Welcome back and if you are newly visiting welcome for the first time!
I write these weekly notes. I do not use an LLM or AI as it’s mislabelled. These notes would be smooth and grammar perfect if I did. The only automation is a spellchecker.
This week, 33 of 52 weeks in 2025 sees a successful collaboration win work that promptly kicks into gear, planning IDEN related events, catching up with my network, trying something new in relation to speaking about my work and tending to our garden.
Let’s jump in
Reflection
Last week I was waiting to hear the results of two tenders. I’d applied for some remote work and got negative responses. Every no moves us closer to yes, right?
Not sure the world works like that but in times of lots of NO, it’s useful to check your alignment to the work you are going after and remain positive. I sense there is another caveat to express here but I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole.
I spent time this week being present, heart-centered and grounded. Being well in times of stress is something I am responsible to myself for. Often to drop into that space of centered calm we need support; a teacher, meditation or particular space, an app, music, up a mountain, under a tree, paper a pencil or pen. I remembered Cait Ní Rians song during Listening to the Oran Mór. How her voice just opened up that space for me to arrive within, routed. I was in the garden between the washing line and the steps, I longed to hear the pristine sound so I could drop into that space instantly. In that moment of longing near the carpet chamomile I registered I can just drop in without anything else so I did. And so it was recentering myself, in a moment, quietly before the unknown. I have no control over the outcomes. All I could do was show up and continue the work.
‘we must transform ourselves to transform the world’.
Grace Lee Boggs
I began preparing for a day introducing Doughnut Economics to a community in Fethard, Tipperary 26th September. My preparation consists of researching the place and group that have invited me, designing the event – how will I introduce the doughnut, what will I talk about, how will we get active with the ideas of the doughnut and applying them in that place? The morning is to have a seminar structure with the afternoon a hands on workshop. I plan to offer a Step into the Doughnut before the events official kick off. It is one of the best ways to introduce anyone to DE. I’ve someone from IDEN coming to deliver a case study and they will also help deliver the workshop. I also have a talk and accompanying slides to prepare.
I have another talk to prepare on Doughnut Economics to a organisation in September, they want to focus on how to use it in their work. This will be a very different approach as its via video and remote, a lunch and learn type of approach. While I have done these before notably to Foodcloud in Spring 2024 they have tended to be 20-30 sessions. The focus on how to apply the 7 ways to think like a 21st century economist in their work context will require some thought.
I was delighted this week to catch up with Brad who supports our IDEN tech and hosts our online world. We finally got the email access sorted for the network. I have some email to catch up on.
Early in the week I also caught up with 2 IDEN young leaders who will come to Electric Picnic and represent IDEN with me as part of the Biodiversity Zone with IEN at Global Green.
Gosh in hindsight I did a lot of doughnuting last week. I had a great chat with a visiting California Doughnut associate who’s been in Ireland for the summer. They are at the start of their journey in San Diego.
CAL DEC, the California Doughnut Economics Coalition launched their doughnut recently. They are doing extraordinary work and San Francisco just held their first meeting.
Looking forward to speaking to people more about doughnut economics at EP, through several events in September and planning GDD 14-17 October 2025.
So this week I tried something new – I posted a tiktok video speaking about work on my desk, I can’t embbed it here but if you are on tiktok have a look and follow me there. I’m going to start sharing more there. I share some exciting news there that I’ll get to shortly. That @tunnellvision channel has been mostly about trying to grow food and I’ve decided I’d like to talk about more things there.
I’ll be sharing a video later of a curious discovery in our pocket forest over the weekend curtesy of a badger we think.
Last week we won! The RFQ for Social Farming Ireland that I had collaborated with Community Wellness on, we were successful. It’s a short tight project and it kicked off Friday. Love a good hit the ground running piece of work. The project is about wellbeing, mental health and supporting social farmers. My role on the project is to do research, support co-design (its more co-production but I’ll be educating around that), support the team and client deliver an agreed output with DAFM.
It’s a really good strong team and I’m looking forward to getting to know Leitrim Development Company who are the client.
Alice in Wonderland is the story I associate most with rabbit holes, the 6 impossible things quote has been back in my consciousness the last week or so, in week 31 I shared I might run creative rewilding your brain sessions.
It’s connecting into new social imaginaries and time traveling to imagine a new future, a low carbon sustainable and equitable future. I was thinking about my most recent trip to the near future and shared it with someone this week.
