Global Community
NEWSLETTER
Hallo and Blessings to all members of World Family
This is the first "newsletter" from the Brighton World Family Group, and my name is Louis Loizou. This is just a beginning, and I hope it will stimulate and become something better, perhaps when we have our own World Family Website. It is not going to be a conventional newsletter for I am not a conventional man or writer, World Family is no conventional organisation or family, and Dr. Makuanjola Olaseinde Arigbede is not a conventional neuroscientist or smallholder farmer.
Introduction
What sparked the idea of a newsletter was a remark that our founder, whom we all know as Seinde, made in a blog on February 13th while participating in the Farmer's Forum in Rome with Jocelyn Jones from Brighton:
"You people are simply rumbling along happily, trafficking in great ideas, what better to traffic in than ideas that shake and re-make the world into one that we would gladly bequeath the generation! This is truly wonderful. My distance as well as the heavy load of work that prevents closer articulation with the family as it prepares for this Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty, make me feel very lonely, although 'Dunni and Irawo and others on the Nigerian end are great company, I still feel a bit cut off from these great things happening in the family in the Northern Hemisphere. We would not be jealous and we shall bide our time, waiting for you, Seyi, to get the website up for the family before USMEFAN stakes its claims to be assisted with its own website from within the family."
I realised when I read this that I also felt lonely and cut off from what was going on in the Southern Hemisphere in preparation for the Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty. I was aware that I will not see Seinde and his family, I would not see many other brothers and sisters in The South, in several African, Indian and American States probably until the end of this year. If I feel this, then maybe others do too. So I came to the idea of sending out a newsletter about some of the many things that are going on here in the south of England, in the City of Brighton and Hove, in nearby Lewes and in London.
Originally, I envisaged an account of some of the activities from here in the North and I was hoping after announcing my intention to the whole Family in a short email that I would would be able to include some news from other parts. No replies came. But this happens in families. We are all busy with the people around us, our jobs and our education, our daily lives, our difficulties and challenges - I very often do not hear from close friends for a long time, but I know they are there. As to my family, well, this is something which probably family members in The South may find hard to understand, but I rarely hear from any of them, except a very occasional phone call from my 92 year old mother who lives about 3 hours train journey away, and is so deaf that I have to employ special techniques of speech for her to be able to hear me in our short conversations.
So this cannot be a conventional newsletter, but now I will begin, and I thank you for being patient with this lengthy introduction. My brothers and sisters in Brighton are all now groaning and rolling their eyes at my famous verbosity, but I don't care, I love them all.
The Family
In the beginning, there are various phrases that Seinde introduced us to - even the words "Food Sovereignty" were new to our ears - but there is one phrase that always returns to me, and it just returned in the middle of a meditation this morning. The Sarcophagus Existence. I saw him speak 6 or 7 times, interviewed him on the radio, watched the video that Caspar from Moving Sounds made while Seinde was packing to leave for Nigeria last November several times. "In the South, our sarcophagi are lined with thorns and scorpions, in the North yours are lined with linen or silk, but we are all living a Sarcophagus Existence." So I do not apologise for my facility with words, I am imagining myself sitting under The Big Tree somewhere in South-West Nigeria on some future day, surrounded by faces from all parts of the world and we are telling stories of how we woke up the world. In the words of one of my favourite songs from my dear brother Paul Chi, Jocelyn's Partner and founder of Healthy Concerts who hosted the travels, talks and discussions here "I don't care if you don't like me, this is just who I am".
This will not be a series of bullet points, not today - maybe in the future when we know each other better we can use shorthand communication, but I want all my sisters and brothers in World Family to know us and I want to know them.
