Communities Engaged in Low-Carbon

Transitions: The Energy Biographies Project

Karen Parkhill

Fiona Shirani Karen HenwoodCatherine Butler Nick Pidgeon

Overview

•Project details

•Lammas – context

•Inside and outside community

•Conclusions

Project details

•4 case site areas across the UK•3 waves of interviews over a 1 year

period•74 participated in initial interviews,

36 in the longer-term (18 men and 18 women, aged 18-70)

•Photograph tasks between interviews

Energy Biographies Research Objectives

1. Develop understanding of energy use by investigating and comparing people's different ‘energy biographies’ across a range of social settings

 2. Examine how existing demand reduction interventions

interact with people's personal biographies and histories.  3. Develop improved understanding of how different

community types can support reductions in energy consumption

 …We will also be exploring the usefulness of innovative

(narrative, longitudinal and visual) research methods for helping people reflect on the ways they use energy

▫Perceptions of the Lammas community

▫Dealing with visibility of the Lammas project

▫The work of forming and maintaining community

Negotiating community in the Lammas project

Introducing Lammas•Lammas Low Impact Initiatives – Tir y

Gafel eco-village•Low-impact lifestyles•9 households (17 adults and 16 children)• Planning requirement to meet 75% basic

needs from the land within 5 years•Off-grid•No running water•2-3 years no hydroelectricity

▫Solar cells & batteries & clamp

Outside Perceptions

things were said that we’d trash the land, we would be a load of hippies, smoking lots of dope and not doing anything very much. It would be feral children running around all over the place; it would look like a travellers encampment (Ruth)

Outside Perceptions‘…some critics of the project couldn't get past the words "community living", which immediately conjured up images of 1960s-style acid-fuelled love-ins: "Not in my back garden!" came the response from those expecting a sudden influx of soap-averse drop-outs…’

‘While this reaction may not have been entirely surprising, the basis of the opposition on both counts was misguided. Firstly, the free-spirited hippy communes of old and the new type of highly focused community represented by Lammas are diametrically opposed.’

Changing Outside Perceptions

they were expecting lots of dreadlocks and buses and dogs and people you know chaining themselves to trees you know just lawlessness if you like and so like what’s happened here at Tir y Gafel is we’ve managed to turn around local opinion very quickly because they see something very well ordered, very well organised and so their fears are put to rest (Peter)

Changing Outside Perceptions

So there was a sea-change in people's attitudes towards who we are and what we're up to. I think as a result largely of those Open Days. And then there's things like the duck race in the village and we all go down, this ridiculous thing with these yellow ducks floating down the stream and stuff and the raffle and the tombola and all that sort of stuff you know. But we all go off to that and then there's the WI Produce Show … and I think there's quite a lot of goodwill that comes out of just being part of those things. There are quite a lot of people learning Welsh … so just being able to speak a little bit of Welsh and communicate in the Post Office or whatever in Welsh, that kind of thing. I think that all definitely helps. (Vanessa)

Changing Outside Perceptions

we've had such a profile that maybe it's almost has helped integrate us into the community more if you like because people know us more, they've got a handle on us a bit and in most cases they don't find us particularly threatening anymore and so, therefore, we have a place in the wider community you know. (Roy)

Changing Outside Perceptions

I was really, really concerned that we had good relationships with the people that we live around … I might not have any technical skills but I've got communication skills, so and I'll go around and talk to people and that's what I did. So I made sure that the people knew what was happening, when it was happening, that they were happy about it and if they had questions they knew they could ring me up and ask me …I was just really determined that we wouldn't cause our neighbours any problems. (Ruth)

InsideCommunity

The residents of the ecovillage have come from all walks of life and whilst some have experience of low-impact living and natural building, many have none. They have all purchased plots costing between £35,000 and £40,000, and have 5 years to establish their holdings. Water, woodland and electricity are managed collectively and the plots are largely dedicated to growing food, land-based businesses, growing biomass and processing organic waste.

the legal layout here is very kind of supportive of social freedom and social independence … the conventional village or social model we’ve got in this country which has developed over thousands of years with good reason is anybody can move into a village and move out and they don’t have to interact with that village at all, I mean there are communities and sub-communities and communities within communities but there’s not, there’s no agreement to share any social values if you like … [Lammas] was always designed that anybody could move in, could be a complete hermit all their life and sell up and move on and that’s one of the kind of core principles (Peter)

InsideCommunity

Making Community?

