IFLAS Open Lecture series - Spring 2019

Here at IFLAS we are delighted to announce the first three of the Spring/Summer series of Open Lectures.

On Tuesday 26th March we have the first Open Lecture in 2019:

Rob & Harriet Fraser: Making Sense of Here: Artful ways of reflecting on the Lake District National Park, a landscape of multiple truths.

What happens when you have a single place that’s celebrated internationally for its beauty and culture, yet has multiple and often conflicting land-use issues? Where is the common ground? How can creative practice and artful ways of thinking contribute to an appreciation of nature, and add to the debate about ways of finding balance in complex environments? Drawing on their work over the past seven years among environmental specialists, farmers and land managers, and their current project ‘Sense of Here’, Harriet and Rob put the Lake District under a ‘creative’ lens and invite you to join them on a provocative journey.

Writer Harriet Fraser and Photographer Rob Fraser work together as ‘somewhere-nowhere’. Their photography, poetry and installation work, which celebrates the beauty of nature while also exploring critical environmental issues, has been exhibited across the UK, and they work with schools and public groups with the aim of strengthening connections between people and nature. Their work frequently involves long walks and celebrates the value of slowing down and listening: meetings with experts across disciplines allows them to consider the complexity of place, and ranging from soil science to farming and forestry, environmental monitoring, hydrology and data analysis. There current project, ‘Sense of Here’, seeks out local views about the places we call home, and interconnectivity between different places, mindsets and visions for the future. Books include The Long View (shortlisted for Lakeland Book of the Year, 2018), Land Keepers and Meadow. More at www.somewhere-nowhere.com.

Then the next free-to-attend Open Lecture will be with Solitiare Townsend:

 How your good life goals can change the world

Individuals are as important as institutions when it comes to sustainability. For too long personal action has been neglected in the global climate and sustainability process, but with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), now calling for us all to change our behaviors to combat climate change, something is starting to shift.

Solitaire Townsend was the driving force behind the United Nations new Good Life Goals, a set of personal actions linked to each of the Sustainable Development Goals. She will explore the ways individuals can lever change at scale, and how people power is as important as powerful people to save the world.

Solitaire has been a passionate change-maker for over 30 years. As co-founder of Futerra she advises governments, charities and brands including Danone, Lancôme and Vodafone on imagining a better future, and making it happen. With Futerra offices in London, Stockholm, New York and Mexico City she admits that making the world a better place is a damn good business plan. You can watch her TEDx talks online and read her in the Guardian, Huffington Post, Forbes and more often as @GreenSolitaire. Solitaire was named ‘Ethical Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2008 and more recently was Chair of the UK Green Energy Scheme, a member of the United Nations Sustainable Lifestyles Taskforce and a London Leader for Sustainability. Her new book The Happy Hero - How To Change Your Life By Changing The World is out now. 

Following on from this will be the third talk of the season, this time featuring Aimee Leslie:

Collaborating for Fisheries Sustainability: Perspectives from new research in Peru

Peru is mostly known for its industrial anchoveta fisheries, the biggest monospecific fisheries of the world. What people don’t know is that there are more than 44,000 artisanal fishers in Peru, and over 60% of them work in illegality. This means they have no fishing permit, no social security, there is no stock assessment of the populations they fish, continued illegal construction of new fishing vessels, and high levels of corruption in local fisheries authorities. WWF-Peru is collaborating with fishers to face these challenges by helping them set up fisheries cooperativas with sustainable business models, meet the legal requirements to get their fishing permits, denounce cases of corruption, and set up traceability systems. In this talk you will learn about about fisheries in Peru and the associated legal and sustainability challenges the sector faces, and what WWF is doing to try to address these challenges.

Aimée Leslie is doing a PhD in Leadership and Sustainability with the University of Lancaster and Cumbria. She has a Masters in Environmental Management from Costa Rica and a Masters in Education for Sustainable Development from Spain. She has been working for WWF for over 7 years, with WWF International as Global Cetacean and Marine Turtle Manager based out of Switzerland and as Director of WWF-Peru’s Marine Program since beginning of 2018. She is a member of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group, the IWC Scientific Committee, and the CMS Bycatch Working Group.

Each of these talks will take place at the Percival Lecture Theatre on our Ambleside campus on Tuesdays from 5.30pm and will finish around 7pm.

All of the above talks are completely free to attend, all that we ask is that you register by emailing us at iflas@cumbria.ac.uk stating which talk you wish to attend, along with your name, and the name of anyone else that you wish to bring along with you.