Some, like SeyiFunmi Komolafe Arigbede (Merritt Island, United States) who lives in the North but is of the South, have written much, as of course has her father, Seinde, and we have heard from Alonge Opeoluwa Daniel (Obafemi Awolowo University), Frank T. (Chicago, United States), Ogidan Rapheal (Lagos, Nigeria), Dr. Philip Sabbah (a Ghanaian in Miami Florida), Hazel Hammond (Bristol, UK), Jocelyn Jones, whom we have to thank for introducing us to her friend of over 30 years, Seinde here in Brighton, Ian Keith David Reuben Fennell (my friend from Brighton who also has the distinction of saving my life during a heart-attack in 2004), and of course last but not least, Nadia Franchi, our sister from Brighton who set up the World Family group within days of Seinde's suggestion at Chesham Street, Brighton, during one of the many discussions.
Now this newsletter has context, now it has bones and flesh and blood. If I have missed anyone, well, you are all as important as each other, I have just been using the list of popular contributors to the site.
The Newsletter
Now to the meat. On Monday night (25th February) World Family Brighton had a meeting that was so full we hardly knew where to begin.
Last meeting we might have discussed Seedy Sunday ( http://www.seedysunday.org/ ) which five or six of us attended on Sunday 3rd February at Hove Town Hall. It is a seed exchange day to save endangered seeds with many stalls and various events. We spent some time with Patrick Mulvaney (introduced to us by Seinde) Head of the UK Food Group (UKFG) which is a forum for many groups concerned with food Sovereignty. He has an impressive grasp on the subject and presented us with an informal talk and dialogue around the subject. Through Patrick and the UKFG we now have a network to over 30 other organisations, more of this later as we were invited to a seminar later in the month.
There are aspects of this which may help us to secure land for planting and one of Paul Chi's ideas is to have days when people come planting and then are rewarded by a Healthy Concert. For those who do not know World Family owes the Healthy Concerts Network, founded by Paul Chi, a huge debt in that it was through this network arranged by Jocelyn Jones that Seinde was able to make a seminar/concert tour of the South of England and Wales. Jocelyn first knew Seinde when she was living in Nigeria over 30 years ago. ( http://www.healthyconcerts.com/ )
Jocelyn has recently returned from The Farmer's Forum and IFAD (the UN organisation for Agricultural Development) conference which she attended with Seinde in Rome. There is a link on the MAIN World Family page to a Synthesis of the Deliberations of the Farmers' Forum 2008 which Jocelyn has uploaded in 3 PDF image files and a comment. (Direct link: http://worldfamily.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1338833%3ATopic%3A7184)
She may also be uploading other material about the Forum and the IFAD conference later. The UN and IFAD are difficult organisations to deal with, as I am sure many of you are aware, and her feeling was that progress in that direction is slow - some people on the boat are looking the right way, but the boat is still steering in the usual direction, to summarise her impression.
On 11th February Caspar of Moving Sounds and myself attended a UK Food Group seminar and book launch near the City of London. (see http://www.ukfg.org.uk/ for the UKFG and details of the book) Geoff Tansey & Tasmin Rajotte's book The Future Control of Food - a guide to international negotiations and rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security is not easy to read as it navigates through a literal jungle of red tape and hidden traps for the traditional farming world.
Caspar and I are trying to understand the history and meaning of the insane idea that is making natural resources "Intellectual Property" as if Mother Nature were subject to patent laws, or seeds were a computer programme. In some of us understanding this we may hope to be able to bring home the meaning of it by Moving Sounds using Forum Theatre techniques and simple stories or plays. (Google Forum Theatre on the internet along with the man who is the greatest pioneer of Social Change through Theatre, Augusto Boal who's first book was called The Theatre of The Oppressed, but there is some information: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-boal.htm) Moving Sounds Website (members of World Family also): http://www.movingsounds.org/index.php
On Monday 25th February Caspar and I had a brief discussion about my next radio show, Vision Shack with 3 of Moving Sounds and 3/7 of their band The Manjinga 7 (Rightcheous Gypsy Ska) which is going to be serious fun - we are recording it next week and it will be broadcast at 12.00 noon GMT as usual on www.radioreverb.com and the subjects will be Arts in Education, Forum Theatre, and all the great work that Moving Sounds do, and will be doing, including their activities in support of World Family. (If you cannot listen, all the "songs" on my profile page are in fact radio shows in 2 parts, the latest first and the recording will be uploaded soon after the broadcast. The first one, of course, was last November's interview with Seinde, Jocelyn and Paul.)
