A translation of concerns from and to Colombia

I have been very fortunate to be part of a short project that was developed in collaboration with Universidad de Ibague, Colombia, and Royal Holloway (my current employer in the UK).  

The project aimed at identifying issues recently experienced by two communities in the region of Tolima, giving them the opportunity to represent and reflect on these issues using photos and videos.  

Their testimonials are very moving.  With the help of artists and designers, community participants were able to communicate snippets of their daily lives.  Presenting these to others in their localities also gave the latter a sense of rediscovering who they are and what they do, something that was also made possible due to their experiences of being in lock-down during the year 2021. 

I was particularly impressed by the amount of work and dedication put by people.  One could get the feeling that this project was very important for them, and that they did their best.  They taught me how important it is to develop trust between collaborators and how we need to let other ideas inform our projects.  I 

There are several possibilities to move forward and continue helping these communities.  From my perspective, as researchers in the developed world we need to be able to translate these and other communities concerns in what we think are global issues.  Post-conflict and violence, rural marginalisation and lack of representation could be some of the themes that we could start to translate from and to these communities: some of these happen in the UK, only by different names.  

In the developed world, there is concern with climate change and corona viruses.  Communities know about these, and have adapted as best as they can to deal with them.  Our translations need to include a better understanding of communities' creativity and what has positively emerged.   

If we could accept that there is much to learn between all of us, perhaps our world would not be as chaotic as we think it is.  

Thank you all for being part of this project, and for inviting me.  

Messages of and about eco-anxiety

The Cop26 meeting is now about to finish.  There are many important lessons that all of us as individuals could grasp, some of them clearer than others.  What follows is my own take on what has happened. I present my own messages of and about eco-anxiety.

At work, we have been encouraged to present what we have been doing (teaching, research, engagement with the community) to better understand the complexities of climate change.  During this summer me and some students decided to explore how our campus is currently dealing with food waste.   We were fortunate to be supported by other academics and a manager of an anaerobic digestion company.  It has been a very helpful exercise for learning to talk to them and also to interact with campus managers in different areas like accommodation services and food production.  

As a result, students prepared and delivered a great presentation where a key message was that we need to better recycle food as well as prevent its potential waste.  How we carry this out could then be divided into two aspects:  

• Increase the value that we attribute to food recycling via better messaging, support processes and awareness
• Adopt new technologies like anaerobic digestion or AD.  

Tackling both of the above requires working on promoting a cultural if not behavioural change in our attitudes to waste and specifically to food.  

During the presentation the audience was very receptive and open to the ideas we were presenting.  One aspect that surfaced to be further considered is that how feedback about the need to generate cultural and behavioural awareness needs to be continuous and at all levels of academic and administrative activity in our campus.  Technologies like AD or those to better support better food waste monitoring (weighting, data analytics) as well as recycling are already available.  Why is it that only a few university campuses in countries like the UK are doing something about food?  

It seems to me that the higher level resolutions and agreements of Cop26 by governments need to be both reflected and challenged by local actions from universities, councils and private companies working together.  This is something that again requires a cultural mind shift from management of these organisations.  

Perhaps more importantly we all need to acknowledge that so far the desire to do something about climate change and doing it now is generating more anxiety than awareness.  Myself I had to slow down in my work and let students and the company manager carry on because I was feeling overwhelmed with so many messages from the media.  

Eco-anxiety is not only an individual but also a collective 'illness'.  During summer of 2021 I started to feel that any change about climate change is going to be slow and has to be concerted: it is difficult to mediate between parties that have different views about what needs to be done.  Every step has to be reflected upon and negotiated.  

This despite what many organisations have already in their strategic plans of achieving net-zero by a certain date.  It is also true that some actions are going to produce more impacts than others (i.e. not flying is more impactful than buying or using electric transport).  So perhaps it would be more important to assess and agree on these actions collectively.  And to establish ways of incorporating our conversations about such actions into strategic plans.  This could also help us all to deal with our own eco-anxieties.  

Creativity and risk taking - Finding your Element by Sir Ken Robinson (RIP)

I am about to finish reading Ken Robinson's "Finding your Element" book.This year of 2021 I have given myself time to think about my vocation.  This book has been very helpful to let me understand myself a bit more.  It has useful exercises to get the reader to think about talents, aptitudes,  attitudes,  passions and other aspects of our personality.   It encourages reflection and self honesty about things we really want to do and are good at, even if we are to learn them fro  scratch.   

I studied computer science and systems engineering as it was the right thing to do at the time.  During my degree I learned how to program computers, and also to type and write bit more academically. I graduated and went to work on software development, process analyses and software selection.  

But something was off.  I could not really be happy knowing that there were politics when it came to work with technology users, consultants or software providers.  I left a technology career behind and studied systems thinking.  I found myself telling my research supervisor that I wanted a life change.  

