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Read the full transcript here.

Morag Gamble: Welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble, permaculture educator, and global ambassador, filmmaker, eco villager, food forester, mother, practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life, we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever and even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on, so our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection? What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation.

In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting, and acting, these wonderful people. I think as do, as activists, scholars, brighters leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post COVID climate resilient socially, just future could look like their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to composite digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections, and actions together. We’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face.

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the Global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.

My guest today on the Sense-Making in a Changing World show is a prominent thought leader in the field of creative health and wellbeing, the creative arts and cultural life of places, public art, and the vibe of neighborhoods and cities. We met together as members of Regenerative Songlines Australia and she’s recently been the president of the Australian Training Institute of Urban Studies and is a current board member of the South Australian Living Arts Festival. I’m delighted to be sharing this conversation today with you with Trish Hansen, founding principal of Urban Mind Studio, as we’re exploring ways of being and being in service. I hope you enjoy this conversation just as much as I did.

Well, thank you for joining me today on the Sense-making in a Changing World show. So for those of you who are listening to this show, what we’re going to do is you can either watch this here as a YouTube or be listening to it on an audio. And I’ll put all the links below to the various versions of it. And if you listen to this now, you’ve probably already heard me do a beautiful introduction to Trish, but right now I just wanted to let you know a little bit about Trish. Trish and I met through the Regenerative Songlines Australia which maybe we can talk a little bit about that, because that’s just been launched but also we had a wonderful time, wonderful opportunity to do a very quick chat at the Global Regenerative CoLab. Now, if anyone hasn’t heard about that, this is a fantastic program. That’s connecting people around the world, working in a regenerative moment, whereas called Regeneration Pollination and people come together and for seven minutes you get a chance to really dive deep in and have a chat with someone and then you move in and you talk to someone else, but it’s a great chance to kind of get to know a little bit about someone enough to then follow up. And so we’re following up and we thought we would record that follow-up as a podcast, so Trish is also, let me just, before, before I introduce you and welcome you in to speak. So Trish is the founding principle, I’m going to read this out, cause there’s quite a lot here. She’s the founding principal of Urban Mind Studio, she’s an ambassador of Good Design Australia, a fellow at the Center for Conscious Design at Think Tank focusing on issues that cities are facing and also the past president of Institute of Urban Studies and being involved in the sustained South Australian Living Artists Festival, and lots of other things. Welcome to the show, it’s so great to have you here today.

Trish Hansen: It’s so good to be here. It’s wonderful. Thank you. We’ve just gone into lockdown today PM. So if it’s getting close to 6:00 PM, we’ll be in a week’s lockdown. And so the whole world’s changed again today and we’re all going through it. And I, we are of the privileged, uh, that live in this extraordinary country that, uh, um, uh, experiencing it our way.

Morag: Hmm. Oh gosh. Well, I hope you’re all keeping safe and well in the midst of all that we’ve managed to, this time, keep slightly out of it. We were in lockdown for a few days, but being out here in the countryside, we seem to get a little bit less affected then. Yeah, stay safe.

Trish: Yeah. Thank you. And it’s all pretty clear and we’re being very cautious, so it’s sensible down south here.

Morag: Yeah, and so, you’re in Adelaide?

Trish: I’m in Adelaide, 10 Tanya on Ghana country. And um, my desk is facing the ocean through the city. So if I look six kilometers over my screen is the city six kilometers beyond that is the, is the ocean, uh, parallel younger and then six kilometers. That way is the Adelaide Hills, uh, or the Mount lofty ranges and the Mount lofty ranges, which is the home of paramount people. And so Adelaide’s nested on the planes between the Hills and the sea.

Morag: And then below that, past, if you keep going down the ocean. So for people who are listening internationally, that would mean that you would probably hit Antarctica beyond there.

Trish: Yeah. So we’re facing west. So we’re facing west, we’re in a gulf that used to be all land and now it’s ocean, the oceans come up and there’s now a gulf which has extraordinary wildlife, including the one of the world’s only giant squid colonies who are there breeding right now.

Morag: Giant squid? Like how big is a giant squid?

Trish: They’re enormous. They’re a meter and sometimes more. Not all of them are that big. Some of them are 20, 30 centimeters, but some of them are a meter, but when they spread their skirt, they look enormous and you can snorkel with the squid straight off the beach, just out of Whyalla and you can experience this incredible breeding frenzy of squid and it’s not ridiculous.

Morag: Ah, that is so amazing. You hear about the dolphins and the whales, but the squid. How amazing.

Trish: The south from here is the South Coast and beyond that, the Southern ocean, and right now, of course, there’s the Southern Right Whales are breeding. They’ve come in and there’s some really beautiful dreaming stories from our first nations and there’s many elders there and people there. And they’ve just been so incredibly generous in these last few weeks with NAIDOC and everything, sharing those stories and having us dancing the whale song and singing. It’s been really beautiful.

Morag: Yeah, that’s amazing. I just recently had a conversation with another friend of ours from the Regenerative Songlines, Ross Williams. He joined me on the show recently and oh, just fantastically generous in terms of sharing their insights and the stories of songlines and all sorts of things. So I think NAIDOC is a fantastic opportunity for us all to really dive into understanding the first nations culture so much more. But I think it needs to be something that we take and then make it an everyday thing. And that sort of, I guess, part of what Regenerative Songlines is about, but maybe we’ll talk about that more later. I’m really keen to find out more about Urban Mind Studio and what you do with that. Because in my mind, I’m sort of heading off into all these wonderful ideas about the possibilities that you can do when you bring people together to imagine what our cities can be like and be different. So could you tell us a bit about what it is that urban mind studio is and how it works?