That evening World Family Brighton had a meeting at which Jocelyn gave us an account of the experiences in Rome, and we discussed most of the things in this newsletter.
We also discussed the Road Show, developed from an original idea I put to Seinde for a Seminar Tour in the UK when he was here. This was intended to introduce young people to the subject of Food Sovereignty to spread awareness to young people and possibly encourage some along the way to come with us to Nigeria in November/December/January for the Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty.
Now with Caspar's and Moving Sounds' imagination and help it has become part of a three-pronged awareness attack, for some of which Caspar has applied for funding and will continue to do so from other sources as it progresses. The Road Show is going to use Forum Theatre techniques, workshops, presentations, the video of Seinde on the Main page and a 20 minute documentary which will be made in Nigeria in May and June.
Locally, in Hanover area Brighton, 2 days after the radio show, Moving Sounds and The Manjinga 7 are hosting an event (see PDF file of poster which is beautiful http://worldfamily.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1338833%3ATopic%3A7042 bottom of page) with 3 hours of Forum Theatre Workshop and good food for 30 people followed by 3 hours of music, dance and celebration with other musicians from the Healthy Concerts network too. This is the 2nd such event we have had, the first was a good try which led to some great ideas and a few empty pockets :-) (see list of ideas we accepted at a later meeting on: http://worldfamily.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1338833%3ATopic%3A7142 ) but a whole lot more work and publicity has gone into this one and people are booking places already, so we hope to raise a little funding for the ongoing projects.
The next major event already in planning will be Caspar's visit to Nigeria from the end of May to the beginning of June when he will be meeting Seinde and all the farmers and others in the region and making a short 20 minute documentary of his visit, which we will use as part of our Road Show in the autumn.
This will then lead to another documentary as we travel the UK presenting Forum Theatre, Workshops and Music events with young people, and by this time we may well have some links between young people here, in schools, colleges and farmer's groups and young people in Nigeria, and maybe further afield. Through World family we have contact with people in Bangalore, India, with men and women in other Sub-Saharan African states, and of course several contacts in the USA.
One of our members from Brighton is visiting New England for about 3 months while her husband is teaching a semester at Rhode Island School of Design which he does most years. He has already made contact through music with an Indian community in and around Providence USA and is also the originator of the project between students and staff at Brighton University and Shristi University in Bangalore. I am sure our USA membership will be interested in this news. Perhaps more on this as things develop.
The third and largest stage of this particular thread of World Family activities will be Moving Sounds and Brighton and other members of UK World Family coming to the Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty in Nigeria. This will then lead to a larger filming project, alongside all the celebrations being planned in Nigeria (which we would love to hear more about) and building upon all the others in Odeomu, Ile-Ife, Brighton, several other places in the UK Road Show, to make a fantastic documentary promoting World Food Sovereignty which can be uploaded to such places as U-Tube and shown all over the world.
This is just the beginning of our World Family international collaborations to promote the importance and meaning of Food Sovereignty and Participatory Development to the world, South and North, so that we in the North can mobilise Civil Society through awareness to demonstrate to our Governments and institutions, like the UN and the EU, the World Trade Organisation and all the associated bureaucracies that Food Sovereignty is as present in the consciousness of ordinary people as is the knowledge of Climate Change which now affects us all, and all our sisters and brothers in The South can make their voices heard and teach us and many others in The North about their way of life, traditional farming and its sustainability, culture, arts and crafts, and also how they throw a good party!
Thank you all for reading this. I wish it were presented in a more interesting form with a good layout, colour and pictures. Perhaps we will get there, with many people contributing. Anyone with experience of editing a Newsletter, please come forward. I will help, but I am too wordy to be an editor. The purpose is to keep us all connected and aware of the vibrant activities and possibilities of World Family.
