Ruby Van der Wekken is a member of RIPESS, a network committed to promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, as well as Oma Maa, a Finnish food co-operative based on community-supported agriculture (CSA) as well as ecologically and socially sustainable food production methods. Ruby works both at the cooperative's community farm and with the development of the co-op, with a personal background in the global justice movement, and advocacy for solidarity economies and the commons. In this interview for the Planet Local Voices series, Ruby describes the work of Oma Maa, and how it exemplifies both solidarity economy and commons principles for fairer, more just and sustainable economies. She also emphasizes the importance of local ownership of the economy, and the need for supportive laws and genuinely democratic governance to enable such alternatives to flourish and spread.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and author of several books including 'The Transition Handbook' and most recently, 'From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want'. He is an Ashoka Fellow, has spoken at TED Global and at several TEDx events.

In this interview for the Planet Local Voices series, Rob inspires with the story of how the Transition Movement  has for years been practically demonstrating and fostering a more resilient, healthy, and beautiful local future in communities around the world. Rob explains how this movement represents a profound - and urgently needed - break with the extractivist, (neo)colonial globalized economy, and emphasizes the critical need for boosting the radical collective imagination of what is possible as an antidote to despair and hopelessness.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

A Stanford-trained lawyer and economist, Michael Shuman is the world’s pre-eminent expert on local finance, sharing practical tools to reclaim wealth from Wall Street for the benefit of communities. He is a prolific speaker and advocate for policy change, and is the author of ten books including Local Dollars, Local Sense, The Small Mart Revolution and his most recent title Put Your Money Where Your Life Is.

In this interview, Michael contends with the prevailing globalist strategies for economic development and thoroughly debunks them - beating conventional economists at their own game. With a robust research base, he sketches alternate strategies for economic development that focus on supporting small-scale enterprises and local economies, promising cascading benefits for society, community prosperity and the planet.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

Morag Gamble is an award-winning permaculture teacher and designer and the founder of the Permaculture Education Institute. Over 30 years, she has led permaculture programs in 22 countries across six continents, inspiring countless people to join the practical permaculture revolution. She also curates a blog and practical YouTube channel called Our Permaculture Life, and hosts the Sense-Making in a Changing World podcast.

In this interview, Morag elucidates the deep, mutually reinforcing ties between permaculture - a holistic practical philosophy of reweaving the practices and interdependent relationships of local living - and the localization movement. As Morag puts it in the interview, permaculture "shows the deep possibilities of what a more local way of being can do in terms of nourishing our souls, nourishing our stomachs, nourishing our communities, and nourishing life itself." She shares her experiential wisdom as well as heartening stories that illustrate how local food and community-building practices ripple out into an ethic of care and a sacred regard for the land that gives us life.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

Jon Jandai is a farmer, seed saver, natural builder, eco-educator, speaker and co-founder of the Pun Pun Center for Self-Reliance, an educational organic farm and earth-building school in Northern Thailand where skills of self-reliance are demonstrated and shared. His TED talk, ‘Life is easy. Why do we make it so hard?’, has over 15 million views.

In this interview, Jon talks about the links between community self-reliance and deep happiness. He explains how globalization has profoundly undermined this self-reliance, driving masses of people into a kind of urban slavery. It has also undermined the diversity of foods, cultures, and thinking, leaving a physical, mental and spiritual wasteland in its wake. Yet, especially for those people who have experienced both the old world of self-reliant local cultures, as well as industrial-globalized modernity, the pitfalls of the latter have come into sharp focus and sparked a movement to return to the countryside, and to reclaim the deep knowledge and skills of local living.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

Ben Rawlence is an award-winning writer, activist and co-founder of Black Mountains College, Wales. He has written extensively about the human consequences of environmental catastrophe in Africa, and later turned his attention to similar issues in Europe and the Arctic. Ben's research led him to focus on building institutions that promote new ways of thinking, seeing, and learning, with a particular focus on climate adaptation through localization.  

In this concise episode, Ben introduces the Black Mountains College project against the backdrop of a mainstream educational and economic system that is unfit for the future. He discusses the paramount need to reinvent education to prepare people and communities for a future in which intersecting global challenges will necessarily be met with local solutions.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

Resisting categorization, Alnoor works towards the healing of culture, people and the living world, bringing spirituality, politics and place-based work into dialogue with one another. He co-founded The Rules – a global activist collective and thinktank for economic alternatives. He also co-founded the post-capitalist community Tierra Valiente in Costa Rica, where he lives. He is a board member of Culture Hack Labs and The Emergence Network, co-director of the Transition Resource Circle and co-author of Post Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse.

In this episode, Alnoor brainstorms how we might appropriate, co-opt, discard and/or reclaim the proverbial master’s tools in order to take down the house and revolutionize the system we live in. He brings a non-dualist complexity to discussions about movement building and awareness raising and localization, and finally turns his attention to healing the rift between political work and spiritual work.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

Iain McGilchrist is an Oxford literary scholar, and a doctor in psychiatry and neuroscience. A champion of holistic thinking, Iain’s tour-de-force book The Master and His Emissary, along with his more recent The Matter with Things, have transformed academic and popular understanding not only of the human brain, but also of the importance of a fundamental worldview shift. His works sustain an in-depth critique of reductionism, and unfold different approaches for understanding who we are and what the world is.  

In this episode, Iain’s research on the differences between the left and right hemispheres provide the backdrop for discussions of the human experience of the sublime, and how important that experience is if we are to reestablish social and ecological balance in the world. He discusses his long-standing appreciation for the local, the place-based and the natural, suggesting that these offer avenues towards right-hemisphere aspects of our experience – aspects which have been neglected to our detriment.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.

A small farmer and Campaigns Coordinator for The Landworkers Alliance, Jyoti both embodies and powerfully communicates the possibility for a more just and sustainable future through local food sovereignty. On her 20-acre farm in Dorset, UK, Jyoti raises animals and grows vegetables and fruit, and processes apple juice, wool and jam. She is also a spokesperson for the international peasants' movement, La Via Campesina, and is a powerful advocate for policy change in the UK and beyond.

In this episode, Jyoti presents a robust case for policy change, helping us understand what kind of structural decisions are needed to shift our food systems away from exploitation and corporate control,  and towards sustainable, local food sovereignty, worldwide. She combats widely held misconceptions touted by global agribusinesses, and draws on personal experience to give detail about how food policy decisions are currently being made.

To watch the video of this series, visit: Planet Local Voices interview series.

The music for this series is ‘Pines and Violet’, by Sky Toes.