So…has it worked then?

It’s the question everyone has been asking, at the launch of the project report in June last year (’09), and every time I’ve spoken about the project to anyone since then. I’m sure, if you’ve reached this far into the site, you’re wondering too…

The simple, “surface” answer is yes. Yes, I tell people, it’s made me more aware. Yes, it’s made me think more about the whole range of interconnected themes around nature and our relationship with it as human beings. Yes, it’s made me act different – from changing my shopping habits, to introducing new sustainable procurement policies at work to feeding the birds.

But whilst it’s a true answer, it is an answer of convenience. The more complex answer is also yes, it has worked, but…

…in ways it is so hard to articulate, because the impact has affected me inside and out, at every level.

… in ways that have made my life much harder, not easier – deep questioning of your values in relation to the world will do that to a girl you know.

…in ways that have led to huge frustration – particularly around the issues of engaging the public in tackling environmental issues.  There is an element of what I would be tempted to term delusion around how a lot of the key “green” groups are tackling this.

…in ways that have led me to uncomfortable truths around choices I have made in the past, but equally having given me the tools to be kind to myself, to understand and forgive, and appreciate what it really is to be human

Try telling that to someone when you’re standing at a conference or reception, balancing papers and a coffee cup, as people scan your name-badge to see if you’re worth talking to…say some of that stuff, and the chances are, they’ll regret it…

A key issue throughout NC has been the journey between being a participant in the project, and then where it would take us as activists – the next steps we, the “chosen leaders in our sector”, would take to cascade what we had learned, the action we would take to put our “personal change” into practical action authentically. It’s been a heavier responsibility than any of us anticipated at the start – well, for me anyway. That word “authentic” is a killer by the way…makes you stop and think…

That step has been an interesting one – there’s been a sense of wanting to “hold the circle” of what we have been through and experienced together, but then the responsibility to step out into the wider world has been so strong, so necessary – the world needs more from us.

Thinking about this, and inspired and motivated by my NC experience, I decided to do my own “solo” at the end of the year, spending a week alone in an incredibly remote part of Scotland. It was an intense experience in so many ways, a whole other blog, but the important thing is that at the end of it I emerged with two clear insights:

First – NC gave me back my heart. And for that I will always, always be profoundly thankful.

Second – I’m ready. Ready to act. Ready to step out into the world.

And so more change is afoot – deeper change. The stone has been cast into the water, and the powerful ripples are spreading. It’s just that sometimes, those ripples take longer to reach out than you – or others – expect.

Watch the beautiful Natural Change film/slideshow that Dave Key made as a projection for the launch of our report last week.  It’s a wonderful evocation of the time spent in nature on this project and the effect that being part of Natural Change had on us all.  The photos and quotes are all from the Natural Change Project.

The film is in 2 parts of 7 minutes on Youtube -

ENJOY…SLOWLY…

There is much evidence that dominant approaches to encouraging pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) do not result in long-term, large-scale social change. ‘Shock and awe’ campaigning - showing ecocide and social devastation - in the hope that awareness of issues will motivate people to act, is now suggested to actually make people less likely to take action.

Many large NGO’s and agencies have realised the paradox of shock and awe and have sought better approaches in social marketing techniques - using marketing to promote pro-environmental behaviour, rather than using it to promote behaviour that is often deeply unsustainable. However, recent research suggests that the psychological patterns created by marketing may actually reinforce generic consumer behaviour.

In the end can it ever be possible to consume our way out of a crisis caused largely by consumerism!

We need to change the deep-seated cultural and psychological structures that hold many current unsustainable patterns of behaviour in place. This means we need to work with values, beliefs and self-concept (identity). There’s lots of evidence that behaviour change can best be influenced in the long-term through psychological approaches that work in this way.

Luckily, such approaches are already widely used in various therapeutic and educational contexts, with great success. Indeed, the entire field of psychotherapy is based on this premise. Natural Change brings these approaches into an ecological context - and to a new audience.

So why Natural Change? Well, because 40 years of environmentalism hasn’t delivered the change we need. It’s time to really spread our wings, dig deep, to be realistic about the limitations of many current approaches to change and to delve deep into the human psyche where the roots of personal and social change really lie.