Louis Loizou
World Family Brighton.
(P.S. On my profile page there is the beginning of a links posting which I update every month with new links to many resources connected with all the issues discussed on my program Vision Shack many of which are of direct or indirect interest to World Family: Links For World Family & Vision Shack Projects & Research)
This is the first "newsletter" from the Brighton World Family Group, and my name is Louis Loizou. This is just a beginning, and I hope it will stimulate and become something better, perhaps when we have our own World Family Website. It is not going to be a conventional newsletter for I am not a conventional man or writer, World Family is no conventional organisation or family, and Dr. Makuanjola Olaseinde Arigbede is not a conventional neuroscientist or smallholder farmer.
Introduction
What sparked the idea of a newsletter was a remark that our founder, whom we all know as Seinde, made in a blog on February 13th while participating in the Farmer's Forum in Rome with Jocelyn Jones from Brighton:
"You people are simply rumbling along happily, trafficking in great ideas, what better to traffic in than ideas that shake and re-make the world into one that we would gladly bequeath the generation! This is truly wonderful. My distance as well as the heavy load of work that prevents closer articulation with the family as it prepares for this Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty, make me feel very lonely, although 'Dunni and Irawo and others on the Nigerian end are great company, I still feel a bit cut off from these great things happening in the family in the Northern Hemisphere. We would not be jealous and we shall bide our time, waiting for you, Seyi, to get the website up for the family before USMEFAN stakes its claims to be assisted with its own website from within the family."
I realised when I read this that I also felt lonely and cut off from what was going on in the Southern Hemisphere in preparation for the Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty. I was aware that I will not see Seinde and his family, I would not see many other brothers and sisters in The South, in several African, Indian and American States probably until the end of this year. If I feel this, then maybe others do too. So I came to the idea of sending out a newsletter about some of the many things that are going on here in the south of England, in the City of Brighton and Hove, in nearby Lewes and in London.
Originally, I envisaged an account of some of the activities from here in the North and I was hoping after announcing my intention to the whole Family in a short email that I would would be able to include some news from other parts. No replies came. But this happens in families. We are all busy with the people around us, our jobs and our education, our daily lives, our difficulties and challenges - I very often do not hear from close friends for a long time, but I know they are there. As to my family, well, this is something which probably family members in The South may find hard to understand, but I rarely hear from any of them, except a very occasional phone call from my 92 year old mother who lives about 3 hours train journey away, and is so deaf that I have to employ special techniques of speech for her to be able to hear me in our short conversations.
So this cannot be a conventional newsletter, but now I will begin, and I thank you for being patient with this lengthy introduction. My brothers and sisters in Brighton are all now groaning and rolling their eyes at my famous verbosity, but I don't care, I love them all.
The Family
In the beginning, there are various phrases that Seinde introduced us to - even the words "Food Sovereignty" were new to our ears - but there is one phrase that always returns to me, and it just returned in the middle of a meditation this morning. The Sarcophagus Existence. I saw him speak 6 or 7 times, interviewed him on the radio, watched the video that Caspar from Moving Sounds made while Seinde was packing to leave for Nigeria last November several times. "In the South, our sarcophagi are lined with thorns and scorpions, in the North yours are lined with linen or silk, but we are all living a Sarcophagus Existence." So I do not apologise for my facility with words, I am imagining myself sitting under The Big Tree somewhere in South-West Nigeria on some future day, surrounded by faces from all parts of the world and we are telling stories of how we woke up the world. In the words of one of my favourite songs from my dear brother Paul Chi, Jocelyn's Partner and founder of Healthy Concerts who hosted the travels, talks and discussions here "I don't care if you don't like me, this is just who I am".
This will not be a series of bullet points, not today - maybe in the future when we know each other better we can use shorthand communication, but I want all my sisters and brothers in World Family to know us and I want to know them.
