The Worlds We Want

Today's show explores the notion of creative reuse. Reuse is something of the ugly duckling of the 3, 4, or 5 Rs of Conservation. While not as easy as simply throwing something in the green bin, one person’s trash really can be another person’s treasure, in that there is a two way benefit of reusing material - firstly, you avoid it ending up in the landfill, and secondly you can save both money and additional materials by putting something to another use.

Today's show looks at the idea of making cities.... intelligently. We look at the case of Batiment 7 a self-organized community-run space in Point St. Charles. We learn about the context that made it 1) needed and 2) possible. We learn about how the University is learning to work with and in the community with their project.

Today’s show is something of a continuation of our last show on the Social economy. Today we tackle the topic of social entrepreneurship. We present a clear definition of the term and talk with Daniela Papi-Thornton, who presents a strong case for "mapping the system."

For the next two shows we are going to explore the idea of “doing business differently.” Rather than consider particular one-off solutions to the climate change crisis, we’re going to be looking at how we organize can address systemic issues. Today’s show is going to focus on the notion of the social economy and on our next show we are going to explore social or sustainable entrepreneurship.

The last show in our series on Indigenous Futures, we present an interview and public lecture with Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot - UBC Professor, is Anishinaabe, a citizen of the Lake Superior Band. She shares with us her ideas around the role of Global Indigenous politics in the initiation of a subtle revolution that may change international relations for the better.

In this episode we continue the conversation we had in June and bring in some new voices as we discuss issues related to indigenous self-governance. The reason that we want to explore this this topic is the clear tie that indigenous rights has on issues related to resource extraction and preservation. Further, we consider how  issues of governance moves the conversation from the idea of empowerment towards access to actual power for these communities.

In this show, we reflect on how climate change, as well as the systems that have caused it, affects culture. We decided to follow our friend and colleague, Joel, as he went back home to his community this summer so that we could learn about what has been underway as it relates to building a strong healthy community that is in a better position to respond to these pressures. On today’s show, we broadly consider the role of culture - art, language, education.

Today’s episode is a slightly different format compared to the one we’ve been developing over the last few shows, as we wanted to take advantage of an interesting public conversation that was held at Concordia University a few weeks ago. It was a panel called “What, if anything, is sustainability?” which was a part of the Annual Sustainability Across Disciplines Conference hosted by the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability.

Some global problems are extremely daunting, so how can we act collectively? In this show, we have a conversation with Dr. Amy Poteete at the annual Sustainability Across Disciplines conference, Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability. We also have a conversation with author, architect, and community development consultant Kathryn McCamant who shares with us her experience working with and developing cohousing communities, and how she’s scaling up her impact with training and collaboration.

How does thinking about the future challenge and enable us to pursue positive change?

We talked to Marcus Ballinger and Pierre-Olivier Desmarchais from Policy Horizons, a government think-tank. We also had a conversation with Dr. Andrew Merrie, Stockholm Resilience Centre, about his project, Radical Ocean Futures.