Trish: Okay. So it’s set up as a sole trader business and the sole trader is me. I work in association with anybody I need to, to respond to projects. The contract and projects I’ve got on right now are working with municipalities, so councils in developing arts and cultural strategy. Of course, that takes us into conversations around first nations culture and honoring first nations culture that takes us into conversations around systems thinking and complexity that takes us into conversations around regenerative everything. And I really want to honor first nations complexity in this because we get excited and make up all of these new ways and models and approaches. And if we’re just quiet for long enough, it’s already there. So even though we need some of these models to help us navigate this period that we’re in, in human existence, such as for instance, the doughnut for as an economic model. And it’s really helpful to have those definitions. When we look at even the SDGs or Doughnut or anything, it already exists in first nations ways of living and being and it always has. So I think we are in this really exciting period where we can look to the traditional wisdom of our local place, hyper-local biome place with the contemporary spirit, using the contemporary tools to really honor the ways that have always been. And the more we do that, we can really clearly see that the values of a place exist, they always have. They existed in the landscape and in Australia, we are so fortunate that they exist in first nations wisdom. And we’ve just got immediate access to that if we listen. And so going back to Urban Mind Studio, the name came about from considering that cities are the emergent property, if you like, of our intentions and a city, its personality, the vibe, if you like the culture of the place, what happens, how creative it is, how hostile it is, it all comes from the people, the systems, the structures, but mostly the interactions between the people and their connection to place. So Urban Mind is really expressing that there is a collective conscience in cities, and of course it’s in towns as well. And it’s in, it’s anywhere ever all places have an identity, they all, and the identity exists. So Urban Mind Studio is a, it’s everything. It’s kind of a consulting world. It’s a social enterprise world, it’s a project world, and it really exists to enrich the creative and cultural life of places.

Morag: Hmm. It sounds to me like it’s opening up conversations that need to happen, like potential for those kinds of conversations, which possibly don’t normally happen. And in a way that then through that conversation, our perception can shift about what it means to live in the city. What well-being in the city looks like. And so I wonder, like when you’re working with groups, is it sort of a group of people from all different spectrums or is it more targeted? It’s like, well, now I work with the council, now work with the community, or is it people from all different realms together exploring things.

Trish: So most of the work I do responds to the contractor work I do. I do a lot that’s not contracted or paid, but the contractor work I do with councils is working directly with the council to engage the broader community, which then means engaging with the business community, the property development community, as well as residents and visitors and tourists, school kids, everyone. And, every council is different and every council is where it’s at. So the first thing is to honor where they’re at and to really work from there to then start to determine what makes most sense and then how to begin. My favorite model is when there’s time to do that, when there’s time and openness in the brief to actually really explore that.

Morag: Yeah. Time is one of those things that I think possibly we just don’t value enough it’s that slowing down to really notice what are the things that need to come out and to listen over a long enough period of time. And when we’re doing contracts and things, that’s not a luxury that we have often. So how do you build in that spaciousness where the spaciousness is not obvious?

Trish: Ah, that’s a good question. And I think procurement at western ways of project management really speaks to this reductionist way that we’ve classified everything, categorized everything, and really project management is at the very end of everything. It’s the doing, what precedes the doing of course is the planning and design thinking. What precedes design thinking is our design conscience. And it’s not just our thinking, but our sensing of something, whatever it is, whatever we’re doing, if we consider what it is that we are sensing. So how does it feel and what is our intuition telling us about a situation or a problem or a project? And then go into the thinking and then go into the planning, the design thinking. So design thinking is essentially a planning process and then project management. So where most of us are engaged at the project management end as one step in a bigger project or something, pushing back and actually acknowledging that what we need to do is ground whatever we’re doing in place being serviced to place. And so being as clear as we can at the time about that, I think is a place to start again. I think Morag, we’ve got a lot to learn from first nations people. And I think we’re in this, in Australia, especially in this beautiful period where we’re putting project management processes up against first nations ways of thinking and being, and doing, and really having to acknowledge that it takes time to build trust. You know, there’s that same from the Black Space Alliance in the US move at the speed of trust. And another I’ve heard other first nations people say, put the relationship before the task. And another saying from first nations, I’ve learned is there’s no time to rush. And so being as clear as we can at the time about that, I think is a place to start again. I think Morag, we’ve got a lot to learn from first nations people. And I think we’re in this, in Australia, especially in this beautiful period where we’re putting project management processes up against first nations ways of thinking and being, and doing, and really having to acknowledge that it takes time to build trust. You know, there’s that same from the Black Space Alliance in the US move at the speed of trust. And another I’ve heard other first nations people say, put the relationship before the task. And another saying from first nations, I’ve learned is there’s no time to rush.

Morag: And all of those together flipped the dominant paradigm around thinking in that. Yeah. That’s so great. So when you’re working with communities then, what are some of the ways that you help people to enter into that sensing space and not just for themselves, but then sensing together about a place?