Some, like SeyiFunmi Komolafe Arigbede (Merritt Island, United States) who lives in the North but is of the South, have written much, as of course has her father, Seinde, and we have heard from Alonge Opeoluwa Daniel (Obafemi Awolowo University), Frank T. (Chicago, United States), Ogidan Rapheal (Lagos, Nigeria), Dr. Philip Sabbah (a Ghanaian in Miami Florida), Hazel Hammond (Bristol, UK), Jocelyn Jones, whom we have to thank for introducing us to her friend of over 30 years, Seinde here in Brighton, Ian Keith David Reuben Fennell (my friend from Brighton who also has the distinction of saving my life during a heart-attack in 2004), and of course last but not least, Nadia Franchi, our sister from Brighton who set up the World Family group within days of Seinde's suggestion at Chesham Street, Brighton, during one of the many discussions.
Now this newsletter has context, now it has bones and flesh and blood. If I have missed anyone, well, you are all as important as each other, I have just been using the list of popular contributors to the site.
The Newsletter
Now to the meat. On Monday night (25th February) World Family Brighton had a meeting that was so full we hardly knew where to begin.
Last meeting we might have discussed Seedy Sunday ( http://www.seedysunday.org/ ) which five or six of us attended on Sunday 3rd February at Hove Town Hall. It is a seed exchange day to save endangered seeds with many stalls and various events. We spent some time with Patrick Mulvaney (introduced to us by Seinde) Head of the UK Food Group (UKFG) which is a forum for many groups concerned with food Sovereignty. He has an impressive grasp on the subject and presented us with an informal talk and dialogue around the subject. Through Patrick and the UKFG we now have a network to over 30 other organisations, more of this later as we were invited to a seminar later in the month.
There are aspects of this which may help us to secure land for planting and one of Paul Chi's ideas is to have days when people come planting and then are rewarded by a Healthy Concert. For those who do not know World Family owes the Healthy Concerts Network, founded by Paul Chi, a huge debt in that it was through this network arranged by Jocelyn Jones that Seinde was able to make a seminar/concert tour of the South of England and Wales. Jocelyn first knew Seinde when she was living in Nigeria over 30 years ago. ( http://www.healthyconcerts.com/ )
Jocelyn has recently returned from The Farmer's Forum and IFAD (the UN organisation for Agricultural Development) conference which she attended with Seinde in Rome. There is a link on the MAIN World Family page to a Synthesis of the Deliberations of the Farmers' Forum 2008 which Jocelyn has uploaded in 3 PDF image files and a comment. (Direct link: http://worldfamily.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1338833%3ATopic%3A7184)
She may also be uploading other material about the Forum and the IFAD conference later. The UN and IFAD are difficult organisations to deal with, as I am sure many of you are aware, and her feeling was that progress in that direction is slow - some people on the boat are looking the right way, but the boat is still steering in the usual direction, to summarise her impression.
On 11th February Caspar of Moving Sounds and myself attended a UK Food Group seminar and book launch near the City of London. (see http://www.ukfg.org.uk/ for the UKFG and details of the book) Geoff Tansey & Tasmin Rajotte's book The Future Control of Food - a guide to international negotiations and rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security is not easy to read as it navigates through a literal jungle of red tape and hidden traps for the traditional farming world.
Caspar and I are trying to understand the history and meaning of the insane idea that is making natural resources "Intellectual Property" as if Mother Nature were subject to patent laws, or seeds were a computer programme. In some of us understanding this we may hope to be able to bring home the meaning of it by Moving Sounds using Forum Theatre techniques and simple stories or plays. (Google Forum Theatre on the internet along with the man who is the greatest pioneer of Social Change through Theatre, Augusto Boal who's first book was called The Theatre of The Oppressed, but there is some information: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-boal.htm) Moving Sounds Website (members of World Family also): http://www.movingsounds.org/index.php
On Monday 25th February Caspar and I had a brief discussion about my next radio show, Vision Shack with 3 of Moving Sounds and 3/7 of their band The Manjinga 7 (Rightcheous Gypsy Ska) which is going to be serious fun - we are recording it next week and it will be broadcast at 12.00 noon GMT as usual on www.radioreverb.com and the subjects will be Arts in Education, Forum Theatre, and all the great work that Moving Sounds do, and will be doing, including their activities in support of World Family. (If you cannot listen, all the "songs" on my profile page are in fact radio shows in 2 parts, the latest first and the recording will be uploaded soon after the broadcast. The first one, of course, was last November's interview with Seinde, Jocelyn and Paul.)