The Natural Change process is complex, dynamic and operates on different psychological levels simultaneously. These include, conscious levels of awareness - comprising those ideas, values and beliefs which are relatively easy to access and explore; subconscious levels - including deep-seated assumptions about the world, which are accessible to us but often only after deliberate and sometimes challenging effort and; unconscious levels - which take us into the realms of dreams, symbols, myths, archetypes, images and transpersonal experience.

Within the context provided by the aims of the programme the groups’ aspirations - their psychological and social well-being, their needs and concerns - lead the process at all times. This creates a unique experience that is co-evolutionary at every stage. It’s in this highly creative and supportive environment that the personal journey can take form and contribute to the leadership and communication aspects of the programme.

In practical terms the process includes small and whole group work; undertaking tasks as an individual - including intellectual, sensory and emotional elements; structured wilderness ‘solo’ time; ‘story-telling’ and reviewing of experiences; spending time together outdoors; and short theory sessions on a wide variety of subjects.

The process builds a highly cohesive community of people who explore lifestyle change and leadership towards pro-environmental behaviour in an open, authentic, honest, inspiring and empowering way.

I’ve been asked quite a lot about the design of the Natural Change programme. ‘What do you do?’, ‘Where do you start with such a big subject?’.

The programme is structured around six themes. These provide a progression of awareness from the individual - where the loci of concern usually starts when people are initially brought together into a new group - out into wider cultural, social and ecological contexts. From here the themes move into practical issues of culture change, for example leadership, and awareness of change processes.

While the content of these themes operate most obviously at the conscious level, the way they are explored - the context, methods, techniques and style of facilitation - allows engagement with deeper psychological processes.

The themes are designed as threads to follow into the massive and diverse web of our human ecology. They are:

Human Needs
By confusing ‘needs’ with ‘wants’ and by attempting to meet fundamental psychological needs through mediated and distorted material consumerism (‘pseudo-satisfiers’), we have created a culture that consumes resources and creates pollution - while evidently decreasing individual levels of ‘subjective well-being’ (happiness).

It makes sense to start here, with our basic needs. What do we really need to be fully human? How can we best meet those needs? What distracts us from meeting those needs? What models, ideas and concepts are available to help us understand the way we meet our needs? How does meeting our own needs effect the ability of others to meet theirs?

Interconnection
Developing a sense of our own needs and how to meet them soon leads to a realisation that we are each dependent on other people and our ecosystem habitat. To deepen this awareness - and what it might mean to the way we think, feel and act - we explore the theme of interconnection.
In what ways are we interconnected with the world around us? Does interconnection diminish our individual freedom? Is it weak to depend on others? Where are the boundaries of our own responsibilities to others? What does our industrial culture tell us about our ‘ideal’ relationships with other people and nature?

Self as Ecology
As the groups’ awareness of interconnection deepens, we start to delve into the reality that we humans are part of the Earth’s ecosystems. Although relatively simple to grasp intellectually, the evidence suggests that in psychological and cultural terms we persist in believing that human beings are superior to, and separate from, the rest of nature. This belief leads us to act in ways that are not true to our own human ecology.
How can we make the jump from intellectual understanding of ecology, to a shift in beliefs about who - and what - we really are? Can this realisation lead to changes in our every-day behaviour? If so, how?

Making Meaning
How do we translate personal awareness into our daily lives? How do we live with other people who don’t share our values and beliefs?  How do we practice pro-environmental behaviour in a cultural system that seems to be working against us all the time?
Bringing things into our everyday lives - making meaning out of our own experience - is what this theme is all about.

Leadership
Being able to create change in a group of people is difficult. This theme explores the challenge of catalysing, motivating and supporting change processes, and the ethics and dynamics of power.
What is leadership? How do human groups and communities work? What is power and what issues does it bring up? Are all leadership styles the same? Are leaders ‘born or made’? Do we need leadership?

Change Processes
The final theme delves into personal and social change processes. What triggers change? What’s changed things in the past? How do we set about deliberately changing things and what are the ethics of engineering change? What concepts, models and historic examples might we use to better understand change? What are the barriers to change?

This progression provides threads into the web of human ecology, keeping the flow and direction of the development journey relevant, meaningful and firmly connected to real-life issues of sustainability.

The Natural Change Project and its associated experiences continues to play a dominant role in my thinking and action, particularly in my professional life. The workshops on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs and creating a social change/citizenship model have been the most influential. The need to belong and have a sense of identity and care for your neighbourhood and community has come through so strongly and has had a tremendous impact on the design of the Personal, Social and Health Education Curriculum and the way we carry out or Citizenship and Environmental projects in our school. In fact the Natural Change project has enhanced my ability to develop a structure/framework to aid the development of the Curriculum for Excellence initiative in PSHE.

