society of St. James‘ shelters), guerilla gardening with local community groups, helping out at Ropewalk Community Garden, and setting up a student Wholefood Food Co-op (see below). I was also a co-convener of the Transition Universities project & conference at Winchester Uni. in 2011, which aimed to bring the perspectives of the Transition Town movement and radical education into UK Universities (and while we didn’t catalyse the movement we aspired to, it was nonetheless a fascinating conference with a surprisingly wide impact!). GA has now merged into Southampton Campus Collective, who do gardening on a regular basis.

Green Action Food Co-op – a Southampton-based bulk-buying co-op for wholesale food from Infinity Foods in Brighton with orders every month or two, starting out as part of Green Action. Now wound up after we moved to Sweden.

SU Conservation Volunteers – conservation work around Hants; Publicity Officer, Secretary, and Task Co-ordinator at various points, and organised a week-long residential trip up to the Trees for Life rewilding project in Scotland (of which I’m still a member). Probably my longest running volunteering stint – I went to SUCV for nearly 10 years!

WildSoc / WildSoton – a temporarily successful but unfortunately doomed attempt to set up a student bushcraft society / network, which was eventually and sadly thwarted by restrictive insurance provision. Non-profit bushcraft groups are difficult to cheaply insure, it turns out! Some content from the WildSoc blog lurks on in the archives of this site.