That evening World Family Brighton had a meeting at which Jocelyn gave us an account of the experiences in Rome, and we discussed most of the things in this newsletter.
We also discussed the Road Show, developed from an original idea I put to Seinde for a Seminar Tour in the UK when he was here. This was intended to introduce young people to the subject of Food Sovereignty to spread awareness to young people and possibly encourage some along the way to come with us to Nigeria in November/December/January for the Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty.
Now with Caspar's and Moving Sounds' imagination and help it has become part of a three-pronged awareness attack, for some of which Caspar has applied for funding and will continue to do so from other sources as it progresses. The Road Show is going to use Forum Theatre techniques, workshops, presentations, the video of Seinde on the Main page and a 20 minute documentary which will be made in Nigeria in May and June.
Locally, in Hanover area Brighton, 2 days after the radio show, Moving Sounds and The Manjinga 7 are hosting an event (see PDF file of poster which is beautiful http://worldfamily.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1338833%3ATopic%3A7042 bottom of page) with 3 hours of Forum Theatre Workshop and good food for 30 people followed by 3 hours of music, dance and celebration with other musicians from the Healthy Concerts network too. This is the 2nd such event we have had, the first was a good try which led to some great ideas and a few empty pockets :-) (see list of ideas we accepted at a later meeting on: http://worldfamily.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1338833%3ATopic%3A7142 ) but a whole lot more work and publicity has gone into this one and people are booking places already, so we hope to raise a little funding for the ongoing projects.
The next major event already in planning will be Caspar's visit to Nigeria from the end of May to the beginning of June when he will be meeting Seinde and all the farmers and others in the region and making a short 20 minute documentary of his visit, which we will use as part of our Road Show in the autumn.
This will then lead to another documentary as we travel the UK presenting Forum Theatre, Workshops and Music events with young people, and by this time we may well have some links between young people here, in schools, colleges and farmer's groups and young people in Nigeria, and maybe further afield. Through World family we have contact with people in Bangalore, India, with men and women in other Sub-Saharan African states, and of course several contacts in the USA.
One of our members from Brighton is visiting New England for about 3 months while her husband is teaching a semester at Rhode Island School of Design which he does most years. He has already made contact through music with an Indian community in and around Providence USA and is also the originator of the project between students and staff at Brighton University and Shristi University in Bangalore. I am sure our USA membership will be interested in this news. Perhaps more on this as things develop.
The third and largest stage of this particular thread of World Family activities will be Moving Sounds and Brighton and other members of UK World Family coming to the Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty in Nigeria. This will then lead to a larger filming project, alongside all the celebrations being planned in Nigeria (which we would love to hear more about) and building upon all the others in Odeomu, Ile-Ife, Brighton, several other places in the UK Road Show, to make a fantastic documentary promoting World Food Sovereignty which can be uploaded to such places as U-Tube and shown all over the world.
This is just the beginning of our World Family international collaborations to promote the importance and meaning of Food Sovereignty and Participatory Development to the world, South and North, so that we in the North can mobilise Civil Society through awareness to demonstrate to our Governments and institutions, like the UN and the EU, the World Trade Organisation and all the associated bureaucracies that Food Sovereignty is as present in the consciousness of ordinary people as is the knowledge of Climate Change which now affects us all, and all our sisters and brothers in The South can make their voices heard and teach us and many others in The North about their way of life, traditional farming and its sustainability, culture, arts and crafts, and also how they throw a good party!
