Localising Leanganook, established as a community initiative in 2016, emerged out of the Local Lives Global Matters conference held in Castlemaine in October 2015. Centred in Mt Alexander shire, Localising Leanganook brings community members together to further explore themes central to the conference: sustaining viable local economies; acting on social and ecological justice; reclaiming democracy; and revitalising spirituality.
 
Community conversations are held every six weeks. These include presentations which challenge existing paradigms, which showcase creative and sustainable local initiatives, and which incubate ideas and strategies to strengthen community connection and resilience.
 
 

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November/December newsletter

Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. I accept the gift from the bush and then spread that gift with a dish of berries to my...

October 2022 newsletter

Learning is unnerving…It knows certainty to be an unrepentant and possibly temporary lapse in judgement//…Certainty, you could say, is the rent that knowledge pays for all the inner real estate it takes up. Learning, and the wonder that animates it, brings that rent down to something livable. The programmes of certainty are an assault...

August 2022 newsletter

For the Homeric Greeks, ‘kleos’, fame, was made of song. Vibrations in the air contained the measure and memory of a person’s life. To listen was therefore to learn what endures. I turned my ear to the trees, seeking ecological ‘kleos’. I found no heroes, no individual around whom history pivots. Instead, living memories...

July 2022

Kintsugi serves as a powerful and dramatic metaphor of acceptance, resilience and renewal in a time of environmental, political and civil upheaval. Having kintsugi in our lives  encourages us to remember that we can get through more than we may feel we are able to, in what sometimes feels like a world of overwhelming...

June newsletter

Botanist, teacher, writer, and member of the Potawatomi nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer has a lot to say about ancient moss beings, who were the first plants to cover the Earth. ‘Mosses, I think, are like time made visible…The mosses remember that this is not the first time the glaciers have melted…’. Kimmerer points out...

April/May 2022 Newsletter

We (humans) are a lot like other parts of nature in a lot of ways. But we’re also different in really critical ways that we have to understand, because if we don’t take an obligation associated with that difference, we will self terminate….I was talking with an Aboriginal friend Tyson Yunkaporta . He was saying that one...

March newsletter

Dear Mother Earth, Each morning when I wake up you offer me twenty-four brand new hours to cherish and enjoy your beauty. You gave birth to every miraculous form of life. Your children include the clear lake, the green pine, the pink cloud, the snowcapped mountain top, the fragrant forest, the white crane, the...

January 2022 e-news

In the Hans Christian Anderson rendition of the tale of an imaginary challenged, we find a naked Emperor, whose greatly admired clothes have been so carefully crafted that we can see, feel and even smell, their materiality. But look again. It is merely a socially shared intellectual fabric, an imaginary. In fact the Emperor...

October/November 2021

We need to master the art of asking questions which address the gravity of our situation, yet which also create longing, which evoke a deep and rich sense of the wonders we can still create, rather than shutting it down or putting it into a deep sleep of complacency.   Rob Hopkins: From What Is...

August 2021 newsletter

If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe.  But, as today’s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses.  I count on Government leaders and all stakeholders to ensure COP26 is a success. (United Nations Secretary General speaking about IPCC report on climate change,  described as...