Climate Change in
Food Bank Neighbourhoods:
ArtHub Zion Chapel Bonymaen Swansea.
ABOUT THIS EVENT
As part of a national project to consult the public on how to tackle climate in a fair way, a group of local people in Bonymaen discussed its significance to a neighbourhood already challenged economically. The setting was Mount Zion Baptist Chapel where Eastside Food Bank is housed.
When poverty plays such a defining role in many people’s lives why would the climate emergency become of paramount concern? In places where people “are scraping along the bottom”, to quote the Baptist Minister of the chapel, how does an existential threat to human presence on the planet take on meaning for them? The paradox to be addressed is that those who have the least agency, and those whose carbon footprint is disproportionately small, have the most to lose in climate breakdown.
The conversation was led by six speakers from a diverse range of disciplines who recognise the inequity and diversiveness of this poverty-driven paradox. Their short introductions to the complex and subtle processes affecting the well-being of local people can be heard below.
Mary Duckett
Mary is coordinator for Bwyd Abertawe. Bwyd Abertawe came into existence through grassroots and cross-sector movement for sustainable food in Swansea, collectively forming and launching Swansea Food Charter in March 2023. Mary has a keen personal interest in the significance sustainable food has — for everyone’s wellbeing, environment and biocommunities, and sustainable-ethical economics. Mary’s education background includes Arts (BA Hons) and Economics for Transition Masters degrees. With career focussed on supporting individuals and groups within disadvantaged communities, including over 20 years experience in community development and project management.
http://www.bwydabertawe.org.uk
Chris Blake
Chris Blake has spent the last decade supporting community responses to climate change. As a founding Director of both award-winning social enterprises The Green Valleys and Community Energy Wales he has been at the forefront of the movement for community owned renewable generation. More recently he has been leading the Skyline programme delivering landscape-scale community stewardship of public land in the South Wales Valleys. Chris is a Trustee of the Black Mountains College and has served as a Board member of Natural Resources Wales. He lives in a smallholding in the Brecon Beacons and has a passionate belief in the power of community action to meet today’s challenges.
John Whitehead
John is a whole systems designer, architect, engineer and community activist. He is a director of a micro-hydro power company. His current focus as founder of the Bottega Project https://www.bottegaproject.co.uk/previous-projects is informed by a wide range of experience and skill sets gained over the past 4 decades — studied process oriented Psychology with Arnold Mindell alongside working as a blacksmith, fabricator and sculptor. Since 2004 John has lived in South Wales working on community projects. This included the Talgarth mill project, which won the Village SOS award BBC Big Lottery Award. The project’s central purpose is to look at how we facilitate and enable System-level transformation towards a viable future at city scale. We are particularly interested in the intersection of affordable housing, community-led health care, local economies and skills education through effective action.
Allan Herbert
Allan has been involved in community development for over 30 years, most intensely with diverse communities in some the most disadvantaged wards in Wales, primarily in inner city Cardiff, striving to increase the sense of agency and control for individuals, families and communities. He spent 11 years managing Communities First projects and has extensive third sector representative experience in a variety of settings. In partial retirement he is working on strategy and funding for Disability Can Do (a pan-disablement Charity working in Gwent) and he has formed with colleague Nick Lewis the River Music project under the umbrella of South Riverside Community Development Centre. River Music brings together and development of diverse music and the expansion of participation and understanding in the arts for children from diverse and disadvantaged communities. He is currently involved as an associate with the Medical Trials unit in Cardiff University (exploring the low uptake of certain cultural and other groups in trials)
Below: local community members Manic theatre Group (Eastside Radio) along with councillor Paul Lloyd are apart of the conversation in Arthub and on line.
Barbara Castle
Barbara has worked in the field of community regeneration for 50 years. Her work has crossed public, private and third sectors, and she has engaged in community development practice, research, writing, teaching, project management and policy development. She worked on the design and implementation of the Communities First programme in Wales, and latterly was Director for Community Engagement and Investment in Bron Afon, a community mutual housing body. In 2010 Barbara was awarded an OBE for her services to regeneration in Wales. Barbara believes in models of community asset development and in the furtherance of local community control.
Mary Sherwood
Mary has worked with a focus on socioeconomic inequality for over 25 years. Her work in the voluntary and public sectors includes one term in local government in Wales, 2017-22, with roles focusing on poverty, social justice and climate change. In 2021, Mary established Fairer Future, a company sharing knowledge to tackle poverty through training and consultancy services. Since 2017 Mary has also worked for Gower Power, as grants manager and now as a director, distributing funds arising from community-owned solar energy to grassroots projects addressing the social injustices arising from our prevailing economic model and from climate change
BACKGROUND
Climate Change in Food Bank Neighbourhoods was one of a series of Climate Conversations sponsored by the Welsh Government across Wales to involve community groups and members of the public in exploring the links between solutions for tackling climate change and the cost-of-living crisis. They were held to accompany Wales Climate Week in 2023. Their aim was to encourage national, regional and local conversations with community groups, individuals, employed and self-employed workers throughout Wales on how we can tackle climate change in a fair way.
This event in Bonymaen focussed on strategies for instilling active community engagement and participation in ‘hard to reach’ communities which suffer, for good reason, the tyranny of circumscribed horizons, where concern for the immediate day-to-day realities of sustaining oneself preclude a wider worldview and climate-driven perspective.
This event is part of the Natural Law Project, an initiative led by Artstation. Artstation is a leading multi-disciplinary art practice based in Cardiff, South Wales. The Natural Law Project is a creative interdisciplinary collaboration around food, energy and social justice between Artstation (Cardiff), Mount Zion Baptist Chapel (Bonymaen), Swansea Law Clinic (Swansea University) and Tai Tarian Housing Association (Port Talbot). It is supported by the Arts Council of Wales under its Connect & Flourish community development programme, 2022-2024.