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events

Details: Written by Luke Devlin

In association with Scottish Drug Policy Conversations (SDPC)

The Human Ecology of Drug Use: roundtable hosted by Mike McCarron

Tuesday 19th July 2016 1830-2030

CHE Library, 2nd Floor, The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

Join us for this roundtable where we will discuss drug policy in Scotland, and the wider social, personal, and cultural aspects of drug use. We expect a wide-ranging, frank and stimulating discussion: all are welcome to contribute.

Mike is a CHE Trustee who, as a concerned citizen, advocates critical public discussion about drug use and its impacts. He is co-organiser of Scottish Drug Policy Conversations.

http://scottishjusticematters.com/launch-scottish-drug-policy-conversations/

Mike qualified in social work in 1978 and worked in Glasgow statutory settings addressing offending, alcohol and drug problems, community care services and child protection, community development in disadvantaged areas and supporting the voluntary sector.

A spell as full-time councillor, also active at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities during the late 1990s, was followed by 10 years involvement in the development and implementation of Scotland’s Drug Strategy.

Created: 14 July 2016

Events

Details: Written by Luke Devlin

Liminal community projects for sustainability: where do we go from here? With Svenja Meyerricks
13th April 2016 1800-2000

CHE Library, 2nd Floor, The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

Booking essential: free, or gift what you can. All funds to to our speaker and to support our charitable work.
Book here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2537847

CHE roundtable discussion with Svenja Meyerricks on ‘Liminal community projects for sustainability: where do we go from here?’

What roles do community projects for sustainability and low-carbon living play in the wider political landscape, in Scotland and globally? Svenja explores how through the lens of ritual theory, community projects open up liminal spaces of learning and social transformation on a small scale, and create communitas or social bonding. However, these liminal spaces remain relatively marginal as long as the final stage is missing – an integration of the learned sustainable practices into wider low-carbon infrastructures, and social practices within ecological limits.

This Centre for Human Ecology roundtable discussion begins with a short talk discussing case studies of community projects which Svenja undertook as part of a PhD thesis (available here). Svenja focused in particular on how community projects have been part of the climate change narrative in Scotland through the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, and on narratives which have emerged through community action in practice.
The talk will be followed by an in-depth discussion – we invite in particular community practitioners, activists and scholars to explore together barriers, potentials and tools to deepen practices within community projects.

About Svenja:

Dr Svenja Meyerricks received her PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2015 for her thesis titled ‘Community projects as liminal spaces for climate action and sustainability practices in Scotland’. She also holds an MSc in Human Ecology (University of Strathclyde 2008) and an MA in Social Anthropology/ Philosophy (University of Glasgow 2007).
She currently works in Milton Community Garden and Food Hub for North Glasgow Community Food Initiative, and is a Director of the Centre for Human Ecology.

Created: 07 March 2016

News about CHE

Details: Written by Luke Devlin

CHE fellow Alastair McIntosh reports on a recent Papuan delegation to Scotland:

A further delegation of a dozen Members of Parliament and senior civil servants from Papua Province, Indonesia, including three party political leaders, was hosted by the Centre for Human Ecology during the first week of December. What distinguished this visit was the presence of elected politicans from a cross-section of parties in Papua. The focus of the visit was climate change, and how this impacts upon land use, community empowerment, and the wider context of sustainable development.

Building on a four-year period of work with the Govermnent of Papua, conducted through its Planning Department, BAPPEDA, the team was led by CHE fellows Vérène Nicolas and Alastair McIntosh, with support this time from CHE graduates, Maire McCormack (who speaks Indonesian), Sibongile Pradhan (who produced the poster artwork) and CHE board member Mike McCarron for discussions about an ongoing programme to educate about sustainable development.

Created: 17 December 2015

Events

Details: Written by Luke Devlin

The People in Place : The Placemaker in Us. Integral@Work: A spirited blether about what really matters with Ian Wight
Wednesday 3rd Feb 2016 1800-2000

CHE Library, 2nd Floor, The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

Booking essential: free, or gift what you can. All funds to to our speaker and to support our charitable work.

You are warmly invited to CHE’s first event of the new year, a roundtable blether led by Ian Wight.

OVERVIEW: How might we go about making a place we can all call home? What do we make of place? What rates as place? What’s the story here, the underlying poetry?

We’ll look into what we might mean by place, especially vis-à-vis space, wondering about its sacred and secular attributes, and its combination of primalcy and potency. It will encompass attention to our ‘sense of place’, in terms of sensing place within us – an inter-meshing of ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ sense-making. We’ll prospect what we might regard as the qualities of place, with particular interest in place as an integration of physicality, functionality, conviviality and spirituality. And we’ll speculate on the essence of place as something we make together, as a form of coming home together. What metaphors, or story-lines, or poetry, might resonate as part of our common meaning-making?

About Ian Wight:

Ian, a Canadian Scot, has been – in roughly equal measure, over the past four decades or so – an educator of professional planners, and a professional planning practitioner. He is now exploring his refirement in his native Scotland, kindling his abiding passions, which include an advocacy of planning as placemaking, as wellbeing by design. Ian’s most recent academic credential is a Diploma in Human Ecology, through CHE, in 2009. He loves a really good blether that bridges the personal, the professional and the spiritual – drawing on an integral perspective.

Ian served as the Head of the City Planning program at the University of Manitoba from 2003 to 2008.
He is a long-time member of the Canadian Institute of Planners. He was a founding board member of the Council for Canadian Urbanism and an inaugural member of the Integral Institute.

Created: 28 January 2016

Events

Details: Written by Luke Devlin

Ecocultures: Glasgow’s Festival of Environmental Research, Policy and Practice

17th October 2015 0930

The Pearce Institute, 840-860 Govan Rd, Glasgow G51 3UU (near Govan underground station)

The Centre for Human Ecology is a partner in this one-day event, funded by Glasgow University’s Collaborative Research fund.

About: The Environmental Humanities are slowly gaining ground in Scottish research environments. ‘Ecocultures: Glasgow’s Festival of Environmental Research, Policy and Practice’ offers an opportunity for interdisciplinary engagement with a wide number of issues of the Scottish environment and landscape.

This dynamic one-day festival will provide a space to explore existent or potential dialogues between environmental researchers, practitioners and policy-makers. Through a programme of seminars, readings and papers from leading academics, artists, activist and politicians, we aim to explore the current state of the Scottish environment and its place in contemporary art and research.

The topic is deliberately broad, inviting contributors to strike new ground in the following areas:

• Environmental Art(s) / Art(s) and the Environment
• Land Reform
• Environmental Protest
• Islands and Archipelagos
• Landscape and Gender
• Petroculture
• Urban Ecology
• Conservation
• Walking and Psychogeography
• Future Landscapes
• Landscape and Heritage
• Imagined Landscapes

Programme (PDF format)

Contact: Enquiries relating to this event should be made via email to our partners Kirsty Strang (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..ac.uk) and Alexandra Campbell (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..ac.uk)

Created: 23 September 2015