Trish: The most powerful analogy I draw on and I use it a lot is something that Carl Sagan first coined in the seventies around cosmic time and Janine Benyus has more recently framed it in a deep time where if we consider all of us time condensed into one calendar year where the 1st of January is 4.5 billion years ago. And the 31st of December at midnight is now, which means about the 25th of February is when life began as simple cells. Those cells started a very primitive form of photosynthesis in late March by July. They were developing a nucleus, which meant by September, 17th of September, they could mix their genes, have sex. We get this explosion of prolific complex life. So by November, we’ve got fungi and then fish, land plants, December reptiles, early mammals, 13th of December, dinosaurs, 25th of December Christmas day at 6:00 PM. Dinosaurs go extinct on the 31st of December, the last day of the year at lunchtime, 11:30 AM. Hominids walk. One of the things that really discerns us as a species, as humans who weren’t yet evolved at lunchtime on the last day of the year, 11:36 PM, homosapiens, 24 minutes to midnight, 11:54 PM, according to our current fossil records and this is we’re learning more and more all the time. About 60,000 years ago, we have fossil records of first nations Australians. 11:59 PM, 10,000 years ago is the end of the last ice age. One minute ago, 11:59 and 58 seconds. Two seconds ago is the industrial revolution. In which time we have removed two thirds of the trees on earth, exploded mountains for minerals and done all sorts of extraordinary destructive things, but also some incredible things where we can look back to the beginning of times through our telescopes and down into our microscopes at the very DNA and the beginnings of the codes of life. And now here we are in this moment, this 10 years if you like, what you end up calling the decade, where we are making decisions that will influence the future of humanity in the next, not even one second, less than one second, one human life, we will know whether we will continue to exist as a species or not. The sun will burn out in 5 billion years so the end of life on earth will come to an end. But here we are in this moment, this rite of passage, and as Dayna Baumeister says, and Janine Benyus like any right of passage, we don’t know the outcome. We are it, we’re in it. So when I use that to explain that to communities and what that then means for them as the stewards, the contemporary stewards of this place, it shifts the conversation from what night they want to put their bins out to how might I be a responsible steward of this place? I’m yet to meet a person that’s not interested in that. And that’s the most beautiful thing about doing work at the very local community level where the last I’ve done several of these recently, half the community turned up, which is something you don’t actually see in cities. More people turn up to some of these and what I would expect at a city CBD meeting. It’s really interesting.

Morag: Hmm. So I absolutely loved the deep time, the deep time walk that if you come across the one that Peter Adams did down at Wingrove in Tasmania.

Trish: No, I’ve heard the British example though .

Morag: And Stephen hiding along the Devon coast as part of the Schumacher college one and actually is a way to raise these issues with young people here when they come, where I run permaculture camps and I have geography students. And it’s one of the sort of things that I do in my year. It’s sort of a season when they come in and one year we mapped out along the river, this walk and similar to the sort of those points. And we got them to stop and think along the way. And I experienced the same thing, the profound realization that there’s issues that we’re just, we’re not talking about and that need to be talked about. And they felt, there’s a, I actually just got an email the other day from a young woman who was part of that thing. And she said, it shifted what I thought I was going to do with my life. I had mapped out that I was going to become, you know, something else. And then I’ve gone off and worked in environmental work and health and wellbeing work. I’ve kind of got to the edge of that thinking, it’s kind of limited, and I want to find a different way of doing that. And I think that’s what you’re saying, that we’re in this point now where even many of us who’ve been involved for a long time in this work are just thinking we’re up against the edges of the viability of some of these approaches. And we do need to sort of step back and to just sort of have that meta picture and think, we need to ground ourselves deeply in place. It’s like, like you’re saying that sort of contemporary stewards, it’s something I was talking also with Ross Williams about, is wherever you are, wherever that might be, is to deeply connect with the country. And it’s only when you do it. He was also saying something about, he asked the kids, he says, so what animal do you love? You know, what wild animal do you love? And they would say something, and he’d say, that’s your totem. And if you love it so much, then you will start to care for that. And then you start to realize what’s going on to its habitat, or what’s happening to the water system that’s connected to that. And these spheres of influence of your care start to change how you are in the land and how you grow up and make changes in what you direct your thinking. And so I think, whether it be from getting that at a young age or being exposed to sort of peeling off some of the layers of what’s kept us in blinkers in some ways, that certain things are more important than others. So I think it’s, gosh, it sounds absolutely fantastic.

Trish: That’s a powerful tool, isn’t it?

Morag: Yeah. I was just wondering, so what do people do once they’ve had that at a community group level? I’ve never done it with a community group like that. I think that would be so powerful. What are you, what are the kinds of things that people then start to speak up about? What comes out of those?

Trish: There was one community that spoke about, and the process hasn’t finished yet. So I won’t say who it is, but they are a very special community on the Fleurieu here. The Fleurieu Peninsula here down south, around the mouth of the Murray, around the lower lakes area of the mouth of the Murray,the Murray river is, as you know, our largest water force in this country and is very vulnerable. And these people are at the most vulnerable end. There are ramsar bird sites and what they want us to be. So it leads them to conversations together to really commit to being a bird sanctuary and eco destination, which means not having major development, not attracting major development, that’s not their priority at all. Their economy is, once they want to sustain their economy through their eco activity and also have a dark sky reserve. And all of these things that come in, versus let’s put the bin out on a Tuesday or Wednesday, like it’s a completely different conversation and you don’t need to. It’s the beautiful thing, it honors people’s spirit because we’ve all got it. We just get asked silly questions, I think. So it’s really interesting. And this, it shifts their conscience, which I think we’re all capable of. Perhaps there are exceptions and we see them on television most days, but there’s, you know, there are, I think for the most part, we are wanting to live a fairly modest life within the means of ourselves and our planet. And we’ve just been on this ridiculous mechanism of growth, exponential growth for whatever sake, nobody’s finished the end of that growth curve. Nobody tells us the story. What happens there? Really? We are on this, in this way. And you and I are the beneficiaries really. We live in Australia with all of the privileges that we have. So, we’ve got some, we’ve just got some work to do. And so when I go to the end of that myself, I still come back to what is right in front of me right now that I can influence. And it’s very clarifying when I start to ask myself, what is it in service to? And I think that question came from Regenesis, the company from Boston, led by Bill Reed and others. What is it in service to, and how might it be in service to the essence, the ecological and cultural essence of a place. And when everything is in service to that, that’s when it becomes quite clear on how to make decisions. So I think there’s some magic going on now where we’re starting to pull together these models. We’ve got this deep time thinking at this grounding of deep time, we’ve got biomimicry, we’ve got nature’s genius with, we know those principles and increasingly understand those through Janine Benyus’s his work and others. We’ve got first nations principles, they exist. And then we’ve got these other ways to approach things through the work of Regenesis and Kate Raworth’s doughnut where we can actually start to use the doughnut as a decision-making framework. So the magic of, I think that doughnut particularly is where a municipality, which is a very hyper local ecosystem, big enough to be an ecosystem, small enough to care, a town even can have its own doughnut. Household can have a doughnut, an individual can have a doughnut and the globe can have a doughnut. So I think..

