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.
 
 

June 2021 newsletter

“Living in Australia means living on Aboriginal land. Getting the right fire solutions on country will take a huge shift, involving many good people in many different ways. Everyone is going to be affected if we don’t become aware of how we all fit together to support change.” (Steffensen, Victor: Fire Country- How indigenous...

April 2021 e-news

Come gather ’round people wherever you roam And admit that the waters around you have grown And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth savin’ And you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. (Bob Dylan)...

March 2021

  The land is a sacred entity, not property or real estate; it is the great mother of all humanity. The Dreaming is a combination of meaning (about life and all reality), and an action guide to living. The two most important kinds of relationship in life are, firstly, those between land and people...

February 2021

What if we had more people making decisions whose goal was the creation of beauty or telling stories or growing food or caring for older people? We would have a richer public life, a richer discourse. And we would get better decision-making because suddenly you wouldn’t have this very narrow financially-driven set of decision...

Acknowledging Survival day in Castlemaine & Daylesford

Here’s a brief Localising Leanganook e-news focusing on Survival Day events being held in Castlemaine and Daylesford on Tuesday January 26th. A more detailed e-news will be published soon. Terra Nullius Breakfast- Daylesford When:  Tuesday January 26th, 2021, 8am-10am Where: outside Daylesford Town Hall Join the fifth Terra Nullius brekky and stand with First...

October 2020

“As the planet’s ecosystems erode and politicians obsess over growth objectives, what we really need is degrowth, that is, to transform our ways of living, our economies, our polities and our cultures to live within the earths limits”. Vincent Liegey and Anitra Nelson, Preface to Exploring Degrowth, 2020, Pluto Press (See a Central Vic perspective...

August 2020

We’re finally being forced to recognize that no top-down institution, governmental or otherwise, can fully ensure our safety. That our deepest insurance against disaster is going local—by getting to know our actual neighbors and checking in on one another when we can, participating in our local community and apprenticing with the more-than-human terrain that...

A brief May 2020 newsletter

Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous....

March 2020

“I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the...

February 2020

The natural world is the maternal source of our being…(it) is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. (Thomas Berry, cited in ỚMurchύ,D: Reclaiming Spirituality , Gill and Macmillan, 1997, p.35) Welcome to Localising Leanganook’s February newsletter....