Welcome to my weekly studio notes, I write these, I don’t use AI to this. The purpose of these notes is to consider the week gone by, process, synthesize it a bit and garner reflections, insights, ask a question and share some resources. I end with a view to my week ahead.
Lets jump in.
Reflection
I began this practice of weekly notes in January 2025. The idea of them being completed Friday before I closed my laptop for the weekend but my life is not like that. Sometimes I need more time to process, so studio notes were often leisurely thought about and written on Sundays. I began noticing they might take me a few hours to think about and complete. As I process all my saved internet links for the week also. In the last month I notice finishing last weeks notes and publishing them has crept into the following Monday morning. Alas this week critical needs have left them till mid week. Not a fan of it. So I am acknowledging I need to schedule time in my diary on Friday to draft my weekly notes and at the very least put together the outline and add photos. That way if I need more time I can edit and publish Sunday. I’ll be back in a minute.
…ok that’s in my diary, scheduled now.
Monday morning before I crack on with a large list of work I’m listening to Ms. Lauryn Hill, Arrested Development. Normally I don’t listen to music while I work.
How has your week been?
Monday last I was so ill, I ended up at the GP and not working for the day, my OOF went on and I slept. Despite antibiotics, I’d a good week (lots of work still to get to).
In part because I delivered a successful
- presentation to SEAI on Doughnut Economics and how it could increase the impact of their work
- a full doughnut day to the community in Fethard, South Tipperary
I had also identified several jobs to apply for but having done further research on them have rejected them as being below what I can afford to work for. I’ve also looked at remote opportunities EU and globally based.
I had the fortune to see Nuala McKeevers one woman play, wozers she is some woman for one woman. At some stage I sensed 3 people on the stage but it was in fact just her. The play starts dark with suicide ideation and moves quickly to care, death grief. You begin caring and feeling for characters that are pure imaginary. So convincing is Nuala’s ability to carry a packed house with her through loss and to hope that she has to be some kind of magician. It was brilliant. I am still thinking about it.
Two quotes for work with universities are on my desk uncompleted and move into this week. Catching up still on days missed when I was ill.
Insights
I now have an hour blocked on Friday afternoons in my digital diary, lets see how that works.
As September folds in to October this week I am also looking back across the month, having delivered 3 different talks to three different audiences in the last two weeks I notice a further shift in how I am talking about new economic thinking.
The three audiences in Setember:
- local authorities, PPNs, Pobal – 100 people from all across Ireland- 15 minute presentation and as part of a panel at a conference
- sustainable authority of Ireland – 111 staff on a webinar – 30 minutes presentation with interactive Q&A 20 minutes
- community: locals, PPN, volunteers, local authority, Local Development Company, social enterprises – 30 people Step into the Doughnut, 30 minute presentation on DE and 20 minutes presentation on West Cork Case Study
These 3 audiences had different presentations and talks. I think its really important to consider the audience for any engagement. For the Fethard Community I did not include the embedded economy full slide but we ended up speaking about it during the workshop in the afternoon.
I really find our roles and the embed economy very central to this work, it also speaks to active citizenship and deliberative democracy.
I still bring the practicing principles into view but the household and the commons, the market and the state in an embedded economy is where I am landing and grounding the presentations. That maturing began around the time of the DTNI conference.
The community workshop on Friday we were introduced to the group by Dónal the Just Transition Lead in South Tipperary Development Company. He posed the question as to why artists were talking to them about economics?
I’ve not been referred to as an artist publicly in a long time. Part of me resisted yet in another way I was happy to surround myself with that idea again.
afternoon we tried out the new Community Toolkit, welcoming people back after lunch and getting them to draw portraits of each other. It was fun, created much laughter and is a curious way to start talking about a portrait of place. We put all their portraits of each on a wall, creating a gallery of portraits. Then we looked at them, exploring what we saw. Only one was drawn landscape, only one was an A4 page folded in half. There was such a mixture of what the did and did not portray.
A great way to bring people towards doing and thinking differently. It is really good to get people to begin drawing and making ‘dreadful portraits’. Drawing with groups builds empathy, opens new neural pathways in our brains and as a shared experience creates cohesion in the group.
The second tool we used was the rapid portrait of place mapping tool. I think I would anchor that work with a more general conversation of what might a portrait of our place look like before jumping into that rapid or slow mapping. I’d intended to but think in the facilitation the flow worked slightly differently.
At the end of the workshop we were sitting around in a group about 16 people, each of the 3 groups had feedback what they had discovered and how the tool had opened up really important conversations. All agreed that the global context of was eye opening and rarely considered. It is this complexity of local, global, ecological and social that doughnut economics holds well. The complexity of the planetary boundaries and the social foundation.
During the step into the doughnut introductory session in the morning with 30 people outside one of the last comments created a very particular intervention I’d never experienced before. It was rather wonderful. I will speak to this on the 14th of October in a webinar, details to follow.
I was asked at the end of the session what would I like to see happen… No one has ever asked that of me and I tend to mirror what’s in the room or community. As a facilitator of place and with communities that’s not my role to say but as an activist, adaptive strategist and leader I did give an answer.
I’d also organised some friends to come make felt with me on Saturday, I’d kinda forgotten I love felt making.
So I spent all of Sunday, making felt and fell back in love with that craft.
A questions for you
What are you looking forward to in October?
Resources
Via Global Action Plan Ireland this newspaper article speaks to the €26B fine if Ireland does not achieve its emissions targets. Exploring and discussing what we could do with that money. A topic I’ve thought a lot about.
The Global Doughnut Festival week is coming up. I’m excited to dip in.
Rachel Dempsey is doing Songs for a better world – singing the Doughnut in Dublin rather unique and fab. If you can go do.
A view to the week ahead
This week is already half run.
Proposals, invoices, meetings, design research, workshop, listening & learning, accounts, project kick off, booking in coaching sessions.
Autumn leaves are making patch work patterns all across the garden. I’m leaning into all its colours. The season of soup and evenings closing in.
Roisin Markham 
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