Morag: Can you just maybe stop there and just explain for those listeners here who might not know what you’re talking, might think you’re talking about a sweet shop. I’m sure they don’t, I’m sure most people are aware of it just in case, just because I think it’s a, I agree. I think it’s a wonderful tool. It’s a wonderful visual aid just to begin with, even then. So maybe you could just walk us through that.

Trish: I’ll do my best, okay.

Morag: And then also how it relates to your work.

Trish: Okay. I’ll do my best. So it’s been created by Kate Raworth who’s Rawort, actually it’s R-A-W-O-R-T-H and if you Google doughnut economics or the doughnut economics action lab, you’ll find this incredibly generous platform of lots and lots of tools. So, and they’re still working out how to protect its integrity. So consultants can’t use it directly and be paid for it. So I don’t, I’m not paid for any use of the doughnut. And it’s still very early in how it’s going to be applied, but essentially if you can imagine a doughnut, you’ve got the fleshy part of the donut, the yummy part inside is a black hole outside is a black hole, outside the black hole, if you like is outside the donut space is if we exceed our planetary boundaries, we go outside of the donut and there’s nine planetary boundaries that have been agreed by scientists around the world. Things like carbon emissions, ozone depletion, land degradation, freshwater removals, and other pollution, et cetera. So nine of the planetary boundaries, if we go out of the doughnut, where we’re exceeding those planetary boundaries and our ceilings. And we’re currently exceeding on full of the planetary boundaries globally. If we go into the doughnut, we’re exceeding we’re infringing on social foundations, things like health, education, food, justice, gender equality, and others. So there’s 12 social foundations that are based on the SDGs now. So you don’t want to go inside the doughnut because that has social implications. You don’t want to go outside of the doughnut because that has environmental implications. Do you want to stay in the doughnut? So really the question is, how do we live within the donut, wherever you live, your house, how does your house stay living within the donut? How does your neighborhood be in the doughnut? How does your town, or your city being the doughnut? How does your country being the doughnut, the world? And what it allows us to do is make some really clear decisions around what we’re in service to, and as Kate and her team develop the model more and more, we are seeing it applied in different places so that we can use it as that decision-making tool at the municipal level, which is where instead of having conversations around, do we invest in this piece of plunk public art on this corner? Because I like it versus what, how is this decision in service to place? And of course that’s exaggerating to make a point and most councils have incredibly sophisticated decision-making models to do that. But it’s a really clear framework. Yeah. Yeah. It’s helpful. Fantastic.

Morag: Yeah. It’s helpful. Fantastic. Thank you. That was a lovely summary of it. And I think, I’ve seen it starting to be applied in a number of different cases, but I hadn’t really thought about bringing it as something that you do at household level. So thank you for saying that because of course it can be any scale, isn’t it, it’s just such actually a framework for thinking now, something that you’re talking about it in, as you were articulating that, to do with art and culture. So what role do you see or do you utilize in the work that you’re doing in order to bring in the art and the culture to help us move towards something that looks more like a doughnut economy or regenerative future? What, how do you, where do you see arts makers? I know art is a big part of your world. So I think in helping us to shape the culture or to inspire the culture that we want to move into, how do you see that manifesting in your work?

Trish: So if we think of that timeline and here we are as human beings, you know, homosapiens, 11:36 PM, we have evolved to be creative, complex, cultural creatures with the capacity for intuition and insatiable need to connect with each other and curiosity, creativity, all of these extraordinary characteristics. Art is the expression of our humanity across everything. Culture is what matters to us and it’s how we make sense of the world. So it’s how we’ve actually made, how we make sense of 4.5 billion years and forever into the future, not just for ourselves, but the cosmos, you know, where I’m starting to map the cosmos. Culture is around what matters to us most, arts and culture is fundamental then to who we are as human beings. It has become a category if you like and funding bodies or governments, but it’s essential to who we are. And many first nations around the world have never separated anything. It’s just been a Western thing that we’ve done. So in terms of what that means at a municipal level, the municipality, the council, the elected member chamber has a lot of power over determining the creative and cultural life of the local place through its investments, as well as through its own behavior. But what does it invest in? Does it invest in this project versus this project? And very sadly, it’s more complex than that as well. It’s never one or the other very often, it’s not investing in the arts and it’s investing in other things that are actually not in service to the local place or culture, enriching culture. So in terms of the doughnut, it’s become one of the elements of the social foundations that it’s not flourishing, if the arts and culture of a region isn’t flourishing, then that is a critical social foundation that the others can’t be met. We can’t be well, we can’t learn well, children don’t learn well, if it’s not creative and interesting. We know the benefits of, we’re starting to know increasingly the benefits, the impact of arts and culture in terms of our own wellbeing and our resilience, our ability to connect with each other, especially in cities where we live next door to strangers, mostly, depending on what relationships we have, but sometimes we’re thrown together with very different values. And so arts and cultural activity allows us to kind of explore those things. And then there’s some very pragmatic, quantitative data around reading a couple of hours a week extends your life, going to festivals improves your quality of life. There’s other examples of where the arts reduces depression, and it speeds the recovery from depression. In hospitals, for instance, you can have less anesthesia, at least analgesia, not anesthesia but analgesia. so less pain relief. If you’ve got some, if you’ve got a sense that you’re in a cultural environment and you’ve got exposure to quality arts experiences. So there’s beautiful data around how it enriches our lives, but again, the data is going down the reductionist, we need it, but it’s still, there’s something about how it feels and the enchantment that it creates and how it speaks to our spirit. Our sense of wonder and awe. And that’s, at the moment, impossible to measure. We’re starting to see neuro EEG and neuroscience scans of what the brain does, but it’s still a perception of what it does rather than the being enchanted and being in wonder.

