Welcome to my weekly studio notes which are framed as reflections, insights, a question for you, resources and a view to my week ahead. These weekly endeavours are written without AI. Spelling or grammar errors are now considered as bonafide content.
Winter has arrived. The nights have drawn in. Week 42 of 2025 brought a continual heavy grey sky that robbed a week of day light. Noticeable in sunrise times getting closer to 8am and train commutes in the dark. Day light and blue skies seem at a premium here.
Thanks for being here, let’s jump in.
Reflection
As the weeks crack on towards the end of the year, I’m no where near to capacity of work! I continue to outreach for work across strategic design, research, PMO or project management.
I am the kind of person who figures things out.
This week seems to have disappeared very quickly. I’ve been deep in research and design discovery phases on two work projects.
I enjoyed starting coaching with a new client.
It’s been the Global Doughnut week with lots to do but I really did not have time to attend many of the events.
I did catch the launch of DEAL launching Doughnut 3.0 on Tuesday, a great Webinar with Kate and Andrew.
I still need to engage more deeply with this new data but top line insights
- updates the dimensions and indicators – tracks outcomes from 2000 to 2022
- disaggregates the global results into three country-clusters (poorest-40%, middle-40%, and richest-20% of countries)
- moving to an annual
- new diagrams available
- per reviewed
There was a webinar I was invited to participated in on Tuesday organised by TU Dublin. A sharing by four of us who are experienced in introducing doughnut economics to a wide variety of audiences in different spaces. It was amazing to learn and share knowledge from over 100 facilitations of Step into the Doughnut, People People Planet and everything in between. I learnt and got some insights from Lara, Lucia and Olivia. Brilliant stuff. We were delighted to be joined over 20 people interested in sharing doughnut economics through these different approaches and by Rob Shorter from DEAL who designed most of them.
I’ve also been attending to connecting people and effort towards the Leaving Certificate Economic Curriculum open submission. There is an opportunity to broaden our economic literacy and curriculum. If we are to reclaim economics for all and unpack the neo-liberalist economic strong hold we need to take action.
Thursday evening I attended the amazing launch of Decolonised Minds by Talha Alali. Buy this book it’s brillant. It will unlock the keys of so many trajectories personally and professionally.
Read it, share it bring it into your work.
I felt so humbled to hear Talha speak about his book.
I was also humbled by the presence and questions from Palestinians present, many of whom identified they were from Gaza. Gosh my heart broke several times, again.
I believe Talha’s book is a seminal work, written and published by a Palestinian from Gaza at this time of genocide. Significant is that he has written it while living in Ireland, a post partition country almost ready to look at our intergenerational trauma. It is a work of great significance that is not just for psychotherapists but for us all. Someone please send a copy to every TD and Minister especially the Finance Department.
In my work I have positioned endings, grief and decolonisation for a numbers of years, but intentionally since 2021. If this is new to you and you’d like more information on this just ask me.
Trying to understand what this means, reflect, learn, listen to the land and all its ecology, listening to the sea and all that is buoyant, the sensing the somatic practice of attending to and with. Then there is people, others of this place and of other places. In global settings where I’ve worked it was subtle. My work always had a slightly different resonance. Always relational, designing with not at.
I build it into my research, workshops, reports however it still hides in its own shadow. Not everyone is ready for that work.
Friday I sat in on a Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment session with the OECD. They are working on a regulatory review of Renewable Energy Communities (REC). I was there representing the Enviromental Pilar from FEASTA, WEALL Ireland Hub and IDEN. That was an interesting session with 4 from OECD and Sadhbh O’Neill as an independant researcher, Jerry from Friends of The Earth and Aideen from GEAI. It was an open honest and frank discussion with good questions asked.
