It All Starts With a Cup of Tea

Getting together to build alternatives is quite overwhelming. “If it feels impossible – on top of paying the bills / feeding the kids / surviving – to build a wind turbine like the folks in Lawrence Weston, or buy your own farm like the community in Fordhall, can you really join in?” Golding offers a way through with three simple, accessible ingredients: “1. A handful of people; 2. A shared frustration; 3. A cup of tea / a pint of beer / some food.” He reminds us that “change inevitably starts small, and personal,” and that “caring beats control: when people come together to take on an issue they care about, they’re more likely to commit with creativity, determination and irrepressible energy than they are when change is forced on them from outside… If energy can be unlocked, and skills pooled, the resulting change can be huge – as the projects we’re sharing show.”