Throw a local food feast (along with Russell Brand and Naomi Klein) to celebrate Local Futures' "World Localization Day", June 20th
We’re great advocates of local power at A/UK - but no-one has been more visionary and assiduous in promoting localisation that Helene Norberg-Hodge, and her Local Futures network, who have (in their words), as pioneers of the New Economy movement, have been “raising awareness for four decades about the need to shift direction – away from dependence on global monopolies, and towards decentralised, regional economies” (see their 2011 movie, The Economics of Happiness).
We’re picking up on them this week because they’re thundering to a major event they’re holding, called World Localisation Day, on June 20th. The video above strings together activists and celebrities (including Thandie Newton and Brian Eno), but the purpose is stated clearly here:
As more people wake up to the need to localize supply-chains and recover their connections to Nature and community, World Localization Day aims to galvanize the worldwide localization movement into a force for systemic change.
You are invited to do various actions - one of which is to “host a local food feast” (In person on online), which could be:
anything from a family dinner at home to a potluck with friends and colleagues, or even a neighborhood street feast! The challenge is to source (primarily) local ingredients – maybe try to get to know the farmers who grew them. [Let them know you’re doing so here, and see the video below for more]
Another is to turn up to events that are being held globally - quite a few left in the UK - and to attend an online conference (pay what you can). with voices like Naomi Klein, Charles Eistenstein and Russell Brand. There’s a very concise definition of localisation at the day’s site:
Ultimately, localization is about bringing the economy home–back to a human scale.
It is the process of building economic structures that allow the goods and services a community needs to be produced locally and regionally whenever possible.
Localizing economies can strengthen community cohesion and lead to greater human health and material wellbeing, all while reducing pollution and the degradation of the natural world.
It is not about isolationism or putting an end to international trade. It is simply about rebuilding human-scale economic structures by producing what we need closer to home.
From community gardens to credit unions, from alternative learning spaces to small business alliances and co-ops, local economies create networks of place-based relationships that affirm our human desire for connection to each other and to the earth. It's the economics of happiness.
By creating this structural basis for community, local economies make caring for one another and for the land into guiding principles of daily life.