Thank you all for reading this. I wish it were presented in a more interesting form with a good layout, colour and pictures. Perhaps we will get there, with many people contributing. Anyone with experience of editing a Newsletter, please come forward. I will help, but I am too wordy to be an editor. The purpose is to keep us all connected and aware of the vibrant activities and possibilities of World Family.
Louis Loizou
World Family Brighton.
(P.S. On my profile page there is the beginning of a links posting which I update every month with new links to many resources connected with all the issues discussed on my program Vision Shack many of which are of direct or indirect interest to World Family: Links For World Family & Vision Shack Projects & Research)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jocelyn Jones on -
Fantastic Louis! Well done and thank you. Love, Jocelyn
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on -
Oh good. thank you. I hope we can attract more people to contribute, which would be great.
Love, Louis.
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Permalink Reply by Movingsounds on -
Louis ,as I said before ,u are mad......but I like it!
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Permalink Reply by OLUWASEYIFUNMI KOMOLAFE ARIGBEDE on -
I love the Newsletter louis!
It helps me to feel more connected with all of you. My everyday life is very busy being that I am a single mom, but I have been diligently setting aside time to work on the flyer and the website. I will post more as I complete my projects.
The tour sounds great!...Will Caspar be posting the interview with my Father and the Nigerian Farmers on this site?. I would love to be able to utilize such videos on the website and in my efforts to drum up support here in America.
Thank you for all your hard work Louis:)
Blessings,
Seyi.
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on
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Hi Seyi.
Thank you. It is my pleasure and often my role in life to connect things and people together.
I am certain that Caspar will be posting his work in Nigeria alongside everything else he has already posted. Did you see the videos of women talking about their roles that are linked to the main page or just click the videos tab?
He will also be posting the final thing on U-tube, and everything will be linked to World Family, whether on this group or if we all move to a new website, there.
I am trying to learn from the wisdom of women about multi-tasking as every day seems to bring new connections. I need to learn economy of action and re-train myself in time management.
Blessings to you,
Louis.
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Permalink Reply by Daisy Bruce on -
Hi Louis,
I am Daisy Bruce and I recently joined the World Family. Just to say thankyou very much for writing the newsletter. As a member of World Family, but based in Totnes, Devon, Its really insightful and helpful to understand what is discussed in meetings and visions for the future. It definitely helps me feel more intune with the group. I'll probably meet you at the workshop on Saturday,
With best wishes, Daisy
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on
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Hi Daisy.
Thank you and welcome to World Family. It will be most interesting to meet you and hear more about Totnes from one who lives there. I presume you know the guys from Moving Sounds. Just aired a radio show with them which I will be posting in 2 parts on my profile page hopefully later today. It was great.
See you on Saturday,
Regards,
Louis.
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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on
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Hi all.
Just to continue some of the strands in the newsletter for the benefit of World Family members not in Brighton. The Moving Sounds radio program was a great success (despite the usual technical problems to an amateur sound engineer), demonstrating the light touch that they bring to serious issues for both children and adults. It was a break for me to have guests who literally took over the show from time to time.
The event that they organised was also a great success, well attended by people from all kinds of groups and supported by another Theatre Company, Trapese, by Transition Brighton and Hove (listen to radio program on T.B.H. for an explanation of this UK initiative to make our communities more self-sustaining in the face of Peak Oil and climate change) and of course by all members of Brighton and Lewes World Family new and old. Talks were given on the history of Agriculture over the last 10,000 years, which coincided by T.B.H.'s showing a few days before of a long documentary "What a Way To Go - Life at the End of Empire". The film is a long, dark and difficult look at all the global issues we face that does not offer easy answers or comfortability but nevertheless ends with a summation that the Human's capacity for a "spiritual dimension" of the kind that leads to kinship, purpose and positive ingenuity and action is what may save us.
Back to the 8th March. Jocelyn Jones then spoke eloquently and authoritatively on behalf of World Family, there was another speaker from T.B.H. and we watched the short Moving Sounds film of Seinde made last November in Jocelyn's house.
