Act: Inspiration

What if a revolution in our relation to land unlocked a revolution of the imagination?

January 21, 2021

Welcome to our first episode of 2021! We are planning an amazing series of podcasts for this year, and we hope you are enjoying them. Do consider subscribing here to enable us to continue making them. In today’s episode we bring together Josina Calliste, a health professional and community organiser who is one of the co-founders of Land in Our Names (LION), a black-led collective addressing land inequalities affecting black people and people of colour’s ability to farm and grow food in Britain, and Chris Smaje, author of the book ‘A Small Farm Future‘ and the brilliant blog of the same name.

Our far-reaching conversation, which could have gone on for hours,  explores our relationship with land, and how a reimagining  of that could unlock so much. My thanks to both of my guests for their generosity and wisdom, and to Ben Addicott for production and theme music.

Rob Hopkins

Rob Hopkins is a cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and Transition Network, and the author of The Transition Handbook, The Transition Companion, The Power of Just Doing Stuff, 21 Stories of Transition and most recently, From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want. He presents the podcast series ‘From What If to What Next‘ which invites listeners to send in their “what if” questions and then explores how to make them a reality.  In 2012, he was voted one of the Independent’s top 100 environmentalists and was on Nesta and the Observer’s list of Britain’s 50 New Radicals. Hopkins has also appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Four Thought and A Good Read, in the French film phenomenon Demain and its sequel Apres Demain, and has spoken at TEDGlobal and three TEDx events.

An Ashoka Fellow, Hopkins also holds a doctorate degree from the University of Plymouth and has received two honorary doctorates from the University of the West of England and the University of Namur. He is a keen gardener, a founder of New Lion Brewery in Totnes, and a director of Totnes Community Development Society, the group behind Atmos Totnes, an ambitious, community-led development project. He blogs at transtionnetwork.org and robhopkins.net and tweets at @robintransition.


Tags: access to land, Building resilient food and farming systems, small farm future