Morag: Yeah, it’s a challenging thing, isn’t it? Needing to measure and weigh and describe it in that way, because as soon as you start to, you lose so much of it, there’s something about that word enchantment that just made me smile from ear to ear. There was a book that I came across when I was at Uni, I was feeling quite disenchanted. I realized I was, when I heard the word enchantment, that it’s not a word that’s in common use. And so I was at Landscape Architecture, Environmental Planning School at Melbourne Uni and listening to lots of different theories about things and starting to feel like a lot of that work was just about designing landscapes for the privileged, you know, and all of a sudden we started, there was this one class, Dr. Ross, I wish I could remember his other name, anyway, he would just sit there and he would talk about philosophies of design and how the design is not the ends, but it’s the means to something larger. So it’s that thing of being in service and someone else who was in the class, a Lithuanian guy handed me this book, he says, I reckon you should read this. And it was Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman. And I still have my crusty old copy because it led me, it kind of opened up my mind to the whole world that I’m in now, because it was that simple thing of seeing things differently. Like I had gone, you know, I did maths and physics and science, and I was very much along those lines and culture and arts and enchantment was not part of my language. And so I think bringing that into a space where we can start to recognize it, speak it, share it, inspire it, honor it. Yes,

Trish: We’ve evolved this incredible capacity. Intuition really intrigues me in this way, because it’s such a complex thing to describe, but it’s so tangibly real in your chest when you feel it and honoring these complex characteristics that we’ve evolved, which many other species haven’t and arguably many have that we don’t understand and we’re not able to even perceive such as trees or the octopus or, you know, there’s so many other unknowns and that having the humility to not know, I think is something of our time. Yes, we need to be, we need to embrace ambiguity and sit in that space, hold that space between happening in our response, and really sit there in not knowing and be comfortable with not knowing, celebrate and honor not knowing rather than having to know the answers and wanting to tell people the answers. And we see that with again, first nations all the time where there is this gentleness of holding the ambiguity. Somewhere, I got a few years ago, I developed an app for this very reason, and it came out of a cancer diagnosis from which I’m now treated and out the other end and very grateful to be here. But in the moments after being diagnosed, I was overwhelmed with a list of things I had to do. I needed to revise my will, get advanced directives, think about how I was going to pay the mortgage. This list was going, getting longer and longer. My family were about to pick me up and I had six minutes to work out how I was going to frame what I was thinking was possibly the conversation of a lifetime. So I was trying to think of the right words. And I just, all of a sudden setback, something threw me back in my chair, and I just thought, this is too big for a list. It’s too big for a sentence. I have to work out how I’m going to be in this. How do I want to be? I’m going to be graceful and gracious. And I want wisdom and joy and humor, love and beauty. I’m getting a lot of courage. I thought, yeah, that’ll do for now. So in those moments, I created this, what I call it a design code and by asking myself, well, what does joy look like here? It almost had me giggling at what was going on, and this was surreal because it was quite a heavy situation. So it shifted me from panic and distress to curiosity. And so I developed an app, which was generously developed by a friend in Sydney, with a design company, apparent. And they developed it into this beautiful, simple app that’s free to download. It’s not collecting any data because we wanted it to be available, especially for young people that don’t have the means to navigate credit cards and things. And so that it’s just there and it really asks you to consider a situation you find yourself in and then go through and choose the words that describe how you want to be in that situation.

Morag: What’s the app called.

Trish: The app is called the Being Code. So the app is called Being, a design code for life. And it’s on the beingcode.net is the website. And you can make a design code for any situation and keep it in your library. And then you can send yourself reminders when you want them. So kids use them for going into exams. For instance, they just create their design code for their exam, which is different to their design code for their relationship. And if you get into a panic, you can just spill the words, which again, takes your mind down a different neural pathway to panic, and you’re imagining a future version of yourself. So by choosing a word and not choosing another word, you’re already cultivating a disposition around your most positive future self. It’s so simple. It’s so ridiculously simple, but really, really powerful.

Morag: And for that to come out of something that is like such an awful situation to be in, sitting there in that moment.

Trish: life. Right?

Morag: Yeah. Isn’t that interesting though that when you sort of feel like you’ve been bumped off your train, you’re on your path, you all of a sudden get pushed off and they’re in that disruptive moment, something else happens. And wow.

Trish: Yeah. And I get quite intrigued with that. How, where I feel like since then, and since setting up Urban Mind Studio, which I set up a week before being diagnosed, I resigned on my role, set up Urban Mind Studio, was diagnosed with breast cancer a really aggressive, ambitious tumor. So many things happen every day to introduce me to the right person. It’s something about, it sounds so cliche, but there is something in having a clear purpose, you can’t fake it. No, it’s not a wise statement. It’s much deeper than that. And once you see it and honor it and feed it, things happen, don’t they?

