A bold venture
I suggest you browse their site, archives, programs…enjoy!
KPFAs mission:
- To promote cultural diversity and pluralistic community expression
- To contribute to a lasting understanding between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors
- To promote freedom of the press and serve as a forum for various viewpoints
- To maintain an independent funding base
Einmal mehr: Information und Wissensvermittlung als essentielle Resource fĂĽr Wandel.
Die Internationale Sommeruniversität verfolgt das Ziel, audiovisuelle Gestaltungskompetenz zur Kommunikation von Botschaften über erneuerbare Energien, Energieeffizienz und Klimafolgen auszubilden und auszubauen.
Die Teilnehmer der Sommeruniversität entwickeln Kompetenzen zur massenmedial kompatiblen Kommunikation von Fragen nachhaltiger Entwicklung und Energie. Sie lernen auf der Grundlage einer fundierten inhaltlichen Auseinandersetzung, Botschaften zu entwickeln und diese audiovisuell zu übersetzen, um dann von der Konzeption bis zur Produktion professionelle Medienprodukte zu erarbeiten: AV- und Radiospots, Hörspiele, Kurzfilme, virale Spots, Handyfilme und weitere diskursive Formate, insbesondere des Web 2.0.
Im Dezember 2008 beginnt das 5. Matrikel der Internationalen Sommeruniversität: Audiovisuelle Kommunikation. Erneuerbarer Energien, Energieeffizienz und Klimafolgen, Santiago - Berlin.
Die Bewerbung ist bis zum 25.11.2008 möglich.
Mach mit! Participate! Participa!: www.uinternacional.org
I recently found some quite inspiring videos from the Burning Man Festival. Even more inspiring was the their background. To me this is a quite special and beautiful way of communicating new and old insights: Mythmaker is about the ancient arts of storytelling, about theatre and circus and about sustainable living.
The mission of Mythmaker: To create, integrate and perform a new cultural mythology. To live and inspire a new dream, which empowers the individual, community and culture to co-create a sustainable future for all life.
I like their commitment and I like their creativeness. I personally would like to communicate the demystification of one or the other myth, but that’s a question of content, I guess…
For me Masanobu Fukuoka was a poet. He is known as one of the pioneers of natural farming and was an inspiration for the originators of the permaculture concept.
“If a single new bud is snipped off a fruit tree with a pair of scissors, that may bring about a disorder which cannot be undone…. Human beings with their tampering do something wrong, leave the damage unrepaired, and when the adverse results accumulate, work with all their might to correct them.”
“To become one with nature — agriculture is an occupation in which a farmer adapts himself to nature. To do that, you have to gaze at a rice plant and listen to the words from the plant. If you understand what the rice says, you just adjust your heart to that of the rice plants and raise them. In reality, we do not have to raise them. They will grow. We just serve nature. A piece of advice I need to give you here. When I say gaze at a rice plant or stare at its true form, it does not mean to make an observation or to contemplate the rice plant, which makes it an object different from yourself. It is very difficult to explain in words. In a sense, it is important that you become the rice plant. Just as you, as the subject of gazing, have to disappear. If you do not understand what you should do or what I am talking about, you should be absorbed in taking care of the rice without looking aside. If you could work wholeheartedly without yourself, that is enough. Giving up your ego is the shortest way to unification with nature.”
One Straw Revolution is maybe one of his best known books (’Der Grosse Weg Hat Kein Tor‘ auf deutsch) and even if you are not particularily interested in gardening, I recommend to read it, and if it’s just for a few paragraphs.
The Fukuoka Farming Website:
www.fukuokafarmingol.info
The Plowboy Interview: Masanobu Fukuoka
The great thing about the States is that beside the most ignorant politicians and the most unethical corporate system you will find a lot of people with a sense of self-responsibility and creativity who put ideas into action.
For example….
‘The Sustainable Living Roadshow (SLR) is a caravan of educators and entertainers who tour the country in a fleet of renewable fuel vehicles to empower communities and individuals to utilize sustainable living strategies for a healthier planet. Visiting k-12 schools, university campuses and community festivals across the United States, the caravan sets up off-the-grid eco-carnivals with experiential learning villages, featuring workshops, speakers and entertainment.’
Read into their principles and ethics, it’s inspiring! Have a look at the diversity of offerings/elements, it’s fun! Makes me want it to happen in Germany…
The Sound Earth Foundation is a not-for-profit information network first and foremost dedicated to promoting sound art, environmental art and the field of acoustic ecology.
Our other goal is to teach everyone to bring their state of being back into balance with nature, and help themselves make decisions on how to lessen their impact on the world around them.
Check it out!
Enjoy…some say it’s an artform, you know.
Check also other linked videos. The Scythe is coming back!
‘Art, Ecology & Education provides pathways to an integrated and sustainable way of living. We participate in the development and integration of an ecologically conscious and systemic worldview.
Using a holistic and transformative approach in our work, we support individuals and groups in the process of transition towards a life sustaining society.’
Upcoming workshops (in german and english):
12+13 July CHANGE - a different worldview for sustainable living
20-24 August ‘EFTERFESTEN Gathering for Sustainability’, Sweden
3-7 September SHIFTING TERRAIN - dancing new ways of perceiving
20+21 September PERMACULTURE - the Basics
Next AEE Evening at the HUB, Berlin:
9 July, 8pm, CSA / Community Supported Agriculture - Conscious consumption one step ahead
Art, Ecology & Education (www.art-ecology-education.org) works as international, intercultural consortium based in Berlin.