We then embarked on a similar group exercise, and as we had more than the projected 30 participants by this time we worked in four groups as "smallholder farmers" and "consumers" examining the possibilities, probabilities and uncertainties facing both. It was later felt that we could have spent a lot more time on a discussion following this as it brought up similar results as last time, but with much more detail and educational opportunity. But we ran out of time.
So many people turned up for the music afterwards with part of Paul Chi's "Trouser Free Ensemble" (Paul and Garima on sitar) another local band and finally as the wonderful organic food and beautifully presented tables were cleared away, with a celebratory dance to The Manjinga 7.
We did not finish until about midnight. The event made a little money to help fund Moving Sounds travel to Nigeria and the Road Show later this year, but then lost it again due to kitchen problems and the like.
Fortunately the fund-raising aspect was not as important as the liaising and awareness-raising that occurred, so we feel that evening to have been an overall success.
Jocelyn has posted reports of a couple of World Family Brighton meetings and at the last meeting this week we were updated by her on all that she has heard from Nigeria, we discussed funding and the need for a set of different approaches to it, the attendance of (probably) Jocelyn to a one-day preparatory meeting for Nyéléni Europe 2009 to which Tom Lines received an invitation a few days ago which will take place in Brussels on Friday 9 May 2008, and finally a brainstorming session to help in something I began but have not yet finished which was a kind of Vision Statement or set of principles which could help us represent World Family to other organisations, and for funding applications. As Seinde is working on something similar we await his work on this, and as Caspar, who has a lot more experience in funding applications, was not present, we also decided to wait until our next meeting. I think Jocelyn will be reporting on this meeting elsewhere, but I wanted to add it to this newsletter for anyone following this thread. Now I think several people are putting their minds to the task of "putting World Family on paper" without limiting or compromising the true spirit of it.
I still do not feel the sense of connection, in common with others here, to what is going on in Nigeria. This group is not really as interactive as something like Facebook, we are aware that not everyone can access the internet easily and/or affordably, particularly in Africa where it is needed the most, and that our connections will be stronger when some of us have been to Nigeria and met our sisters and brothers face to face, shared our arts and inspirations, our stories and music. We in Brighton look forward to that time.
We are, however, despite the fact that life has a way of diverting our efforts and sometimes undermining our vision, moving closer to the real action - Caspar's visit at the end of May, our Road Show with Moving Sounds in the autumn (September/October) and the celebrations in November.
From my personal perspective I see the world is undergoing a series of upheavals (Zimbabwe, Tibet, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine and Iraq to mention but a few) and challenges - global warming, migrations, peak oil, the poverty of true values in both political and economic mechanisms globally leading to more human suffering, and the madness of medical researchers who seek to undo God's work by creating genetic monsters in the name of medical science along with the educated and greedy idiot Transnational Corporations who think they can "own the intellectual property rights" of nature's creations.
And yet I find myself moving out of personal crisis and dependence upon the systems humans have created to a greater feeling of freedom and the feeling that I am just about ready now to face what I believe my whole life has been training me for. What form it will take I do not know, but this and all of you are surely a part of it. So thank you all for being who you are. It would be lonely without you.
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Permalink Reply by Tom Lines on -
Louis mentioned the invitation to a preparatory meeting for Nyéléni Europe 2009 in Brussels on May 9th, and I attach a copy of the Call for Nyéléni Europe for your interest. If you would like to know more about the preparatory meeting, please ask me.
The main idea of a Nyéléni-type event is to promote food sovereignty in Europe, concerning European food and European farmers. But at last week's meeting we felt it would be useful if World Family was represented at the preparatory meeting, so that we can get more involved in the wider Food Sovereignty movement and also get World Family and its distinctive approach better known. It was suggested that two of us might go and I have written to the organisers to request this. Any thoughts, anyone?
Best wishes,
Tom Lines
tlines@globalnet.co.uk - Attachments:
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Call for Nyeleni Europe.doc, 40 KB
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