Insights
I was so excited to receive the survey data for the Social Farmers Ireland piece of work. I’m so enjoying analysing it. Thinking about the slicing of it, I’ve gotten all the basic data defined and put into relevant numbers and % charts. I’m happy with the data set, it’s small but it’s half of the active farms in the SFI network. I’ve completed an initial pass, moved into deeply looking across responses from individual questions to a matrix view. This gives more nuance, holding or challenge narratives. My Miro board is shaping up nicely and holding all.
There is good direction and overwhelmingly positive outcomes, the team at SFI should be very proud of their work. There are very clear themes, sentiment and soon to be recommendations and next steps. The report will be in its early draft form by the end of next week.
The work with Trinity progresses. Defining and designing an event for the 20th of November with lots of reflection, processing and follow up to be worked on. I am also enjoying that work.
I’m enjoying being out of the house two days a week. Don’t get me wrong the stove was lit this week and my workspace was super toasty but a change of scene, oh and the journey by train to and from Gorey/Dublin is always a joy.
I got some valuable feedback this week on an unsuccessful job interview, I appreciate the busy person who took the time to speak to me.
A question for you
Have you heard about social farming? I think if we are looking for a wellbeing economy example it’s a great one.
Resources
Pobal published a new report with UCD this week – Disadvantage Communities Almost Five Times Less Likely to Benefit from Renewable Energy at Home.
Have you read Ursula Le Guin, The Carrier bag theory of fiction?
The work of multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger crossed my path again this week, he is the artist that worked with mirrors as shields at Standing Rock.
“As artists, we live on the periphery. But we are the mirrors. We are the reflective points that break through a barrier.” -Cannupa Hanska Luger, LA Times
His new book, SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide it looks stunning. I’d love a copy of it. ‘Luger transforms a 1970s military survival guide through poetic redaction, speculative fiction, and iterative line drawing—deftly surfacing and disrupting the colonial subconscious that haunts this vexed source text. An epic and timely meditation on planetary life in the midst of transformation, SURVIVA boldly presents an earth-based, demilitarized futuredream that foregrounds Indigenous knowledge as critical to humanity’s survival.’
This is a podcast well worth listening to especially if you have not heard Sean McCabe speak about the work being done in Bohemians Football Club on extending the clubs Coop for sustainability, community resilience and skills building. Here himself and Rory discuss new models based in wellbeing and community wealth building.
This links in some way to the OECD session I attended on Friday if we build local renewable energy infrastructure as a community wealth building solution we may be able to achieve a just transition.
A view to the week ahead
Research – quant and qualitative, deep diving uncovering insights, noticing themes, sentiment and documentation of information. Then the space between the stats – like a hidden language you have to get real quiet to notice. Between the survey and other engagements with social farmers we have strong evidence and recommendations. The insights need a bit of space and maturity of thought. Conversations, draft documents and a formal conclusion to the work. The communication in written and visual format my brain is already thinking about.
Design and research continues for the Trinity piece of work, the initial structure has landed and needs to be documented and shared more broadly. Research will also deepen on contextualisation in the next two weeks.
I am in Maynooth University on Wednesday, specifically Maynooth Works as part of their research week I’ve been invited to bring something different to PhD and Post Doc researchers. I have designed bespoke workshop for 30 people on the leadership skills of active listening, collaboration and empathy.
There’s a follow up session on an AI review I did on a positioning paper.
More to be done on the LC Economic Curriculum submission.
Jobs applications and work outreach continues. Let me know if I can support you or any of the organisations you are connected to.
Thursday I’m so looking forward to heading north with my friend Malú Colorín to see her exhibition Interwoven in the Downs Art Centre.
We will also be going to see the Alice Fox Flaxen Exhibition which is also as part of the Belfast Linen Biennale. I’ve been following Alice’s work for years, she is an artist who grows and weaves things like dandelions, flax, grasses. She was one of the first artists I saw with an interest in raw materials from the ground and how they can be used. I’m looking forward to the chats in the car too.
Knowing I’d be away Thursday, I worked when the weather was messy this weekend, getting ahead of where my work needs to land by Friday.
So to the week ahead, have a good one.
Roisin Markham 
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