Soon to be re-born on Brighton and Hove Community Radio
The Time, Now, the next program and all our imminent futures
On Thursday July 3rd, at 12.00-13.00 as usual, I will be producing and hosting Vision Shack live. At this moment in time I am not sure of the content of that program. I am considering an 'update' style of show examining the journey we have taken in the preceding 8 programs. 9, in my cosmology, is the number of completion and also holds within it the essence of a new departure, a new octave, so I am in the process of considering how to run it, with which guests, music, live and recorded.
Factored into this process are many considerations. Vision Shack was inspired by the great work that is being done by many unknown (and sometimes known) individuals. Work that is, I am convinced, going to play a pivotal role in how the immediate future unfolds.
The world we live in and the Planet we live on are both travelling through a period of crisis that is acknowledged by those who are at the forefront of change and development. Even the mass media and large organisations that run things currently are beginning to report the previously largely unreported facts as we approach what many believe is not the 11th hour but 11.59 and some seconds. No-one knows what the future will hold, but with intuition, belief and compassion those who are faithful to real, as opposed to the same old, progression we can extrapolate perhaps the greatest period of change that humans have faced within known history.
In very recent months there have been all kinds of financial scares and crises, emanating from America, but integral to the entire world economy. There have been dramatic accounts in some newspapers. No sooner had these 'stories' broken than we begin to hear in the quality dailies about food shortages, food riots all over the so-called developing world, even the questioning by such august and neo-liberalistic organisations as the World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) of the wisdom of continuing to use food-growing land for the growing of biofuels, once naively seen as the answer to the rising prices and inevitable demise of fossil fuels.
In this context, it is interesting to listen to the first Vision Shack of all, on the subject of Food Sovereignty, with my guest Dr. Makuanjola Olaseinde Arigbede. He was warning of the inevitability of food crises and the suffering of the Southern hemisphere and parts of Asia and the pacific that would be caused by the insistence of 'The New Maharajahs' the Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) who have been acquiring smallholder farmers' lands on a massive scale to produce fuel for cars rather than food for humans.
How many times I have said in conversations since that program last November that we seem to be aiming towards a world in which Arnie Schwarzenegger-style robots are driving around in 4x4's while the human race dwindles into extinction I cannot count.
At last the message is getting through that the 'developed' world might have to tighten its belt, give up its over-developed comfortability full of devices that are bad for our health, bad for the planet, and manufactured out of suffering and deprivation.
There is also another message getting through and spreading like wildfire, that the way forward is for people on the ground to do it for themselves, that politics and governments, large organisations and financial institutions have failed to address the global and local challenges. Anything can be viewed through politically-tinted spectacles, but that is just a way of looking at things, a way based in fear. Fear leads to the desire to control, to manipulation, to avoiding reality.
The future that is steadily and inevitably growing and making itself known in thousands of small ways, in conversations, new initiatives based upon the qualities of heart and compassion and the courage that has allowed the human to face the impossible and overcome it throughout history has many faces. The World Family, of which I am a member, based upon 33 year's of Dr. Arigbede's work with farmers and farmers' fora in Africa and Europe; Via Campesina and all the peoples of South America who are building a self-sustaining model of trade within their region without the WTO whom they have dismissed largely in no uncertain terms; individual small-scale projects in sustainability in design and manufacture, cross-disciplinary collaborations producing leading-edge intelligence towards sustainability and equity; the Transition Towns initiatives, of which there are now 61 official and hundreds pending in the UK and now as far away as New Zealand and many other countries watching with interest and a growing involvement; new ways of building both buildings and communities... and so on and on.
I know now that I will be going to Nigeria between the dates of 23rd and 29th November, only a year after beginning the Vision Shack journey, after other stages of activity by individuals and groups here and in Nigeria, to celebrate Food Sovereignty (see program references for links to information about this) on the land as one of up to 2,000 guests of the Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in the beautiful campus at Ile-Ife, several of us from Brighton and Lewes and there will be a documentary of all the plays, music, local stories and statements from both young and old farmers and members of the local communities, forum theatre sessions, UK road-shows and interviews that will be edited upon our return.
I hope to take the equipment with me to record some of the music, the celebrations and importantly the stories and views of the farmers, their families and communities and those who are working within these uplifting processes towards raising awareness of the Food Sovereignty and its vital place in ALL our lives.
So the next Vision shack? Well, I have a lot of dwelling on all of the above to do before I can give you its title or exact content. So, if anyone is here yet, watch this space....
At last the process of the next program has begun in me. I always work instinctively.
The germ of the next show is sown and is growing, and it will involve many, if not all, of the others, directly or indirectly. The probable line-up will include some guests who have been on before and some who have not. Knowledgeable people from different fields relating to, well, I suppose the state of the world and positive visions that we can aspire to, see the content of the previous 8.
But above all, I want it to involve you, the listeners, more. So to remind you I will be making a trailer - I have one that has not been heard, (except here) but I will put up a slightly revised version on the station as an in-between program short. There may be others to follow to remind you of my once-monthly show. Please email studio@radioreverb.com from with Vision Shack in the subject heading wherever you are in the world during the live shows - I want to hear your perceptions and ideas.
