Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting pest life cycles and soil borne pathogens by temporarily removing their hosts.
Wikipedia
The Low Carbon Design Institute was born out of some simple statements written in a Commonplace Book found in a Venice pavillion some years ago. In it, I wrote:
If ‘the plan’ was the visual reference of the 20th century, what is the 21st century’s reference: nature.
Not nature as reproduced in the CGI hair of ‘The Lion King’ or the televised ‘Blue Planet’ but common soil.
Common earth, in a common neighbourhood, in a communal context, to be digested and acted on locally.
An institute for reduction, a school for common good, a collective for controlled wealth.
Armed with these vague ideas, I wrote a blog post and sent it to my mentor Tom in January 2020 thinking I might do something that year. Instead, I put together an advisory group in the hope of finding a little funding to cover my time and my costs. An application to the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 was unsuccessful so I decided to try to find friends who would help cover the cost of speakers and invest my own time. Matt Jones, one of my 2022 sponsors, said I should run it twice before changing anything. So I did.
The 2021 cohort of residents was 14 strong with many of them based in the UK. In 2022 all 3 residents lived in Europe.
Then in August 2022, I took on a maternity cover contract at the Design Council, helping them with their Design for Planet mission. Weirdly, it was useful to have that role and keep thinking about the residency, climate education and training as a vector of change.
The most valuable thing about the residency was the time to get to know others and the deep discussions. The lectures were an excuse to talk about a specific aspect of climate change and then go down a rabbit hole. Over the four weeks, a little trust builds up but I meet with the residents at least once or twice a year to nurture that trust. A few residents have kept going with their climate work, becoming more dedicated with every year, some haven’t. It’s ok, the residency doesn’t have aggressive KPIs or an impact assessment framework. But it does need to be ‘good for something’.
The number of applicants this year makes me think I need to take a summer break to think about the format and respond to a cost of living crisis, an eco-anxiety mixed with general fatigue and arts funding cuts. All of these will have spillover effects on the programme and I’d like to respond appropriately.
The 2022 lectures can now be found on Youtube and I look forward to writing again at the end of the summer and share a new plan for 2023/4.
The Low Carbon Design Institute 