Little Malcolm and the struggle against indifference

I biked to St Mark's this afternoon, to look at Malcolm's garden (and buy some of his excellent cakes). It's a picture of Autumn colour, the pair of pheasants he keeps in a cage at the end just adding to the scene.

Here he is standing by some of his collection of nascent Nerines: he's Treasurer of the Nerines and Amaryllid Society.

Malcolm attracted more punters than did the Chaplain of the University of Gloucestershire: I was the only member of the audience for his talk on Faith and Sustainability at the Greener Gloucestershire Festival this afternoon. Ah well, it was the first one of its kind.

The Assumption

I had company at mass this evening. Rio arrived to stay with us on Sunday evening last: she is here for three weeks, studying at the University of Gloucestershire. Her father is a professional cyclist: it seems that betting on the outcome of cycle races is big business in Japan.

Rio is studying philosophy at a private university in Tokyo, founded by the Jesuits 100 years ago. Though a Buddhist, she expressed the wish to come along to church when I said I was going. Her English is better than most, I'd say, so she was able to follow the book pretty well, but after communion I must say I was fazed at first when she inquired about "the crisp".

Royal address

‘Spirituality and the Earth Community: Responding to the Spiritual Challenges Facing People and Planet’. This was former Professor Ursula King’s theme for her Cheltenham lecture last evening. It deserved to be better attended. Possibly the title was what put people off, for after a somewhat analytical start, she took off in the latter part of her talk, and ended with several almost impassioned responses to audience questions. Not for a long time have I heard such a free thinker, open to so many differently stimulating channels of thought! “I was mighty impressed,” as a friend put it.

Amongst challenging questions Professor King herself raised were, “Are modern societies predominantly secular?” (Answer: “Pace Richard Dawkins, no.”) “Does spirituality only concern the needs of the individual?” (Answer: “Again, no.”) And, echoing Indira Gandhi at Stockholm almost 40 years ago, “Will the growing awareness of ‘one earth' and ‘one environment' guide us to the concept of ‘one humanity'?” (Answer: “We must sincerely hope so, notwithstanding the signal lack of progress to date!”) Finally, and she gave no answer to this, leaving us each to take up the quest for a response ourselves: “How do we live a good life?”

the open west 2011

I have this evening started a photography course at the University. I am hoping it will help me to get to grips with Photoshop better. There are 14 of us - I being clearly the oldest: I think I am going to enjoy it!

Arriving early at the Pittville Campus, I had a look round the open west, which is on in the Summerfireld Gallery till 5th March. I liked it when it began in 2009; much less so, last year's. This year however there is much to admire, including Jake Lever's amazing, suspended boat. I shall go back.

Forgiveness

Striking images of people who have become reconciled with those harming them featured in an exhibition at the University of Gloucestershire this week. Entitled The F-Word: Images of Forgiveness, it's the brainchild of journalist Marina Cantacuzino and photographer Brian Moody: they travelled across four continents to collect stories of people whose lives had been shattered by violence, tragedy and injustice - and who had chosen to take the challenging and often painful journey towards forgiveness. Huddled in the midst of the tableaux - as if ganged up against - were the University's three rather warlike figures sculpted by Lynn Chadwick.

The timing of this exhibition's local visit fits well with the end of the long-running inquest into the July 2005 London bombings, which has brought so many brave people's testimony to our attention. That too may be a step in the direction of forgiveness.

Talking the talk

Over the past 48 hours, I've attended three meetings where sustainability or resiliance have been the watchwords. On Tuesday afternoon, there was quite a heated discussion in the RCE Severn Steering Committee about the extent to which we needed to sock it to our stakeholders. Should our working groups challenge businesses' CSR policies, and challenge too the whole notion of the sustainability of continuing economic growth, given Peak Oil and that we are already in ecological debt? Are children being equipped by our schools for a society based on the realities of resource depletion and global warming? What is our positive vision of a low-carbon, steady state economy or our plan for energy descent?

Some of these questions were addressed by Ben Brangwyn of the Transition Network at the University of Gloucestershire's IRIS Seminar that evening. Ben's "excited by local currencies," he tells us - not as a replacement for the pound sterling, but as a complementary process. And he's big on visioning: "Where will we need to be in 20 years' time? How do we get from here to there - year by year?" "We don't know," he stressed, "if this Transition thing is going to work: it's an experiment; but we cannot sit around and wait for someone to do a pilot." And he cautions, "complex systems can never return to a prior state." Sustainable Bungay was an example of what could be achieved with faith-based communities heavily involved. Or, talking of adaptation, what about Cheltenham becoming a City of Sanctuary? (There's a challenge!)

