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.
 
 

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....

January 2020 newsletter

“It is difficult to relinquish the illusions of power and delusions of exceptionalism that come with privilege. But is it strangely liberating to realise your true status as a single node in a cooperative network. There is honour to be found in this role and a certain dignified agency. You won’t be swallowed up...

November 2019 newsletter

Worldwide more than 1 billion people are members of cooperatives. Cooperatives provide 100 million jobs worldwide, 20% more than multinational enterprises. (1) The commons asks us to think about the world in more organic, holistic and long term ways. We see that my personal unfolding depends upon the unfolding of others, and theirs upon mine....

September newsletter

History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper- anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of...

August newsletter

‘In the stories we tell, we tell ourselves’ (Kwaikutl elder) (1) The universe is made of stories, not atoms. Murial Rukeyser (2) Our August newsletter has information about: Words in Winter– Daylesford, Newstead and Trentham Susan Murphy- Falling Awake in a Global Ecological Crisis Repair Cafe’s- Daylesford and Castlemaine Hepburn Herbal Group– getting started...

July 2019 newsletter

This we know: The Earth does not belong to Man; Man belongs to the Earth. All things are connected like the blood which unites one’s family. Whatever befalls the Earth will befall the sons of Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does...

May 2019 Newsletter

The view of evolution as a chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of  Darwin’s notion of “survival of the fittest,” dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networking. Life forms...

April 2019 newsletter

“Humanity is only beginning to awaken to the true magnitude of the crisis on hand….In all realms, from money to ecological healing to politics to technology to medicine, we need solutions that exceed the present bounds of the possible. Fortunately, as the old world falls apart, our knowledge of what is possible expands, and...

March 2019

Humanity is only beginning to awaken to the true magnitude of the crisis on hand…nothing less than a miracle is needed to heal our world…..The recent convergence of crises – in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment and more – is a birth crisis, expelling us from the old world...