Participate in shifting the paradigm / feel free to get in touch!
Check them out!
The Global Oneness Project is a web-based video initiative exploring how the simple notion of oneness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.
We’re traveling the globe interviewing creative and courageous people who base their lives and work on the fundamental understanding that we are all connected and thus bear great responsibility for each other and our shared world. Our living library of films is available for free from our website or on DVD for events and educational use.
We are committed to documenting what is being born during this time of planetwide transformation. While we are confronted with unmistakable signs that our current way of life is no longer sustainable, inspiring and innovative people and programs are blossoming in all areas of our collective society. From a pay-it-forward café in Ahmedabad, to a youth program that brings African wisdom to Los Angeles, from the General Secretary of the Andean Nations, to the spiritual guardian of Ayers Rock, our film subjects live and work with many of the following values, attitudes, and beliefs:
* We are responsible to each other, the earth, and future generations.
* There are enough resources for us all, if we share.
* Free exchanges of information allow for greater, collective creative potential.
* Love, care and compassion have the power to transform the fabric of society.We hope that by showing the diverse ways oneness is expressed—in the fields of sustainability, conflict resolution, spirituality, art, economics, indigenous culture, and social justice—others will be inspired to create solutions to personal and community challenges from their own lived understanding of oneness.
‘6 billion Others’, an ongoing project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, aims to draw a portrait of contemporary humankind by asking questions about universal values and attempts to reveal universality and individuality of each person.
This is just one project of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and he’s bringing it into a broader context with the creation of goodplanet.info (work in progress), which aims to provide all information on sustainable development and its challenges to learn and commit. Plus there is goodplanet.org, a non-profit organization, dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development.
‘Art, Ecology & Education’ bietet Wege zu einer integrierten und nachhaltigen Art zu leben.
Es gibt eine Webseite als Wissensresource, es gibt Workshops und Kooperationen in verschiedenen Bereichen, es gibt ein Netzwerk innerhalb des ‘Wiserearth’-Portals, es gibt diesen Blog….
Dazu kommt jetzt: ‘Art, Ecology & Education’ schafft eine Möglichkeit in ‘real life’, um sich kennenzulernen, auszutauschen, zu feiern, zu diskutieren, brainzustormen, einen gemĂĽtlichen und inspirierenden Abend zu verbringen, und durch ausgesuchten Input Neues zu lernen.
Die ersten zwei Abende haben schon statt gefunden.
Der erste Abend war ein Screening von ‚A Crude Awakening/Oilcrash’ (OV), mit anschliessender, sehr spannender Diskussion ĂĽber ‘Wahrheitsgehalt’ und Machart des Films bis hin zur Frage: ‘Wie können wir auf Peakoil reagieren?’.
An dem zweiten Abend ging es um Paradigmen Wechsel als Grundlage fĂĽr Sustainability. Ausgangspunkt fĂĽr eine offene Diskussion waren zwei kurze Videobeiträge: ‘The Web of Life’, eine EinfĂĽhrung von Fritjof Capra (Physiker, Systemdenker und Autor, MitgrĂĽnder des Center for Ecoliteracy in Kalifornien) und ‘Beyond Deep Ecology’, ein Interview mit Satish Kumar (NGO Director, Peace Activist, Herausgeber des Resurgence Magazine and Programm Director am Schumacher College, U.K.). Beides sehr inspirierende Persönlichkeiten und herausfordernde Denker! Dieser Input in Kombination mit dem Interesse und der Unterschiedlichkeit der Anwesenden ergab einen reichhaltigen Abend…
Auch der Veranstaltungort trägt zur Atmosphäre bei: im selfHUB spürt man Offenheit, Vielfalt und Synergien.
Weitere Veranstaltungen folgen, die Themen und Formen werden variieren, aber es wird immer einen Bezug zu einer ganzheitlichen Wahrnehmung des Lebens und zu integrierendem Denken geben.
Check it out and feel invited!
‘The Schumacher College, in partnership with the University of Plymouth, is the first in the world to offer a post-graduate programme in Holistic Science.’
‘Das Schumacher College in SĂĽdwest-England ist eine der bekanntesten internationalen Institutionen fĂĽr ökologische Studien und Nachhaltigkeit, wo namhafte WissenschafterInnen am Kreuzungspunkt zwischen Naturwissenschaften, Politik, Spiritualität und gelebter Nachhaltigkeit ihre Konzepte zur Zukunftsfähigkeit lehren.’
Ich mochte den ersten Eindruck, den ich vom Schumacher College bekam, als wir von Toni Spencer, Researcher und Project Developer des College, empfangen wurden und zusammen aĂźen. Das Gebäude war kleiner, als ich es mir vorgestellt hatte, die Leute schienen freundlich und offen. Ich sah den Tagesplan, der jeden morgen an eine Tafel geschrieben wird und auf dem unter anderem steht, wer an diesem Tag kocht. An diesem Tag war dafĂĽr Satish Kumar zuständig, der Programme Director des College…
Nach dem Abendessen trafen wir uns im Garten mit einigen Studenten zu selbstgemachtem Apple Cider. Die Gruppe des Master Programms für Holistische Wissenschaft ist klein (maximal 13 Teilnehmer) und international. Die Dozentenliste für das Programm ist sehr ausgewählt und inspirierend. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass dieser Studiengang eine sehr intensive und besondere Erfahrung sein muss.