Over the years I have been involved in many outdoor and charitable projects which have greatly benefited the young people involved in them. Most of these projects were in addition to the formal school curriculum and often attracted a certain type of pupil.

So what has changed? I guess I look back at these projects now in the light of the Natural Change experience and see them as “clip on’s”  They achieved much but the skills, concepts and life long learning within them was never utilised to its full potential. They seemed to focus on short term outcomes and achievements. For example, the pupils worked on disabled paths at a local castle. They made a brilliant job and were most moved when a visitor in a wheel chair came up and thanked them for their work. The atmosphere on these castle days was brilliant but then these pupils would leave and be replaced by the  next group of children who would come along, do the castle paths or gardening work and leave also. Great project but did those involved continue their volunteering? Where were the opportunities to develop this work further? Could some of these skills be recognised and taken into work experience or future employment? Could work of this nature continue at University? It struck me that we need to see these projects in much wider terms and create the “real pathways” for life long commitment to sustainability and citizenship. The castle project now includes much more climate building amongst the pupils before we go out. Another essential ingredient l learned from the NC project! Skills being developed by the project are made clear to pupils in advance eg team building, awareness of health and safety etc.  The National Trust have supported this work and through their community partnership scheme have obtained  BAA sponsorship which has paid for travel costs to the castles.. One of the strongest features of the project has been that we all achieved John Muir awards for our work. I was delighted with my award as were the pupils. Workers from BAA (Dyce Airport) join the children on our castle days and our School Police Liaison Officer also comes along. We hope to extend this to include other members of the community to enable the young people to access positive adult role models, thus aiding relationships and opportunities for further community work and partnership.       

So where do we go from here?     The new PSHE curriculum now has an active citizenship focus which is rooted in its community. The progression of skills and experiences are key features. This work is now part of the formal curriculum. Talks have taken place with the John Muir Trust to extend this type of work into Bucksburn, our school community. The construction of a wilderness area in Bucksburn was one idea which community learning staff were interested in pursuing. Here we hope to develop the John Muir Award scheme to include community groups as well as school children. Aker Solutions, our school business link, are very keen to work with the school and BAA to develop this initiative. A lot of meetings and discussion has been taking place over the last few months to bring together all those involved in learning within the community. We are gathering many group documents on social responsibility and community involvement with a view to forming a group of people who would like to work at creating a social action/citizenship model which incorporates life long learning between all groups and sectors within the local community. We require to identify a common vision and draw from the knowledge and experience of the group.       

Clip on projects were fine to begin with but actually effective sustainability and citizenship work should be a journey that starts early in life and continues throughout our lives just as learning should. In education we have to provide those opportunities to make the links to support our young people in their leisure time or when they leave school. We need to inspire our young people to want to make a difference and see it as a life long process.  The community should be at the heart of the process, supporting, caring, valuing and appreciating its young people and their efforts to “make a difference”. Feeling you belong and are valued by your school and community is where the motivation and inspiration begins.

Over the last couple of weeks I feel as though I have been wakening up from a deep sleep.

Everything feels lighter and easier - why is this?

Is it because it is Spring?  Perhaps my energy is being restored with the increase in sunlight and warmth.

Or is it because I’ve been through a long change process that’s forced me to think deeply and often left me in a state of confusion.  And I;m now starting to see the trees - and the wood? 

Maybe the blankets are coming off again - in a safe, freeing way.  I think what’s different is a sense of clarity and intent.

Spring is a time for starting afresh – new growth all around me is a constant reminder of the natural cycle – and hope for the year ahead.

Normally I’d feel the need to rush in to the countryside and consume the environment at this time of year.  But each day I get more excited as I watch the few trees I can see from my attic flat change ever so slightly each day as the green shoots fill the gaps between their branches.

So my energy for Natural Change has been refreshed too and I’m optimistic about exploring this approach in the field of health and wellbeing.  Intent in engaging others in this dialogue – and being open to the way ahead….

Natural Change has happened.  To all of us participants and also in some respects within me. The project will make its report and will also live and grow in our testimonies. Yet there will be untold impacts, as yet invisible, person to person, seed to seed.

What has changed? Am I really any different? I haven’t become uber-environmentalist-world-peace activist.  But that wasn’t the purpose.