RadioReverb is going through a process of development backed by program makers, and we are working hard to ensure the best from this unique community resource.
Factored into this process are many considerations. Vision Shack was inspired by the great work that is being done by many unknown (and sometimes known) individuals. Work that is, I am convinced, going to play a pivotal role in how the immediate future unfolds.
The world we live in and the Planet we live on are both travelling through a period of crisis that is acknowledged by those who are at the forefront of change and development. Even the mass media and large organisations that run things currently are beginning to report the previously largely unreported facts as we approach what many believe is not the 11th hour but 11.59 and some seconds. No-one knows what the future will hold, but with intuition, belief and compassion those who are faithful to real, as opposed to the same old, progression we can extrapolate perhaps the greatest period of change that humans have faced within known history.
In very recent months there have been all kinds of financial scares and crises, emanating from America, but integral to the entire world economy. There have been dramatic accounts in some newspapers. No sooner had these 'stories' broken than we begin to hear in the quality dailies about food shortages, food riots all over the so-called developing world, even the questioning by such august and neo-liberalistic organisations as the World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) of the wisdom of continuing to use food-growing land for the growing of biofuels, once naively seen as the answer to the rising prices and inevitable demise of fossil fuels.
In this context, it is interesting to listen to the first Vision Shack of all, on the subject of Food Sovereignty, with my guest Dr. Makuanjola Olaseinde Arigbede. He was warning of the inevitability of food crises and the suffering of the Southern hemisphere and parts of Asia and the pacific that would be caused by the insistence of 'The New Maharajahs' the Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) who have been acquiring smallholder farmers' lands on a massive scale to produce fuel for cars rather than food for humans.
How many times I have said in conversations since that program last November that we seem to be aiming towards a world in which Arnie Schwarzenegger-style robots are driving around in 4x4's while the human race dwindles into extinction I cannot count.
At last the message is getting through that the 'developed' world might have to tighten its belt, give up its over-developed comfortability full of devices that are bad for our health, bad for the planet, and manufactured out of suffering and deprivation.
There is also another message getting through and spreading like wildfire, that the way forward is for people on the ground to do it for themselves, that politics and governments, large organisations and financial institutions have failed to address the global and local challenges. Anything can be viewed through politically-tinted spectacles, but that is just a way of looking at things, a way based in fear. Fear leads to the desire to control, to manipulation, to avoiding reality.
The future that is steadily and inevitably growing and making itself known in thousands of small ways, in conversations, new initiatives based upon the qualities of heart and compassion and the courage that has allowed the human to face the impossible and overcome it throughout history has many faces. The World Family, of which I am a member, based upon 33 year's of Dr. Arigbede's work with farmers and farmers' fora in Africa and Europe; Via Campesina and all the peoples of South America who are building a self-sustaining model of trade within their region without the WTO whom they have dismissed largely in no uncertain terms; individual small-scale projects in sustainability in design and manufacture, cross-disciplinary collaborations producing leading-edge intelligence towards sustainability and equity; the Transition Towns initiatives, of which there are now 61 official and hundreds pending in the UK and now as far away as New Zealand and many other countries watching with interest and a growing involvement; new ways of building both buildings and communities... and so on and on.
I know now that I will be going to Nigeria between the dates of 23rd and 29th November, only a year after beginning the Vision Shack journey, after other stages of activity by individuals and groups here and in Nigeria, to celebrate Food Sovereignty (see program references for links to information about this) on the land as one of up to 2,000 guests of the Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in the beautiful campus at Ile-Ife, several of us from Brighton and Lewes and there will be a documentary of all the plays, music, local stories and statements from both young and old farmers and members of the local communities, forum theatre sessions, UK road-shows and interviews that will be edited upon our return.
I hope to take the equipment with me to record some of the music, the celebrations and importantly the stories and views of the farmers, their families and communities and those who are working within these uplifting processes towards raising awareness of the Food Sovereignty and its vital place in ALL our lives.
So the next Vision shack? Well, I have a lot of dwelling on all of the above to do before I can give you its title or exact content. So, if anyone is here yet, watch this space....
At last the process of the next program has begun in me. I always work instinctively.
The germ of the next show is sown and is growing, and it will involve many, if not all, of the others, directly or indirectly. The probable line-up will include some guests who have been on before and some who have not. Knowledgeable people from different fields relating to, well, I suppose the state of the world and positive visions that we can aspire to, see the content of the previous 8.
But above all, I want it to involve you, the listeners, more. So to remind you I will be making a trailer - I have one that has not been heard, (except here) but I will put up a slightly revised version on the station as an in-between program short. There may be others to follow to remind you of my once-monthly show. Please email studio@radioreverb.com from with Vision Shack in the subject heading wherever you are in the world during the live shows - I want to hear your perceptions and ideas.
RadioReverb is going through a process of development backed by program makers, and we are working hard to ensure the best from this unique community resource.
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