Focus and Pecha-Kucha
Last week, we had two very different opportunities and two very different media outlets for telling the Living Forest story.
Aaren Madden, writes a monthly article in Victoria’s Focus magazine, entitled “Dream City”, see page 36, in which she interviews people with interesting ideas on how we could improve our cities, and provide for a more sustainable planet. This month she interviewed me and we talked about watersheds, nature deficit disorder among kids, and how most of urban life is so cut off from the wildness of nature that we don’t even know the first facts about our regional ecologies. Most of us don’t know what watershed we are a part of. Do you? I didn’t mean to put Aaren on the spot, but it seems to me that this is a crucial piece of information if we are to take care of our neighbourhoods.
So our conservation communities at Elkington Forest will be a deliberate attempt at re-connecting us with the various features of our watersheds, and then examining the impacts of our lifestyle choices on that watershed.
Then on Thursday, Feb 25th, I presented 20 slides to a packed house at the Victoria Event Centre and told a short concise story about Living Forest Communities. For each slide I was allowed twenty seconds to speak; no more. The structured format of Pecha-Kucha (Japanese for chit-chat) is challenging but fun. It is amazing what information is not essential when you only have 6 minutes, 40 seconds. So what is the priority message for the Living Forest Communities adventure? Saving special places, producing food, building a memorable sense of community, creating forest based jobs, and preventing industrial deforestation — these are the biggies.
Two very different formats and two different angles on the same message: what is it that we have lost in our current urban life, and what is it we need to regain?
Talk to you again, shortly.
Doug
PS, I really like this image of a direct connection between kids and the food they eat.
Filed under: Doug Makaroff on March 1st, 2010 | No Comments »





