Surviving the Future: Conversations for our time

Shaun leads the ‘Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time‘ online courses and community, through Vermont’s Sterling College.

With hundreds of participants from every continent on Earth (yes, including Antarctica!), it’s proving a potent and beautiful space for making sense of these times of interlocking crisis together, and exploring what they mean for ourselves and our diverse communities.

Conversations for Our Time is also part of the wider EcoGather programme — an ongoing $1.5m project inspired by David Fleming’s books, to which Shaun acts as consulting scholar. 

Launched in 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, it offers a shift from traditional “distance learning” to place-based, community-focused online education dedicated to the regeneration of ecosystems, communities and local economies.

Key partners

Vermont’s wonderful Sterling College is the key partner on this project, alongside invited guests who join us for ‘Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time‘, including Vandana Shiva, Stephen Jenkinson, Richard Heinberg, Kate Raworth, David Abram, Mark Boyle, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Lyla June, Jason Hickel, Kali Akuno, Rob Hopkins, Sherri Mitchell, Iain McGilchrist and Nate Hagens.

The wider EcoGather programme is currently partnering with inspired projects in Bhutan, Vermont, Colorado, India and Puerto Rico.

The Happy Pig

The Happy Pig is a bastion for the renaissance of the non-monetary economy. A throwback, and throwforward, to the days of simple hospitality being the norm. It is also one of the places Shaun regularly calls home in his nomadic — if non-flying — lifestyle.

Put simply, it is a place where you can turn up unannounced and confidently expect a warm welcome, a curious cat, fine conversation and a bed for the night, without money changing hands.

As a free pub, bunkhouse and community space (not to mention home to a spectacular library), it is a chance to remember what it is to not have to find money simply to have a place to exist.

To remember that Nature’s bounty is freely given, that great craic is what life’s all about when you get roight down to it, and that you’ll never beat Shaun at table tennis.

Key partners

Shaun‘s great friend Mark Boyle founded The Happy Pig as a practical expression of the ideals they work for in their lives, and the self-built electricity-free cabin he calls home is a short stroll away.

Many wonderful people helped build both the structure and the spirit of The Happy Pig, and Shaun and Mark are among six custodians keeping both safely out of the grip of the market.

The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?

The Sequel is the 2020 feature film about the vision, legacy and influence of the late Dr. David Fleming, author of Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It.

Key partners

As executive producer and scriptwriter, Shaun worked closely with BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong on this project.

The film also features contributions from several luminaries inspired by Fleming’s work, from Helena Norberg-Hodge and Rob Hopkins to Roger Scruton and Jonathon Porritt. And Bullfrog Films quickly signed up as the global distributors.

Commissioning Editor for Chelsea Green

Off the back of the close collaboration on Lean Logic, Chelsea Green Publishing offered Shaun a role as their first Commissioning Editor for Europe.

This proved a great fit, with the role’s description as follows: “Identifying authors and book projects in line with Chelsea Green’s mission: to reverse the destruction of the natural world by challenging the beliefs and practices that are enabling this destruction, and by providing inspirational and practical alternatives that promote sustainable living”.

Key partners

Authors and activists doing work that deserves a wider audience, and the editorial team at Chelsea Green Publishing.

David Fleming’s Lean Logic

Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It is the astonishing life’s work of the late Dr. David Fleming, Shaun‘s close colleague and friend.

Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy is the more accessible paperback version which Shaun conceived and lovingly edited out of the main book.

While LeanLogic.online launched March 2020, thanks to the hard work of fan Matthew Taylor and the kind permission of Chelsea Green Publishing, making the full contents of David Fleming’s Dictionary for the Future freely available to all with an internet connection!

Key partners

Shaun and a small group of David’s former colleagues, friends and family have stewarded his influential work and worked to spread its insights and pleasures to a wider audience.  From 2015, Chelsea Green Publishing have been invaluable allies towards this end.

The Ecological Land Co-operative

The Ecological Land Co-operative exists to provide affordable opportunities for new ecologically beneficial projects and smallholdings to find land.