Morag: Absolutely. Yep. That’s how I live my entire life. And it’s funny, isn’t it? That you don’t really speak about it terribly much because it’s not, it’s just not, but I think we should be, we are speaking about it. Aren’t we?

Trish: Yeah, people say when others acknowledge that they’re having that same experience, that this was meant to be, you know, there’s all of these cliched reductionist kinds of ways of us describing it, but it’s real. And I think I’ve, through first nations, friends and colleagues, have come to understand a deeper sense of connection to timelessness and how we are just another step in the evolutionary chain and that ancestors are always here, their spirits always here. They’re there in us, they’re everywhere. And they’re in our, in the reference of how we live our lives without being religious. And then of course, religion has done its own thing with trying to value that. But it’s a beautiful thing.

Morag: So these, all of these ways that you start to interact with communities in a way that sort talking about looking at the future of the city, you know, it starts there, but it feels like you just very gracefully, gently peel off multiple layers until you find somewhere that the essence of the conversations and connections that need to happen is, so that’s what a beautiful gift to be able to be offering to communities.

Trish: Thank you. It really is. And I think the most beautiful thing is there’s no control in it. So it’s like a drop in a pond, you know, that that’s actually what it’s about. And that only comes when there is genuine connection. So the best conversations happen when it’s, one-to-one or one-to-a-few, it really doesn’t have to be a room full of people for that shift to happen. And it’s those connections and the quality and the integrity of that connection that actually is what emerges from that is the consciousness of the city. So there is a group called the Conscious Cities Directorate and the Center for Conscious Design, which is, I’m a fellow of, and it’s based in Israel, but it is genuinely global with similar principles to the doughnut, which is to be regenerative and distributive. And what it does is hold a festival, conscious cities festival every year, which this year in 2021, it will be in October and there’s around 30 cities participating where really it’s taken us into the sensing and the feeling of a city and its vibe, the intentions we hold for our city, which in then shape us. So, the last year’s theme, Itai Palti, the initial founder, but now it’s pretty broad. Last year’s theme was around, what are they asking us? What are the intentions we have for our city? And how do our intentions shape our city which then in turn shapes us.

Morag: And so I wonder what your feelings are about the way things have changed since COVID because being in a city has changed quite significantly because of that. Have you noticed any shift in the way that people are interacting with the kind of ideas and processes that you bring?

Trish: Yes, I have. And I’d like to ask you the same question, because I think it’s been a critical disruption and we can either use that disruption to transform the ways that we inhabit the earth, or we can try and control this disruption to continue the ways that we inhabit the earth. We know that the ways that we inhabit the earth have to change. And I think we still have not yet utilized the full opportunity that COVID is presenting us, which is this disruption. So how do we use it to innovate towards a more regenerative and distributed future? What do you think about that? What have you?

Morag: Mm, well yes, absolutely. I agree. I don’t think we’ve really fully embraced it. There was that narrative going around for a while. I will be able to sort of snap back soon, but I think everyone doesn’t realize that that’s not quite how it’s going to pan out, but the world that I exist in with permaculture, community gardens, urban agriculture, community food systems have flourished in this time. And in a way where I’m hearing stories about people up and down streets getting to know one another, because they’re trading seeds and exchanging and through local, even local online networks coming up, and people would be all the things that we’ve been talking about for years within the permaculture movement of setting up community exchanges, tool libraries, all these different sorts of things, all of a sudden just, they’re just there. It’s not something that’s odd anymore. So when you’re now talking about lots of different ideas, people are going, oh yeah, well, I’ve got one here and they’ve got one over there. And we started up this and so many new ideas that are happening too, because they’re responding to that particular need. And what I feel is really wonderful, is that we have had this myciliating network of permaculture or related types of things that are going out and that they weren’t visible. It was the great unseen network that happened in pretty much every community that I’ve ever come across. And then it’s when crises like this happen, that all of a sudden they become seen. And so, also a lot of noticing that we weren’t prepared yet. We hadn’t really valued it enough. So I don’t really know how to do all this stuff. I now know that I want to do it and I need to know how to do it, but there’s lots of questions and lots of curiosity and lots of reimaginings and lots of sharing that’s taking place. And so I feel a great sense of well, I don’t know what the word is. I was going to say delight, maybe that’s it, that there’s an embracing of just these simple living practices that do bring personal well-being, community well-being, family wellbeing, and it’s contributing to the restoration of communities and to planetary systems. But, you know, it’s still the thing that I get stuck with is it’s, I don’t know why I just, it’s still, it’s not enough, is it? Like this is enough, but you know, like I get stuck on this. That is exactly what we need. But then at the same time we have, so the communities are getting it, but we need to shift at this whole economic level. So, I feel delighted that there is this understanding and a shift at a community level. And that I feel like we’re kind of okay, because we know what we need to do when we get in strife and we know who we need to ask, and we know that we can access those things within our society. I mean, I know there’s a lot of people who are incredibly struggling and don’t have access to that, but there’s a greater sense of that possibility and what it is that we need, where I feel like we haven’t made any shifts or changes is, and particularly in Australia is at the national level. And I wonder sometimes whether to just not focus on that and just to continue focusing on strengthening the richness of the relationships and deepening the connections.Yeah. So I get stuck at that point. So I don’t know, what are you thinking?

