Transforming Our Futures

In this Podcast we interview Maggie Brookes on her first novel “The Prisoner’s Wife.

Many will know Maggie as Maggie Butt as she has been an Enfield resident for many years and is well known for her poetry and has several publications to her name. She has now written her first novel based on a true story in World War 2 of love, imprisonment, escape and both the cruelty and humanity of those in what is an intriguing story.

It is a compelling read and it will be intriguing to hear why Maggie wrote it and the tragic story that inspired her to create a novel that will remain in the memory.

In this Podcast we interview Bernie Rees about  how Permaculture can make a difference in living a sustainable life and  tackling the twin but related problems of climate change and the decline  in biodiversity.

Permaculture is a design approach based on understandings of how nature works. At its heart permaculture has three ethics:

This  makes permaculture a unique toolkit that is used to design regenerative  systems at all scales - from home and garden to community, farms and  bioregions around the world.

We  will talk over with Bernie what this actually means in practice and  whether it is an individual approach or one that can be scaled up to  make a real difference.

In this Podcast Zaid Hassan and Lucy White discuss how groups of individuals can get together to help reduce carbon emissions through the gigatonne challenge

Averting dangerous climate change is imperative. While we know “what” should be done, there seems to be little clarity as to “how” to do it.

According to the science, global emissions need to peak and start declining by at least a billion tonnes of CO2e per year. If this doesn’t happen within the next decade we will likely see global temperatures breaching +3-6 degrees, leading to the catastrophic failure of key systems that we depend on for survival.

If you imagine the challenge of reducing a billion tonnes of emissions a year as climbing Mt Everest, how do we learn to climb such a daunting peak?

In this Podcast in our Conversations Across Borders series we interview Gill Tiney about her network to develop global collaboration in business, government and civil society.

The whole world over people are finding themselves disconnected, from themselves and their communities. The epidemic of loneliness is spreading. It is causing depression, anxiety and stress. As a society we are becoming more isolated.

Gill argues that collaboration is our natural state, it helps us to achieve more than we can alone, yet we struggle to build strong successful relationships that pull for successful collaborations.

We are restricted by a school system, negative media and society as a whole that pulls only for academic prowess and supposed success, we are challenged daily to understand our own limiting beliefs and triggers that prevent our ability to collaborate.

To this end Gill has set up Collaboration Global  - a physical and online community that identifies these issues and come together to free each of us from our limiting beliefs and show limitless opportunities.

Conversations Across Border is a Joint initiative of Tracesdreams and GlobalNet21 and will be streamed live on Facebook

In this Podcast we interview Cellina Memola Daswell of REACT in Edmonton.

REACT is a community group that has grown to over 3,000 households and started originally as a neighbourhood watch scheme.

It has now expanded and represents a community that is in a deprived area of the Borough in Enfield, marginalised economically and suffering multi deprivation.

It is faced with a major development of their doorstep Meridian Water but are fearful that the homes developed there will be too expensive for the long standing local community. They also face the prospect of a new Incinerator on their patch and fear for the pollution it will cause and its adverse impact on climate change.

It is an interesting case study of a vibrant community that is organising itself to ensure it is not the forgotten part of Borough it which not is placed.

Join us in this Podcast when we will be interviewing Alice Roberts from the Campaign To Protect Rural England and the Better Streets Scorecard.

She will be discussing how the work she does is as relevant to urban as well as rural areas and also about her work to create better streets in London and the give a score to their achievements.

In this Podcast Hannah Dyson interviews Ozgur Korkmaz on his epic cycle journey

Ozgur Korkmaz put the breaks on his old way of life by buying a bike and embarking on an epic journey from London to Istanbul in 2018. Cycling through 11 countries, covering a cool 2115 miles overall, averaging 45-50 miles per day with one day off per week, mental and physical strength was just one of the requirements.

We explore why Ozgur chose to cycle to Istanbul, his experiences cycling through 11 countries and what those countries taught him. We will discuss what Ozgur’s concerns were before the journey, what went through his mind during the highs and lows and how this has changed his life for the better.

Ozgur is a huge advocate for the benefit of cycling and how it can improve our mental and physical health. He is also a driving instructor so will give us this unique insight on both road and cycle safety and how we incorporate cycling into our lives and still use the car.

We explore why it is so difficult to get people to give up their car and the idea driving makes people feel good.

In this Podcast we discuss with Julia Valentine & Catriona Leggat the issue of gender and active travel.

The active travel and gender report of 2018 shows that women’s journeys around cities are typically shorter than men’s, use different modes of transport and are more likely to involve ‘trip-chaining’ (multi-stop journeys) which tend to be for a balance of child care, work and household responsibilities.

And, whilst women are motivated to travel actively for physical and mental health reasons, worries about their personal safety, convenience (particularly when taking multi-stop trips) and appearance are all barriers to preventing them from cycling and walking.

Julia Valentine & Catriona Leggat are in the Women’s Equality Party and have been concerned for some time about active travel for women especially women travelling alone. In this webinar we are going to explore their concerns and what the solutions might be.

In this Podcast Hannah Dyson interviews Enfield Councillor Clare De Silva about widening participation in both work and politics. Clare De Silva , Conservative Councillor for Bush Hill Park will explore how society is surfing a tidal wave of change.

Widening participation in politics is something Clare is passionate about and believes that the option of working remotely can widen access to all kinds of jobs and careers, ensuring the best possible pool of talent

In this Podcast Emma Rigby and Francis Sealey interview Cormac Russell where we discuss enriching local communities through community mapping and asset based development.

In this Podcast Emma Rigby and Francis Sealey will be interviewing Cormac Russell one of the leading experts in Europe on asset based community development where we will be discussing how you can map your local community by using the assets based community development principles

We will look at how community mapping can enrich a local community and create new connections as well as build on its strengths

Cormac is Managing Director of Nurture Development and a faculty member of the Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) Institute at Northwestern University, Chicago.

Over the last 20 years Cormac has worked in over 30 countries around the world. He has trained communities, agencies, NGOs and governments in ABCD and other strengths based approaches in Kenya, Rwanda, Southern Sudan, South Africa, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

He is passionate about the proliferation of community-driven change and citizen-centred democracy, and has supported hundreds of communities to make ABCD visible through what he calls ABCD Neighbourhood Learning Sites.

Cormac has just published his book “Rekindling Democracy: A Professional's Guide to Working in Citizen Space”