A Radical Hope & Sustainable Solution: Video Assignment

December 6, 2021

In the fall 2021 I took a course taught by Mitchell McLarnon titled “Alternative Environmental Education in the context of Climate Emergency”. I loved this course and was immediately enthused about it upon reading this in the syllabus:

This course engages with theories, ways of knowing and values aligned with working through non-hierarchal and anti-oppressive environmental education in the historical moment of climate emergency. Topics include: environmental and land-based education; alternative and anarchist pedagogies; systems thinking; urban political ecology; responsible consumption; community- based learning; and personal and social responsibility.

By the way, this course helped me identify the anarchist tendencies in my homeschool praxis and was the start of my own deep dive into anarchist philosophy, political theory, and pedagogy. Here are a couple books to get you started should you likewise we interested: Anarchist Pedagogies edited by Robert H. Haworth and Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective by Judith Suissa.

This was one of my assignments for that course, part of Module Five: Radical Hope & Sustainable Solutions. (I like that title.)

The assignment was this:

Niko Roorda calls opportunities that tackle complex sustainability issues “sources of vigour.” In his chapter of the same name he also looks at international organizations, sustainable ideas and sources of inspiration, people, community efforts, business, science and environmental efforts to re-think the future and re-shape the future for sustainable living.

Your assignment in this module is to identify a ‘source of vigour’ close to you and your community. It may be a group, an NGO, an individual, an initiative, a business, a technology, government program, education initiative, policy or plan etc., that is addressing a sustainability issue close to where you live. The source of vigour may be designed to address a cultural, economic, social, environmental challenge in an urban or rural context. There are many ways people and communities are taking up the ‘Great Work’ as described by Thomas Berry.

This is my assignment submission. My Source of Vigour.