Trish: I think it’s every point of influence we have, we should use whether it’s writing to our ministers or elected members or being active at a local level. But I do think there is energy. There’s something shifting in the world and it could be that we are just going through this period of composting human crap, you know, that we just are composting and that the structures and systems that have been in service to growth will either transform. They will have to transform themselves, or they will collapse. And let’s assume that that will happen over time. I want to be in service to their collapse in the most sensible way and legal way, but also be in service to the new horizon. So what is in my mind, as I’m saying this is Bill Sharps and Anthony Hodges, three horizons where we know that there’s this existence that has to change, there’s a desirable vision for a desirable future that we want to bring in. So how do we support that horizon and how do we retire what needs to go? And part of that, as you might know, is where there is a disruption such as COVID, how do we make sure that COVID is, or any disruption, whether that be technological or a social enterprise or whatever, how do we make sure that that disruption is captured by this, the horizon that’s supporting where we want to go, rather than supporting the old ways that are needing to retire? Because what we don’t want to do is be in service to those structures and systems that need to go. And I think that’s where it gets really interesting is where whoever we are, if we’re asking ourselves whether we’re on a board, whether we’re the CEO of a company or the head of an department or a worker that has the opportunity to think about what job they want to do, if we’re asking ourselves deeply, what am I in service to? What is this in service to,? What is this jurisdiction of law and service to? What is this council mechanism in service to? What is this decision in service to? When we start really asking ourselves that we don’t have to make radical decisions and quick jobs overnight, and then be vulnerable, but really sitting with that question and being satisfied with that question is something we can all do.

Morag: Yeah, it’s such a powerful question. And I think what you’re saying too, about whatever, whatever you feel like you have the capacity to speak up, to do that, to stand up and speak up and know that you have this world of support that is with you as you stand up and speak up. And that often, you know, I think there’s this sense that, oh, you know, I’d be sticking my neck out. I’m a bit alone on this, that you’re not alone because there is this rising tide.

Trish: Yes, welcome Beautiful Greta says, everyone is needed, everyone is welcomed. And I think we are, as I think it was Obama that said we’re the first generation to know about climate change, the last of the generations that can do anything about it. So everybody is needed at whatever point you are. You might’ve been the greatest emitter on the planet, but when you come to that realization, that transition is necessary, then let’s get on board with that. And let’s just move with that. I think blame and shame is not going to help us in the next 10 years. We might be able to reflect on that in 20 years, but let’s just make the decisions that we need to, to position ourselves as best as we possibly can.

Morag: And so I just want to touch on it a slightly different tangent here now, because as we’re moving forward and it’s, we talked about horizons and I always have in my mind, there’s this sense that we need to have an image like we need to, and it’s like what Rob Hopkins talks about that what if we imagine the future and then we start to be able to take steps towards that. So we can abandon one way, but how are we moving forward? And so I wanted to ask you about what is the image of the city through an urban design mind, through the approach you’re thinking, if you were successful in the kind of all the dreaming with all of the communities, what might that look like as a different city? A city 10, 15?

Trish: Okay. This is very unrehearsed, but I think I would go back to the principles of how to be, and I would start without so much focusing on the outcomes, although that might be a very interesting exercise, I would focus on how to be, not what to do or who to be, but how to be. And for that, we’ve got first nations wisdom. It exists already in every city in Australia and every town there’s first nations values. There’s the values of the place. So I think I would go back to that and just honor that, and then allow whatever to emerge, because I could say in a city, I would like this in this place or this in this place, or I’d like the government to be of this. But I think if we come back to those first nations principles, and honor them and just listen quietly and gently, because you do have to be gentle and quiet to actually hear and understand the complexity of it. It always freaks me out how first nations friends and colleagues talk in circles, and if you’re not listening, it might sound random. There is nothing random about it at all. It’s telling a complex story that doesn’t have a clear beginning and a clear end, it honors complexity. So I think there’s a lot we can learn. So I’d say I wouldn’t be bold enough to say what that might look like. I’d like first nations people to respond to that because I don’t think we’ve demonstrated it anywhere since colonization. And I think that would be the most extraordinary project. And I have all sorts of fantasies around, first nations, if our first nations groups, which are essentially the biomes, like naturally formed regions, became the new regions for decision-making municipalities. And then we just kept drawing on this deep wisdom. You spoke about the totems and other points of connection and using language and I think whatever we can do to draw on that spirit, very genuinely, which is why didn’t use the word custodians when it came to municipalities being the custodians of the future creative and cultural life, because I’m being taught that custodianship is something deeply active. You don’t become a custodian by being elected, or by moving into an area, you are a custodian in fear of your spirit, which is Bill Gammage’s statement that first nations people work on country in fear of their spirit. I am just starting to feel that, but I’m a baby in this. So even when I go and volunteer at a local planting project or whatever it is, it still feels altruistic. And there’s something about that shift towards being in service to country, in fear of your spirit, that we all, we haven’t, those of us that have come from other countries haven’t necessarily developed that. And I think that’s what interests me most. What would a city be? I don’t even know that cities would exist actually, because they don’t really make that much sense, but they do exist now globally. So how might we draw on traditional wisdom in a contemporary spirit to really start to shape this place and also then offer those learnings to other global neighbors.

Morag: That’s a beautiful vision. Thank you for articulating it like that. You have lots of really lots of different things landed really clearly as you said that, so totally unrehearsed, but absolutely beautiful.

Trish: Thank you and I’d like to thank every first nations who’s ever had the patience to teach me because there is that process isn’t there where we are just, we’re babies in this. And you don’t realize that until you start to move into this.

Morag: Yeah. And I think that’s also the thing is to have the courage to ask and be in that space of not knowing, but to step forward, to be in conversation so that we can move in there in this direction. So maybe just as a way to close up our conversation today, I feel we could keep on talking. The Regenerative Songlines Australia group, that we’re part of. So tell me about how that is for you, like in terms of where you feel like you’re in service to that group and how you’re interacting with it in your part of the world. What are the projects that are happening down there?

