Roisin Markham

This week began with no electricity again and dizzy heady impact of a sinus infection. It ended with a walk in Wicklow woods in grey drizzle. All good.

Work offered a mix of facilitation, research prep of supply chains and circular economy, community wealth building and just transition for a conference with DTNI the end of February.

Reflections

Writing studio notes seemed like a good discipline.

Where I actually began with the notion to commit to weekly Studio Notes, was around using technology to support me to find value where I had not made space to look and uncover it. I had seen others feed notes into a variety of AI, increase their quality of writing and reach. Based on my tech curiosity, research in AI tools and ethics when I worked in big tech I thought yeah! I can do that. A few hard crafted prompts could just pumped out what I maybe can’t see.

But there are two constraints here that I hold myself to account on.

1. I’ve gone through a massive backlash of the emergent technology that consumes so much energy and is wasting our planets resources at the expense of all life on earth.

2. The value of reflection, writing and thinking is the actual value I’m looking for. A form of it maybe created by tools, technologies, frameworks and techniques but the manual labour of it, the toil, the actual doing. That’s what is going on here.

A reclaiming of my own writing perhaps I’ll even get good at it!

Perhaps the writing piece is too flat, linear for me. Mixed in with my awful spelling and lack of grammar. Writing does not always come easy to me, I’ve wonder how dyslexic I actually am. How neurodivergent my brain is with my lack of ability to pronounce things, sound words out, so much so that I often joke about “yes, English is my first language” as a way to laugh away embarrassment.

Again the discipline of writing is a good practice (as long as you have something genuinely useful to share, right?).

Perhaps part of my process shifts to drawing or more playful intersections.

Calder’s mobiles, kinetic moving sculptures come to mind. I love his work. Do you know it?

In this video exploring one of Calders most famous works, Untitled 1949 this quote really jumped out

that you could stand in front of something and wait to see if it moves, how it moves, just automatically slows you down. it means that you have to take a lot of time to look carefully

Sothebys Lisa Dennisons

I am holding the counter balance of over indulgent navel gazing and the natural surfacing of insights. It does not all happen in the week and even you reading this may notice things I the observer, writer do not.

Perhaps this writing, reading relationship we are forming is also in part your invitation to reflect. A path that we walk through practice.

For the second time this week elephant paths come to mind. The space that is more natural to walk through than ‘designed or presented pathways’. Elephant paths as they are known are a trampled path that is outside designed through fairs in urban design or trail pathways. In UX design research we also see elephants paths.

My week was dominated in my heart and mind by the culmination of the second National Womens Council All Island Women’s Assembly on a Shared Femnist Future. I was invited to participate and offer some of my work into that space. Wow what an amazing space it was!

Chaired by one of our past presidents Mary McAleese, it was an honour to be in the room with 50 phenomenal women from North and South.

I had worked with Rachel and the NWC team to support the design of the day. I specifically asked for consideration and invitations for more marginalised groups to share something of their culture in the collective space. Along with introducing new economic thinking and a future ancestors piece culture connects our humanity.

The first panel was good but infuriating – speaking about systems being broken, working within them to change them, a very privileged middle class view and noted later a rather singular state view.

I was delighted to offer an introduction to Doughnut Economics, challenging that women are the in fact half the population not a minority group and that these systems are working exactly as designed.

During the morning panel both of these quotes came to mind:

“YOU NEVER CHANGE THINGS BY FIGHTING THE EXISTING REALITY. TO CHANGE SOMETHING, BUILD A NEW MODEL THAT MAKES THE EXISTING MODEL OBSOLETE.”

BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Kate Raworth used both of these quotes in her September 2024 Lecture in UCD, Dublin. I’ve always loved Buckys quote, the Milton Friedman one I come to it more and more.

I had also asked Mary McGuigan to read the Rights of the River Foyle that the Zero Waste NW has created. A declaration so beautiful, it lives rent free in my head, positioning us deeply in right relationship with all as part of, as interbeing.

I wanted this in the room before I introduced a 2225 time travel jump.

Mary’s work with The Rights of Nature and The Gathering is also heartening and inspiring.

I notice in the design of events we are rushing through packing the agenda, no space for breath. I suggest doing less and putting in more space for flow & allowing discussions to deepen.

So my offering of a Future Ancestor facilitation got time crunched, I was under pressure to deliver it in half the time allotted which was already time short. Not sure I landed it the way I wanted too. It needs more practice and more opportunity to play with it and share it.

The rights of the River Foyle connects deeply to the river catchment environmental awareness and growing work on clean water. That work further shapes the ideas of bioregional environmental and economic development. I’ve begun to speak about it as the basic layer of rock, where the river comes from that rock to find its way to our seas. In an Irish context when we peel back colonisation and partition to bedrock of our shared island it gives us a different context. I believe it has the potential to offer us new ways towards a future shared Island narrative. When we access time outside of our Western colonised mindset and jump 7 generations into the future we have the potential to move beyond current lived realities and culture. We open ourselves up to living from the future rather than from the past. A radical act of imagination, hope and possibility. Right now we need that in spades.

Some great piece of academic research were shared across the two days. Gendering Constitutional Conversations by Fidelma Ash is worthy of a deeper read and action.

Academic research with rigour makes me long for the days of quantitative and qualitative design research. Ah the joys of deep design!

Insights

People may not want to participate no matter how invitational you are. That’s their choice.

Step into the doughnut is not wheelchair accessible when using ropes, I’m going to switch to People, People, Planet for the next few workshops I run especially the ones open to the public.

Always plan buffer time.

Just because someone understands a theory does not mean they know how to apply it.

A question for you

Have you traveled to the future? Would you like to?

Resources

AI’s energy dilemma: Challenges, opportunities, and a path forward – WEF 2025

It comes back to thinking like an artist, and throwing out seeds, freely and abundantly. It’s this generative feeling of a gift that needs to be shared urgently, that you want to offer without a thought of how it might come back to you. It’s a very fragile thing

Fritz Haeg, artist

In a recent article about reciprocity Fritz also said “I think. Buckminster Fuller was very articulate about this idea of not needing to lead people down a path, but instead, just opening a door for them, or planting a seed.”

Can failure be regenerative?