All communities can be really hard and there's a lot of disparate and intelligent people here … who actually, when you look closely, are here for lots of different reasons that sort of float around 'sustainable, low-impact, green' but that is not a combining ethos; it's a complicated group of people and a fully-functioning operating and happy complicated group of people is a hard thing to find within the human condition [laughs] Generally you get an arguing, miserable, fighting bunch of bastards (Roy)

Aspects of communality•Infrastructure e.g. track ways, water•Car sharing•Hydroelectricity•Planning targets

So, we're going to be interdependent on each other for very many things: Our electricity supply; our water supply; our fuel supply, our communal woodland is all managed together … Other things with the community, it was specifically set up so that there is no obligation to attend meetings and there is no obligation to do communal work. (James)

Aspects of communality•Infrastructure e.g. track ways, water•Car sharing•Hydroelectricity•Planning targets

[re: planning requirements] It's across all of us so if eight of us do it and one of us doesn't, the idea is that we should be able to have a buffer zone and help support other people cos theoretically someone might have a brilliant idea that takes more than five years to establish, so we have to support each other to a certain extent to make sure that everyone else manages, because, if I'm the only one who makes the 75% then we have failed our planning (James)

Being part of ‘Lammas’

I feel it's very, one of the things about living here is that you are very open to judgement because it's 'eco Village' so any visitor that comes can go, 'Well that's not very 'eco' is it?' (Graham)

 

Being part of ‘Lammas’

it's great because Lammas is this kind of international thing now, we get people from all over the place … so part of why this is feasible is because we've got people on tap and it’s good, intelligent, willing, sorted people who want to do the same sort of thing themselves, who come along and it's super-positive for us in the main (Roy)

The ‘work’ of becoming a community

And so, there are people here that want to make us be a community or just have it in their mind that we are a community; [but] that takes a certain amount of energy…that’s a continual process of re-affirmation. (Michael)

The ‘work’ of becoming a community

We are all under an enormous amount of pressure. I mean it's massive you know, the task that's been set us is enormous, which doesn't always bring out the best in people when they are under that degree of pressure. So there is kind of friendships that form, as is normal with human beings, some people will be friendly and others not… Yeah we have been kind of thrown together and you don't pick your neighbours sort of thing. So we are becoming a community. I feel that's quite important. (Vanessa)

The ‘work’ of becoming a community

People do all the time send out texts saying ‘can anybody help with this?’ or ‘can anybody lend me this?’ you know ‘can I borrow somebody’s car?’ or whatever and that’s lovely, that’s really lovely. I see the rest of the world it’s just chance, you might have a good neighbour or you might not and you might be able to build a good relationship, whereas here I feel that people have really signed up to be good neighbours and that’s lovely (Emmanuelle)

Concluding thoughts• Perceptions of the community

▫ Changing, connected to those outside the community e.g. local neighbours, Welsh Government

▫ Have done a lot of work to challenge stereotypes

• Visibility of the project▫ Both necessary and problematic▫ An important part of changing perceptions

• Forming community ▫ Requires ongoing work, forming community through

tensions, struggles and achievements

• Scaling up?

Implications

If we were just trying to build a community or kind of go through a developmental process for a community that really didn’t exist before we got here…If we…[were]…just trying to deal with and engage with local and national governments in terms of low impact development policy and things like that…or just trying to promote sustainability or low impact development…within the population and supporting people who want to do low impact development. Any one of those things is, would be a full time undertaking within itself. We’ve decided to do them all at once, one, and we have agreed to meet some, these kind of abstract targets within 5 years as well, so it blows my mind. (Michael)

Thank you

www.energybiographies.org