Ecological Health in Neighbourhoods

Our neighbourhoods require access to varied knowledges, tools, resources and platforms to gain autonomy over how they will address planetary dysregulation at a neighbourhood level. We are taught that crisis is inevitable, but it is not. Crisis results from how a society responds to phenomena. We know that governments will continue to be unresponsive to planetary dysregulation, putting racialised and marginalised peoples at risk for the worst parts of the crisis. Therefore, co-learning how crisis is formed and rooting ourselves in Kinship will give us the agency to move forward.

The movements, stories and organising for new plural economic possibility, the establishing of new Land policies, the demonstration of the symbiosis of mutual aid and systemic transformation, the opportunity to be in Kinship with each other and all other living Kin, which allows us to co-learn and seed multiple liberating imaginations - these, and many more instruments for our futures need to be nurtured, demonstrated, and crafted in the everyday simultaneously, and are critical in all of the many layers this transition demands of us.

If poor health outcomes and injustice are seeded in neighbourhoods that are racialised and marginalised by governing systems, then liberation, healing, and justice can be ignited and shaped in neighbourhoods that are rooted in democracy, autonomy, and self-governance. Understanding non-western epistemologies and reframing the concept of health as intrinsically connected to the ecologies we live within are key functions of what we see being ways of practicing expansive, rigorous justice movements, led by lived experience. Science can give justice movements energy, and data knowledges provide us with the tools to act and organise around what we can’t intuit.

This co-learning and neighbourhood-based journey is inspired by historic precedence of neighbourhoods as sites of revolutionary organising and points of liberation, guided by the movements that have come before, and for the movements that are yet to come. We are opening applications for people that are interested in addressing the systems impacting on the ecological health of our neighbourhoods so we can create places that are life-sustaining, to provide people and Nature with health, dignity, and justice.

Running from July 2023 to March 2024, over 9 months you will learn alongside a range of peers from across the UK with the common goal of sharing knowledge, ideas and energy in order to take action as part of your neighbourhoods.

You will receive more on the detailed curriculum for the learning journey and materials to support this as the journey begins, shaped in collaboration between Centric Lab and CIVIC SQUARE, but your participation will take the form of online collective learning sessions, in-person retreats, talks, workshops, screenings, optional hikes and visits, as well as tools, frameworks and peer support to put to use in between sessions to get to know your neighbourhood in different ways.

• Whilst regular sessions will be held remotely over Zoom, there will be three in person gatherings throughout the course of the journey at Centre For Alternative Technology, Llwyngwern Quarry, Pantperthog, Machynlleth SY20 9AZ for all peers to attend. There will also be optional opportunities to gather in Birmingham and other locations as part of additional learning visits.

• Please note: Centre for Alternative Technology is an engaging place for all ages, with a range of accommodation available on-site. This means it is possible and warmly welcome for children to join the in person gatherings and learn, dream, explore and play in their own right, alongside your own involvement in the learning journey. Accommodation and food will be provided for all of the in person gatherings at CAT, with a stipend for all peers to cover travel costs, as detailed below.

Each participant will be able to apply for up to £2,000 to cover costs to use the Community Health Impact Assessment Toolkit directly with their own community groups and members.

• The learning journey doesn’t require any financial payment on your part, but by embarking upon this journey you agree to share the knowledge and ideas openly, and convene in the lightest ways in your neighbourhood as a minimum, with the opportunity to deepen your organising and form a Neighbourhood [Urban Health Council](https://www.urbanhealthcouncil.com/) in the final phase of the journey if you have reached that stage of intention, action, and what feels possible in your context.

• You will receive a stipend of £250 to be used as you wish in support of your involvement, such as to cover travel and independent learning materials to deepen your experience. You can also consider pooling or sharing these with peers to support each other as appropriate, such as for those travelling long distances, if you have more than you need.

• If you are excited by the proposition for this learning journey but there are structural economic blockers that would prevent your participation from being possible — such as childcare costs, being an essential or shift worker, participation in strike action, to name a few — please do apply and let us know in the relevant section of the application form so that we can look to arrange the appropriate support to the best of our ability and resources.

• Additional funds can be made available for special requirements specific to what you are learning about in your neighbourhood(s), such as financial barriers to accessing information, the land registry, researching covenants, for example.

• Can sit across the radical imagination and practical everyday organising

• Have a deep desire to learn iteratively, value that process and to share it generously for others to gain insights from

• Are ready to put intuition into practice

• Have identified pain points that resonate with you and your neighbourhood as you read this invitation, whether or not you know the concepts or a more structural view yet

• Are interested in spending time outdoors and getting physically connected with your local ecology

• Seek tools for action beyond yourself

• Are keen to practice and test

• Are ready to move into new cognitive paradigms

• Bring yourself with humility, gratitude and openness, and are ready for Kinship

• Want to learn more as personal or professional development, but not formulate those learnings into action in service of the health of your wider neighbourhood at this time

• Are expecting to reach a resolved point of individualised healing through this journey

• Are looking for a prescriptive, passive, classroom style of learning, rather than contributing to active peer-to-peer exchanges

• Look to extract or profit from a collective knowledge ecosystem, rather than sharing generously and operating around a wider open source, abundant commons mindset

• Aren’t interested in or ready to begin mobilising together with people in your neighbourhood

• Are too anxious, urgent or impatient to take the time to go deeper as part of your organising

• Underestimate or are overwhelmed by the scale and possibility of what can be created

• Are too blinded by supremacy structures to be open to a plurality of imaginations

• Already consider yourself to be an expert and are only interested in sharing what you know

• Cannot guarantee your commitment to the care and safety of all fellow peers by respecting all aspects of their identity, experience and boundaries