Trish: Okay. So I came to it by invitation through Carolyn Pidcock who’s based in Sydney and we’re colleagues and chums and we catch up quite a lot and talk about all things regenerative. And I feel like I’m in service to a first nations led something and it, I trust those first nations leaders to know that whatever that is, it honors regenerative and distributed future in the most deep and complex ways that those two words don’t encapsulate and Annie and Paulina talks about energy and she work in energy. And I’m yet to learn how to do that. But of course, intuitively we feel it. And so I’m really interested to know what that means from a platform’s perspective. How do you cultivate a platform for good energy? And I think it’s happening where it’s happening. So I’m in service to that in terms of what’s happening here. There’s a group of us, a core group of us who have established Regen Adelaide inspired by the other regen movements, Regen Melbourne, of course but also the other dynamic, economic cities around the world. And looking at Michelle Maloney’s green prints model as well, don’t know what it means yet. We just know that when something is held neutrally, and it’s not a part of a governance structure, but it’s neutral, but can invite partners from all different backgrounds, whether it be universities, not-for-profit sector, business and community being that backbone organization is what we’re looking at establishing, but we’re taking our time, we’re also acknowledging that we need to know on a first nations here and how do we do that locally? When everybody’s so busy, our first nations friends and colleagues have got the weight of the world on their shoulders and are sharing so generously and revitalizing language. You know, that is happening beautifully here in Adelaide and Tandanya, Jack Buckskin is doing some extraordinary work here. There’s some beautiful things going on. But we barely even pop up. If you look at the Regenerative Songlines Australia map, I think there’s one or two projects from Adelaide, but there are thousands on the ground. We’re just not putting them up.

Morag: It’ll get there eventually. I don’t think I’ve got any mine on there yet either, but you know, it will, it will. And I think somehow more than the map at the moment. It just feels like having that space where there’s that constant conversation of people from all different bioregions coming together and it being, as you said, an indigenous-led process and being, yeah, it’s so exciting. And also I think the world is watching too, because there’s these sorts of regenerative collaborations around the world that are happening. And this is one that I think seems to have almost the most cohesive approach and the most interesting approach in terms of actually taking it forward. So yeah, I’m..

Trish: And quite complex, isn’t it? Like there’s no one language, there’s 350 languages, 350 nations. It’s extraordinary. What I find really interesting is that the more I learn Morag, the more similarities I see with first nations globally. So even though there’s different languages and dreaming stories and songlines and responsibilities and things, the values seem so similar, move at the speed of trust. Like we said, relationships before the task, thinking generations, not just seven but thousands. There’s no time to rush. That’s one of my favorites as well. There’s these beautiful tenants of wisdom and you feel it when, I feel it when I’m with first nations friends and colleagues where there’s just, it’s just time, it’s different time.

Morag: And, you know, just as you were speaking there, I was easing into it and feeling really relaxed. And then this feeling of like, yes, but we’re in that moment, that squeezy moment. And it’s that holding that intention I think, it’s not racing off and doing it, but it’s also not just relaxing back and saying, oh, whatever, either. Now I know there’s this very strong tension in there, but I think it comes back to about how we, what you’ve said many times is about that, our approach, how we are being here, how we are relating. And if we can shift that, if that can, and it’s not a linear change, I think that’s also what we have to realize that change is not linear. And if there’s this shift that can happen, it will unfold in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine yet.

Trish: So that saying traditional wisdom contemporary spirit, it captures where we’re at right now to me. And it came from a beautiful man in Indonesia, who’s since passed away who was working with the Indonesian government on what the motto of Indonesia was, which at the time, which was years ago now, five years ago, was traditional values, contemporary spirit. And so I’ve been using that. The spirit of that ever since is how do we draw on our traditional wisdom and our traditional values of first nations people and place, which first nations do intuitively and that’s embodied in culture. With this contemporary spirit, with all that we’ve got, with every bit of technology that we’ve got, with every bit of science, contemporary science that we know as well as indigenous science, but use everything we’ve got to shift and we don’t have that long.

Trish: And you know, other people just say, well, it doesn’t matter. We compost human crap for the next, whatever until it’s gone. And that’s another possibility. So yeah, I’m in service to a regenerative future. I know that and that’s what guides me every day. And I think that’s where I, when I start to panic with so overwhelming, there’s so much to do, you know, I write to my local member, he writes back in the wrong name. And I just think that’s madness when all of these things happen. I just think just whatever’s next, whatever’s the next breath. And then having these wonderful conversations where we can go off into larger thinking influences those actions. Yeah. And thank you so much for your podcast series. It’s fabulous. You’re going in all of those places.

Morag: Thank you. Alright. I think it’s, I think that I enjoy doing, it’s hard to say, but I’m going to, I was going to say it’s the thing that I enjoy doing the most. But there are so many things that I enjoy doing, but I love these conversations. I absolutely love them. They just fill my cup, they open up this sense of possibility and also to broaden perspectives because each conversation opens up a new way of saying that holds part of the answer. We each hold part of the kind of the ideas that, you know, something that you say I can imagine is going to resonate to so many people. And then something that Uncle Ross talks about, it’s going to resonate to a whole other lot of people. And, you know, just the richness that can come out of conversations is just wonderful. And I really value the chance to spend time to have a wonderful hour with you. How blessed am I.

Trish: So am I. Well, I’d love to do the opposite sometimes where I interview you and can hear you speak, and I can hear that coming through the various podcasts. But yeah, so it is a real privilege to be given that voice. And thank you.

Morag: Thank you for being here. Well, enjoy the rest of your evening. And we’ll make sure that all the different links to all the different things that you’re doing and the organizations and projects and processes, we’ll put them down below and that way, anyone who’s listening can follow up with that.

Trish: Okay. Thank you, Morag.

Morag: Thanks! That’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email, and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.