The purpose was to experience, learn, reflect and act.  Action learning that would help find the way over the value-action gap. It’s a bit of a bamboo and rope bridge at the moment.  No zip slide.

But 10 things I have learned, things I didn’t know about me:

1. I had a relationship with the earth.  How could I not know that?  Its always been there sustaining me but I just had never ‘felt’ it before.
2. I needed to become ’super-sensitised’ to nature. This sounds ridiculous.  What I mean is that I have a heightened awareness of nature I didn’t have before.  I see, and want to see, the detials, the intricacies, budding, lichens, colours, the birds, ’smell the roses’ I suppose, nothing earth shatteringly new.
3. I considered myself an outdoor person but actually I realise I have been consuming the experience and not relating to the environment.
4. That the natural world can converse with you and I would hear its voice one day.  (Hope you’re still with me)
5. That a good way to reconnect with my hidden intuitive and creative self would be through an immersion experience in nature.  I’m revisiting poetry, music and art in ways I have long laid down.
6. I need to practice presence.  This is about being less distracted by the tyranny of time, sorting out work life balance.
7. Being silent for a sustained time would lead to a crescendo of inner clarity.  Sounds pompous but I really mean it.  And I vouch for its effectiveness.
8. How much I need the bonds of community to really be me.
9. I can’t pursue an exclusively individual path anymore.
10. I really enjoy change!

Its seems clearer to me now than ever that the path of individualism is a congested motorway, strewn with diverting roadworks, but the community is a interchange of journeys and shared spaces.  The former is one buttress of the gap and the latter the other side.  We’ll get there, naturally, hopefully quicker than we realise.

Wake up and smell the ecological coffee

I found this diagram which chimes with the experiential learning on this project, and also happens to be grounded in some science too.

Change happens...

Anticipation. That’s probably the best way to describe how I’m feeling as we reach the “end” of the Natural Change project – and it’s fair to say that’s not how I predicted I would feel at this point in the process.

Our last official workshop took place in Edinburgh – coming full circle from our starting point six months ago. There is a sense of “bringing it all back home” – a recognition that you don’t have to be physically far away to experience the wilderness…erm, experience! I’ve written before about how to bring all that these incredible outdoor adventures have given me into my day to day life, so the finishing point for this part of the exercise seemed apt.

And the good news is, it really isn’t an ending. Instead it would appear that all of our experiences in Knoydart, Glen Tilt and Cambusbarron were simply preparation for the next step. The project has acted as a catalyst for all kinds of ideas and actions, both personal, professional and as a group. I think the phrase might be “watch this space”, as our biggest challenges may be yet to come!

But of course the key question is: did I change? Or, as I’d prefer, am I changing? The answer is most definitely yes. The harder question is how much of that is down to being a participant on this project? For those who live in the world of evaluation and impact measures, that is the crux of it, but I don’t think any of us have a black and white answer. Change happens – the world changes and you change with it, the product of a whole host of complex and interwoven influences and drivers. But I’d be prepared to say that a lot of the change that has happened – in particular in relation to me really exploring my values and how I relate to the world – has its roots in NC.

I’m more aware – it’s like the volume has been turned down on some things and turned up on others. Trees will never just be trees again; I notice the day every day and hear the birds singing. I’m tuned into the beauty and interconnectedness of wildness – even in the middle of the city. Personally I’m less afraid – of life, and of looking stupid in a fleece! I feel like I’ve reconnected with my intuitive and creative self – an astonishing gift that I am so grateful for. And I’m asking more questions in relation to social change – bigger questions, harder questions. Not thinking that it’s all too hard so just focus on something else, the something I can control. I’m having conversations I’ve always wanted to have in all kinds of unexpected places.

But I feel selfish, because these are all so personal. In relation to my behaviour and sustainability – am I living a greener life? Not so much, not yet. However, the change is that now I really WANT to – I just have to pluck up the courage to let go of some of the things I will have to in order to be authentic, and I’m not sure I’m ready right now. But, the seed is sown…

I’ll admit at this point there has been much that has happened on this journey that I haven’t been able to share on this blog – far too personal – but I am so thankful to have been given this opportunity. In learning that the wilderness can be such a powerful source of intense natural healing, I have a new and profound respect for the earth and our complex relationship with it. I now know that this is a new beginning and, at heart, I am a truly wild soul.