My photograph was taken at the well-attended meeting of the Gloucestershire Churches Environmental Justice Network yesterday, where Professor Daniella Tilbury spoke of the UoG's work in the sustainability field. What is it about our lives that has got us to where we are, was the question she posed. Not, "Who dropped that plastic wrapper?" but, "What sort of society makes it necessary to have such wrappers?" Strategies to change behaviours don't work: the consumer culture is here to stay. How do we influence without preaching? "The biggest problem we have in this institution [the UoG] is students."

Student engagement in sustainability

I have been at a national forum discussing this today, at the University of Gloucestershire's high-tech Centre for Active Learning. "It's so important to get students to turn lights off!" exclaimed one speaker, as the sun beat down outside and the lights blazed away in the Centre where we all sat. Apparently, the computer mechanism works with some delay in adjusting the levels of light and heat. A bit like getting the Queen Mary to change course.

This seems to me to say it all. Students are well ahead of the game in their desire to live simply, and usually that's all they can afford to do anyway. But do their teachers always set them a good example? Even though their talk is all about sustainability, do they walk it? If not, it shows.

"Students have the numbers to make a real difference," said UoG Vice-Chancellor Patricia Broadfoot in her opening address. Yet "student status depends on conspicuous consumption," observed Gill Kelly of QMU, Edinburgh. How do we all discover the knack of habit discontinuity?

2030 targets

Last June, Professor John Beddington spoke at the Cheltenham Science Festival - fairly soon after taking up his appointment as the Government's chief scientific advisor. I mentioned his talk in one of my early blogposts. Last night he was back in his birth county, addressing a surprisingly sparse audience at the Oxstalls Campus of the University of Gloucestershire. His theme was The Challenge of Global Sustainability. It was a stimulating hour.

Professor Beddington listed the threats, and how they would grow over the coming 21 years - that is, by 2030. By then, the Arctic would be ice-free every Summer, and the world will need 50% more food, 50% more energy and 30% more water. A frightening prospect. His comfort? We can commission more nuclear power stations and look forward to fusion; and we can embrace GM foods. Bad news for many then.

the open west 2009

Caroline and I have been up to the Summerfield Gallery this afternoon (at the University of Gloucestershire's Pittville Campus), to see part of a new show, called the open west 2009. It's rather good.

As wide a variety of contemporary art as you could wish to find is well shown in a wonderful space. And it's not just a case of never mind the quality: feel the width, as the finish of most of the work is excellent.

In the background of my snapshot you can see Soo Jung Choi's "Romeo and Juliet", a charming and thought-provoking essay on a familiar theme (acrylic on canvas). (Foreground: the exhibition's hard-working organisers, Sarah Goodwin and Lyn Cluer Coleman.)

"Romeo and Juliet" rubs shoulders with Clara Clark's "train", a large, noisy, primitive-looking sculpture ("chicken wire, paper, sawdust, wood, motor, pulley"); whilst around the corner you find Jessica Harrison's stomach-churning, almost pointilliste "Monster" ("fly legs on paper").

Yesterday, I visited the other venue where the show is up, Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum. What impressed me there was the lyricism of Anna Bush Crews' film "Seapot 24 (the spout)", and the extraordinary concentration of Thurle Wright's paper constructions. Not that I would want to buy one.

You can catch the open west 2009 anytime over the next five or so weeks. By the way, some male artists have been selected also!

What a rare joy to find such ambitious displays in Cheltenham!

OYBike

Paris, Barcelona and now... Cheltenham! As I anticipated last month, the University's new cycle hire scheme has been extended throughout Cheltenham as a whole. It's England's first town centre scheme.

Any of 30 bikes can be commandeered at any of nine docking stations - like this one in Montpellier.


And it's free for the first half hour, so you can for instance jump on at the Station and leave your yellow cycle in the Town Centre. If you want one for the day, it's £8 - quite a bit less than the cost of two gallons of petrol. There has been no great rush for them yet - the procedure needs simplifying - but it is early days, and the recession has hardly begun to take hold.

As Cheltenham's terrain is basically pretty flat - compared to somewhere like Sheffield or Bristol - and we are all having to extend our mortgages each time we fill up our fuel tanks, it should succeed.

Designer oak

I hardly recognised David Wilkin's treehouse on our visit to The Pinetum last night. What started (when we were last there) as something rather modest has now blossomed into a two-storey confection, complete with woodstove. What a romantic idea! And all standing free of its host oak tree.

The Pinetum was the starting point for one of our family bike rides, to St Weonards. I seem to remember the first puncture occurred about ten minutes after we had set out down the woodland track - and the last (of several) some hours later.

Which reminds me that this is Bike Week: the Cheltenham Cycle Campaign were handing out leaflets in the High Street and showing off the smart yellow bikes you can hire if you belong to the University of Gloucestershire - and which may soon be available to all Cheltenham residents, as they are in Paris and elsewhere.