with Bayo Akomolafe & Helena Norberg-Hodge
In this webinar, Local Futures’ Director, Helena Norberg-Hodge, is joined by poet, author and activist Bayo Akomolafe for a lively and challenging conversation about activism today. As our global crises deepen, many are coming to question activism altogether. Widespread assumptions undermine meaningful action: it is believed that people are greedy and aggressive by nature, that they don’t incorporate new information into their thinking, that they are simply unwilling to change…
We questioned these assumptions, and explored new and creative directions that can help us resist the corporate-led consumer-culture while renewing local economies and our deep connections to others and to nature. We addressed the need for both inner and outer change – avoiding self-righteousness while caring for ourselves to avoid burn-out. We looked at “big picture activism” as a strategic way forward – a means to forge a powerful movement for fundamental change.
Recources
Talk at the Economics of Happiness conference, Portland, Oregon, US in February 2015: Bayo Akomolafe: An Oriki for Our Time
Bayo Akomolafe is the Coordinator of the International Alliance for Localization (IAL), which was launched in November, 2014 at the Voices of Hope symposium in New York City: Bayo Akomolafe at the “Voices of Hope in a Time of Crisis” symposium
Recorded February 23rd, 2016
Presenters
Adebayo Clement-Akomolafe, Ph.D (Nigeria) – Bayo describes himself as a ‘recovering professor’, and is the Initiating/Coordinating Curator of The Emergence Network, Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization, a project of Local Futures (USA), as well as Lecturer at Covenant University, Nigeria. The host of the online writing course, ‘We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence.’ Bayo is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. A frequent keynote speaker, Bayo is a Board Member of Mutual Aid Network (Wisconsin, USA) and Real Economy Lab (UK). His speeches and essays have been compiled into a book called ‘The World Alethea Dreamed Of: Yearnings for Home in a Time of Desperate Lostness’. Websites: Bayo Akomolafe.net and emergencenetwork.org.
Helena Norberg-Hodge (Australia) is the founder and director of Local Futures/ISEC. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is the producer and co-director of the award-winning documentary The Economics of Happiness, and the author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, described as “an inspirational classic” and Local is Our Future. She has given public lectures in seven languages, and has appeared in broadcast, print, and online media worldwide. She was honored with the Right Livelihood Award (or ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’) for her groundbreaking work in Ladakh, and recently received the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.”
