Howareya’s? In Ireland summer is bouncing along, warm weather busy beaches and festivals season is in full swing. Locally our beaches are packed with seasonal visitors and the jelly fish are keeping out of our favourite swim zones.
Welcome to my weekly studio notes, I write them to support my work and ecology of practices in general. No AI is used in writing these notes, it would defeat the purpose. This is week 32 of 52, 2025. I’ve committed to write these weekly studio notes for a year capturing reflections, insights, a question for you, resources and a view to the week ahead. This week I’ve completed and delivered two requests for quotes, BDT Consultancy leading one and partnering on the other. I’ve also had two insights that are percolating. The resources are partly what I’ve been consuming online and that I want to document here for others to find.
Let’s jump in then.
Reflection
Business development is still the key theme of work at the moment. I wrote a lot, edited a lot. Having finalised 2 proposals for business there has been a lot of writing, synthesis and collaboration with others.
The one I’ve led on has been a chunk of time over three weeks with my associate adding value, us learning from each work and weaving both of our strengths together towards speculative-futures, strategy and delivery.
The second one I supported a lot through a one health, wellbeing and co-design framework, business rigour across process, approach, delivery and budget planning.
Both pieces of work would be amazing to win & get to do the work. But I learnt a lot from both of these RFQ responses.
There have been two prep meetings for Electric Picnic, I’ll be there as part of crew at Global Green and the IEN Biodiversity Zone. 3 of us from IDEN are going. I’m plotting some festival time travel shenanigans too.
Random things have collided to make sense and bridge information.
Like this for example
The statistic on less drag, energy usage are fascinating. More about this in insights.
The Wexford Enviromental Network Website dedicated Save Lady’s Island Campaign page was updated and a blog report from the last meeting published. I’ve also been reading more about our agriculture policies and EU directives to understand what the derogation is and how to be informed on it.
What’s the reality of Irish farms as sustainable businesses? most farmers that I know have a job or a second business they run that support their family. Very few make a good living from the farm. How are Irish farms are not economically sustainable and coupled with the ecological and environmental impacts we cannot afford to squander our landscapes and waterways for future generations. There is a lot of complexity for us on the land in Ireland, with farmer owners aging and no succession plan we must look to how we bridge our housing crisis with knowledge of land stewardship and food production. I believe we must put care at the core for nourishing us and our environment. The idea our ecosystem central tenant is stewardship of land and pristine waters to increase biodiversity, restore healthy farming systems that regenerate soil not deplete it, creates nutrient rich food that we eat as locally as possible… what of scale what of business, what of brands and large agri-business? I don’t know but what we are currently doing has to change and we need to be doing that in communities.
I’ve been working with gesturing decolonisation futures, tending to endings and my private journey of clearing out my working space. This has shaped a significant insight for me about my relationship with waste and usefulness this week.
I finished a book I’d stared eons ago, half read in my phone books folder. Not sure I’d overly recommend it, written in 2015, it’s of its time. I think I began reading it during covid because it linked to the ideas of time travel and happiness. Curious that I went back to it, in particular about turbulence, slipstreams, wormholes, alignment and flow. Not using the last two words they are mine. I had to look up who the author was, an organisational psychologist and author into scaling and growth hacking. I must have come across him on twitter, back in the day. His books from 2021 remind me of the Paul McKenna vibe from the mid ‘00s. But who am I to judge someone who has been read by millions of people.
This week I also did a deep dive on John O’Donohue and Ursula Le. Guin, building on former knowledge but wanting to understand something deeper. Of course that linked to Octavia Butler, Emergent Strategy architect adrianne mariee brown. I’ve included one of her podcast on imagination in resources.
A recruiter randomly asked me for an updated CV, curious to see what that produces.
I have been thinking about 6 Impossible things sessions I ran during Covid and mastermind groups I ran in the past. Collective groups for coming together to think, reflect and work on personal, business or community challenges. Is this something you might be interested in?
Insight
Writing tenders, refining how I talk about our business, the key value we offer and our approach to the work is always interesting. As is doing a budget for a MEAT, most economically advantageous tender.
Lunchtime Thursday, I swam out to the buoys from Cahore beach. One of those swims where the sun illuminates my arms below the water. The glimmering a warm golden pattern over my hands mixing with sage, green, teal and blue of the deep water.
I swam around the outer green buoy turning back towards the shore… wind catching the water just enough to create lapping waves for slap-face. Enough that I have to adjust my swim, I should really swim with goggles. I realise it’s not a very trauma informed or nature based word and I will possibly revisit it. Funny how words spoken, once written down change.
I have been sitting with Bayo’s quote – “Times are urgent, let us slow down”.
In the water as I adapted my swimming, I got it, it came to me. Cognitively it caught my attention but I don’t think I’d an embodied understanding of what it really meant.
In Slipstream, the time hacking book I’d read about flight turbulence, how experienced pilots slow down the aircraft to navigate through it. A counter intuitive action.
Smiling to myself, I slowed my swimming down.
In part this graphic from the Tour de France earlier in the week had made me curious about the aerodynamics of traveling with less friction and conservation of energy.
Going slowly made the wave action slap less. Less speed it turns out is indeed a more comfortable pace.
Going slow in urgent times allows more, more people to come along with us, more time to understand complexity, to assimilate adapt towards a low carbon future.
I swam back to the shore.
In relation to Lady’s Island Lake, ecological restoration, a community coming together to care about their shared commons… I’ve been trying to understand it from a farmers perspective and learn more about their world. I’ve started thinking about ot from a One Health framing which sits in within my frameworks for change. Having worked with SEAI, ESB and DTNI across the renewable space and the challenges/opportunities navigating policy, community, business, enviromental and ecological I wonder. What if the agricultural sector had a new body focused on innovation and a just transition? Like SEAI and how it operates for sustainable energy. What if Ireland had a Sustainable Agricultural Authority of Ireland, SAAI? not owned or driven by big ag but driven by polices like the DECC and its new research and innovation strategy (not addressing agriculture at all). An innovative incubator for land use and agriculture cannot be included within the current structure of Teagasc. It has lost the confidence of farmers and I’m not sure it ever had general societal confidence.
That is my third insight this week.
A question for you
What have been your insights this summer?
Resources
Irelands agriculture policy lobby has been described as a well oiled machine in this amazing piece of research from September 2024 DeSmog Mapped: Inside Ireland’s Powerful Farming Lobby. This is an eye opener showing that this stakeholder group is a significant force that holds private interest of agricultural business over what’s best for our land, waters and citizens. It has an interactive stakeholder map.
ALL Art is political https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdx5KEyh/ came across this on Tiktok and I’m really enjoying the content Jamaal Burkmar is sharing.
“I am a work in progress, I need your help” this is my take away from a wonderful post by Bernadette Shanahan on Linkedin about her experience of the Do Lectures in Wales. I love the three perspectives. This might be something I incorporate into my newsletter.
A view to the week ahead
News, winning or rejection. I should know if I have been successful on either request for quotes for business. If I’ve not been successful on either then I am full time job/contract hunting.
I am just about out of time. and resources.
But it’s high summer as we tip almost into Autumn in this part of the world. Harvesting and plenty is cyclical.
Let me know if I can support you in your work or if you need a thinking partner on a specific issue.
Have a good week.
Roisin Markham 
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