Ken Robinson talks about taking risks when we feel that something is off.  In his book he gives lots of examples of people who changed careers, went to live in unexpected places, created businesses or simply turned away from what they were supposed to do in life.  To many of these people, comfort signalled a need to move on and engage in what they thought was 'next'.  

Robinson encourages people to take risks, given that life is uncertain and far from linear.  Taking risks promises that we can all start living more genuinely according to our Element(s) (where passions and talents meet).  In my own case, I took a bit of risk by getting into debt to pay for my systems thinking studies. I got the backing of my twin sister that acted as a financial guarantor of a scholarship loan I was awarded.  I will be always thankful to her, to my mum, my sister Clara, my other siblings and people who I encountered throughout.  

Thanks to life I keep encountering help. My guarantors have helped me to start a new life and to maintain it when things were not going well.  Graduating from a PhD with no job on sight and in another country was a challenge I did not foresee: the funny thing was that even getting a funded post-doc was seen as an alien thing by them.  This lack of approval affected my mental health and it took some years of counselling to accept that being a researcher was what I wanted to do, despite my previous technology education, my loyalty to loved ones, my anxiety of not being good enough, or my conservative attitude to life (and risk).  

I agree with Robinson that life is full of risks.  But I now find myself questioning if when taking them we are to involve our loved ones to act as 'guarantors' (the ones picking up the bill if things go wrong).   It is worth pursuing one's own passions.  But at what cost?  And for whom And? And if finding one's Element is not a linear process that could also involving 'going back' according to Robinson, why the rush?  Why do we have to do things now?  Why the 'now or never' attitude? 

As I pose these questions, maybe I am also learning to accept that in our lives there will be always things that are 'off' and that there will be times when we need to live with such things: I am now living with anxiety and that is OK.  I did live with problems as we all do.  I cannot fully blame my taking of risks for my anxiety although I would say there is a fine line between taking a risk and becoming a neurotic (my therapist's favourite term).   In Robinson's account of finding one's Element, there does not seem to be any choice but to pursue it (with guarantors, debts and anxieties involved).  Even of that involves small steps. The issue becomes: "do something!".  It reminds me of a wrong thing to say when one is mentally ill:"man up, get over it!". 

To this choiceless invitation,  one my psychotherapists would say something similar: There is no other choice but to be truthful to oneself and professional, so that we measure more carefully what we aim for.  There are some anxieties we can live with, and there are others we cannot.  And there is no shame in not being able to develop a 'thick skin' about anxieties as Robinson's examples seem to suggest.   

Both Robinson and my therapist will acknowledge that some form of 'guarantor' is needed.  Lucky if we are able to have them I think.  Maybe we need to ask for true help in our lives.  Help that tell us what risks are worth taking or when to take them.  

So what could be next? 

Out of these ideas and also echoing what Gabor Mate says to his younger self, my creative one would say:   "Worry, but not too much.  There is no need to pursue perfection.  Young or old, time is on your side"

And as I finish Robinson's book and review some of its ideas, I find myself feeling grateful for this year of 2021.  I can say that I am not yet sure what my Element is.  It has to do with connecting people to learning opportunities.  It also has to do with slowing down and saying no to things I can do but do not really want to.  There might not be big risks yet for me on this.  And time is still on my side.  

So what could be next for me?  Let people do things bit more, let me do bit more of aside art and writing, let me do more walking or swimming if not cycling.  Time is on my side I think! 

And for you?  

  

Navigating through a climate change field

 Our world is now witnessing a global summit to talk about climate change.  Some of us have also decided to contribute to it by organising and running local activities.  At my workplace, we have a full agenda that involves students and businesses.  

For me this was going well until I started to feel what some people call eco-anxiety.  I do not like big gatherings or feeling that I am out of place.  Talking about how we need to do something now and urgently to save our planet got to me in a bad way.  Because to my mind I have been doing things.

From buying and using an electric bike to changing our old family car to one that does not emit too much carbon dioxide to refurbishing our house loft with foam insulation to reducing my car travelling to eating less meat to working with students on looking at how campus food can be better managed, I now feel that somehow this is not 'enough'.  My perfectionist self has kicked again on the face of so much information.  

Perhaps a better way of framing what I feel and think is to say that climate change is a very complex thing and that we are still learning how to do things.  It would be better to be more aware that we are also part of complex systems whose direction(s) are the result of many individual actions.  At the moment, there are some parts of such systems which I find difficult to navigate with, possibly because they are entrenched in their own and radical views about what needs to be done now.  

We need to gain more awareness and continue doing things.  But for me I need to take a small break from all this talk on climate change and breathe.  Maybe take a back seat and let things unfold.    It would be good to listen to what goes on and share what we have learned or what we could be doing differently in our lives or work.  

But not at my own expense.