Shaun was a key member of the co-op’s board from 2012, as they won planning permission for their first site and then raised over £300,000 in community shares to drive forward their longer-term plan. He stepped down as Chair in 2015, and remains an enthusiastic member.

As of 2021 the co-op has created six sites across the UK, each divided into several new smallholdings made available as homes to ecologically-minded families.

Key partners

The Ecological Land Co-operative works alongside the likes of Chapter 7, The Land magazine, Landmatters and Lammas in the struggle to reclaim people’s right to live on and work with the land.

See also Shaun’s blog post, setting that struggle in context.

Planning permission for the first site, Greenham Reach, was reached after a long battle for planning permission, culminating in a 2013 public inquiry.  In the process, we received over sixty official letters of support, including from the Soil Association, the Campaign for Real Farming, the Transition Network, the Permaculture Association, the Devon Wildlife Trust, Food Policy Professor Tim Lang and other academics, Jonathon Porritt, Zac Goldsmith MP, John Hemming MP and Caroline Lucas MP, as well as established organic smallholders and local residents.

The Future We Deserve

Shaun wrote the foreword for The Future We Deserve, a collaborative book project edited by Vinay Gupta, Cat Lupton and Noah Raford.

He also contributed one of the one hundred short essays that make up the book, and arranged the contributions of Maria Elvorith (the cover art and a short essay of her own), who passed away during the book’s production, and to whom the book is dedicated.

Key partners

Book editors Vinay Gupta, Cat Lupton and Noah Raford and artist, contributor and luminous inspiration Maria Elvorith (1982-2010).

TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas)

TEQs has become most commonly known by the names ‘carbon rationing’ or ‘energy rationing’, and is under consideration as national policy in a number of countries.

Shaun Chamberlin is managing director of The Fleming Policy Centre (formerly The Lean Economy Connection) which co-ordinates the coalition promoting the system, supporting research and working with Governments to move it towards implementation.

Shaun also lead-authored an academic paper on TEQs in 2015 which has become the most-read paper in the history of the peer-reviewed Carbon Management journal.

Key partners

Shaun worked closely with Dr. David Fleming, inventor of TEQs and founder of The Lean Economy Connection, from 2006 until his death in 2010.

The Fleming Policy Centre now acts as the hub for the campaigning, research and technical communities around the system, with the European Resource Cap Coalition a particularly noteworthy ally.

The Transition Timeline

Shaun‘s first book was authored in collaboration with the Transition Network.

It was requested by local Transition initiatives in order to provide them with a sense of the context within which their local ‘Energy Descent Action Plans‘ were being implemented, and played a key role in the early growth of this now-global movement.

Key partners

The team of contributors for this project included:

Rob Hopkins and Ben Brangwyn (Transition Towns),
Peter Lipman (Sustrans),
Chris Vernon (The Oil Drum: Europe),
Tim Helweg-Larsen (Zero Carbon Britain / Public Interest Research Centre),
Paul Allen (Centre for Alternative Technology),
Patrick Holden (Soil Association),
David Fleming (The Lean Economy Connection),
David Strahan (Journalist and author),
Jonathan Essex (Bioregional),
Richard Heinberg (Peak Oil educator),
Jeremy Leggett (Solar Century),
Doly Garcia (Limits To Growth computer modeller),
Ruth Potts/Andrew Simms (new economics foundation),
Caroline Lucas (Green Party).

Transition Town Kingston (TTK)

Shaun was a founder member of the Transition Town Kingston Steering Group.

TTK exists to mobilise and facilitate community action in Kingston to respond effectively and positively to climate change and peak oil, and operates according to these governing principles.

Key partners

The Kingston community, including the other five members of the TTK Steering Group.

Superstruct

Superstruct was the world’s first massively multiplayer future forecasting game, in which players collaborated both to envision our future and to invent new ways to ameliorate it.

Shaun was one of the five game masters for the project, which was conceived by the Institute for the Future (IFTF).

Key partners

Jane McGonigal and Jamais Cascio of the Institute for the Future (IFTF).