If you’re interested in
- rewilding your brain
- a time travel creative session
- creating conditions for emergence
- imagining 6 impossible things before breakfast
Let me know. Depending on what happens this week I may develop a few online and offline events. If you have a group or team that may want to explore this idea, happy to chat it through, contact me here.
Brenna Quinlan illustration leans into to some of what I visited when I last time travelled to our local village in 2030, I’ll say more about this soon.
Brenna’s daily illustrations are really hitting the nail on the head. If you are on instagram I recommend her as a follow if you are n’t already following her.
Insights
Perhaps that is what the end of the summer requires – events to move us from summer to autumn, a oddly designed box that moves us from one liminal space towards a future worth living into.
Several people have been in touch asking for support on information, ideas or networking on their behalf. In the wider scheme of things I like to be helpful. I also like to think of those opportunities for support like swings and roundabouts. They don’t seem like commercial exchanges but my brain does cost to maintain and I work at having a diverse and healthy network.
Creating a future worth living into is a significant body of work. At the very least it’s a talk, workshops and potentially some expression through design and art, and may be a book. But the story of this question is critical at this time.
The subtitle is most definitely ’How to save €26BN’. Ask me about this if you are curious. I think it needs spoken word rather then writing. Some form of creative expression is required whether that’s me creating something, or working as an art producer/curator I am not sure yet. I need to play with it and share the work so far. These are the new rules though:
Be kind, then be even kinder.
People are generally sound. Irish people reject behaviour not aligned to our values. Let’s create the pathways we want for change.
Do no harm.
Be sound.
A question for you
How do you deal with questions and asks of your time, skills and network? How do you find or create the reciprocity in the ask?
Resources
This week I published another page as part of my Future Ancestor work documenting the film I was invited to collaborate on:
NESC published a new report last week on Connecting People to the Energy Transition. I was pleased to see it in my inbox box Tuesday and look forward to a deeper dive into reading it. The Irish Times featured it in this article Public ‘unsure what big switch to clean energy means and how to play their part’.
I love a good living lab.
Sussex Co-Lab is a collaborative programme designed to improve local communities by addressing challenges and making policies more effective. I have found their work fascinating and have been enjoying reading their Living metrics evaluation workshop. Actually their whole report I’ve flagged for a deeper dive, I really like their approach. The table of contents alone demonstrates how they think so well.
The actor Donal Gleason in an interview this weeks draws attention to an inspired idea – just like the way our news features Sport, Gleason suggests that it should also have a section to feature the Arts. Have a listen.
What about we push this further and also have a positive low carbon feature that helps us build our new horizons and a resilient democracy.
Big excitement this week Vanessa Machada de Oliveria published her new book this week, Outgrowing modernity. I an so excited to read this. Feel free to buy it send it to me as a gift.
Her new book book invites you to interrupt 5 lies that neurocolonisation instills in us—beliefs (and behaviors) that have condition us to think we’re owed the following, regardless of others or the planet:
- Moral and epistemic self-righteous authority
- Unrestricted, unaccountable autonomy
- Arbitrating truth, law, and common sense
- Affirming one’s virtues, innocence, and purity
- Exploitative appropriation and accumulation of various forms of capital
In moving away from these ingrained worldviews, we can choose instead to develop 4 capacities necessary to our—and Earth’s survival: sobriety, maturity, discernment, and responsibility.
Machado De Oliveira moves beyond critique into a praxis of strategic disinvestment: one that invites us to recognize what no longer serves us and reinvest in nurturing structures and lifeways that restore our knowledge in the value of life for life’s sake.
ZINES, I love them and continue to use them in my work, collate resources and research about them as modalities of research within themselves. Lookie here
- Critical feminist zine-making as method and pedagogy: reflections on a zine workshop series – Research paper.
- https://francesstreetpress.com/ake-zine/
- https://millionexperiments.com/zines
A view to the week ahead
This week I will be kicking off the research for the Social Farming Project, establishing a good framework for the work. its a short tight project and I want to sure I’m focused and supporting the team and the client well. I am excited for the work.
I’ll be progressing the Fethard work and prepping for EP.
September is shaping up to be fun and it already has a good variety and it’s not even half booked yet!
Need to nudge a client on our circular thinking and global supply chain workshop mid-month.
Yes I do have talks.
Yes I do offer bespoke workshops.
Yes I do offer co-design coaching and mentoring,
Yes I do offer strategic and business management consultancy.
Yes I do offer thinking partnerships and mentoring sessions.
Thanks to those of you that reached out in the last week to catch up and discuss collaborations, I’ll look forward to seeing where those conversations bear fruit.
Have a great week.
Roisin Markham 
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