Year: 1996
Community Regeneration – encouraging dreams
(The boat featured in the photo is one of the “ripples” as it was built in a neigbouring village by youth under the guidance of another man who had a dream to build an historical boat as a means to impart boat building skills to youth.) Change is not a new phenomenon as every generation […]
Alex’s dream/Sinclair’s vision
(This is Alex and the boat of his dreams. It was built by Alex and a group of volunteers in Portsoy, Scotland as one of their inputs into the Scottish Traditional Boat Festival.) Within the hearts of people everywhere lie the dreams, often dormant, that cause real development to happen. While there to discover few […]
Affirming Self – just being
The most fundamental of human needs after physical sustenance is that of affirmation. People have need to sense a conscious reality, to perceive permanence and to belong. It is primarily why people have gathered together in groups and created structures throughout history. The perception of security that emanates from belonging is critical to spiritual health […]
Accepting Stillness – enduring solstice
Solstice is the point in time when the sun on reaching the extremity of its cycle, becomes still before beginning the next cycle of earth’s seasons. Solstices are about change, uncertainty and transition from one season to the next. In earlier periods the advent of each solar solstice was the cause of much apprehension as […]
Community Wealth – Community Power
With conventional jobs rapidly disappearing new mechanisms are needed to distribute wealth and provide for the needs of people. The future will require local people have access to investment earnings as a means of wealth transfer. Taxation and social handouts have proven a disaster in this interim period that we have been struggling with job […]
Acknowledging Roots – life’s web
The “search for roots”, has become a growing passion for many, especially in the western world. Some pursue family trees in often fragmented records, others search long lost relatives, and still others explore ancestral homelands. Most do not realise that these are superficial exercises, for our longings, even much of our anguish, and despair emanate […]
Community Development – out from the margins
The nineties brings us to another similar but, profound juncture, as in the thirties and sixties, once again, the impacts of technological advancement begins to impact those further up the chain in society. Local initiative and involvement are again being espoused as the route forward. Similarly, as in other times, I would suggest, it provides […]