Ethics, Design, Care
This short talk is about an economy with caring for [continue …]
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The Good Work In Urban-Rural
A new course in Sweden asks, “what will a self-sufficient Hällefors Municipality taste like in 2030?” By turning ‘would-be-nice’ ideas into tangible prototypes, it turns ecological transition from an aspiration, into a practice. Included here: 20x emerging new livelihoods - from Edible Food Forests, to School-Farm Biocantines
MeetUp
Contents
Multiple Author Books: Chapters by John Thackara
Prologue, in The Anthroponaut’s Wordbook Art, Science and a Vital [continue …]
Publications
order here
Publisher: Thames & Hudson, [continue …]
Recent-talks
2023
16 Jan — Glasgow School of Art Winter [continue …]
Urban-Rural Projects HIGHLIGHTS 2005-2015
back to Urban-Rural Projects Systems Thinking In Stockholm’s Archepelago
Fifty [continue …]
Wild work: connecting the social and ecological by design
A week of workshops at California College of the Arts, [continue …]
Grottole, Italy
Many city people yearn to reconnect with nature and the [continue …]
Sustainable Finance vs the Real World
These are curious times. Even as the world burns, sustainable [continue …]
Back To The Land 2.0: Some JT Videos
Mapping Local Resources. Connecting Growers & Citizens. New Co-operatives. Urban-rural reconnection. (These videos introduce the annual Back To The Land 2.0 summer school, in Sweden, that I run together with Konstfack).
Sustainability You Can Touch
I was stupefied when I read this text in 2020: [continue …]
From Control, to Kinship: Ecological Restoration in a More Than Human World
(Keynote talk in China) A just transition will happen when we see nature differently, relate to nature differently, and understand the purpose of development differently. So, can AI foster new ways of knowing and being in the world? Can it be medium of attention; a medium of connection; a medium of relationship with the living world?
Newsletter: Microbes and Social Equity. Tools for Changemakers. Meetups & Offsites
Microbes and Social Equity | Tools for Changemakers | Multi-Species Cities | Design for Planet School for Village Hosts | Meetups/Retreats | Offsites for Teams |
Design for Multi-Species Cities
What would it mean to practice design in the knowledge that the well-being of humans, and non-humans, is inter-connected? Here are the results of a design workshop at Milan Polytechnic: practical ways to make cities hospitable for all of life, not just human life.
“An inspiring design”
Twenty landscape students were given an unusual design brief: regenerate the soils of the Camargue bioregion - its rhizosphere - as a biological, living entity. Do do this, they were told, by creating new associations between, people, animals, vegetation, and weather.
My newsletter: Meetup dates | Regenerative Design in China | Back To The Land 2.0
Dates for my Meetups/Retreats in 2022 | YouTube Channel | Nature Reconnection: Hour of Ecology | Project Regenerative Design in China | School for Village Hosts in Europe | Back To The Land Summer School in Sweden | Recent Publications |
Beyond Calculation: AI and Sustainability
(Keynote talk in China): Even before AI came along, “what’s good for humans” helped shape an economy that extracts vitality, as well as resources, from the planet’s living systems. This cultural disconnection – between the living world, and the economic one – explains why we either don’t think about rivers, soils, and biodiversity at all – or we treat them as natural ‘resources’ whose only purpose is to feed “the economy.”
The relationship of my texts to a dead fish
(A conversation with John Wood, professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and joint editor (with Julia Lockheart) of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice). I question why artists and designers should be encouraged to write in an intellectual way. After all these years, I still don’t understand the need to converse in abstruse language.
Urban-Rural: The New Geographies of Innovation
In this China keynote I describe three enabling conditions for system change: a capacity for ecological thinking; a focus on social infrastructure (rather than the concrete kind); and a shift of focus from place making, to place connecting.