Birthing the Urban Village

Want to help birth the urban village?

It’s a time of social, political, economic, cultural and environmental meltdowns, and we need to regenerate ecosystems on a large scale — including and in particular the ecosystems of our cities! The urban environment is part of nature, both impacted by the landscape around it and with profound effects on surrounding lands and waters, as well as on the lives of their inhabitants.

With 68% of global population projected to be living in urban centres by 2050, our cities are the global engines of culture, creativity and economic innovation, yet they are also often cold, alienating and unsustainable. Can we bring the warmth and deep relatedness of the village to the urban streets, and still keep the excitement and magic of urban living, all while bringing our world back into balance with the nature that surrounds us?

How can we regenerate our cities, our human ecosytems, economies, social interactions, and human nature? How can we do so with an emphasis on culture building being core to our being, not allowing ourselves to be thrown off of our core integrity and purpose, while we also have to respond to what is throwing the world out of balance? This is the way to keep becoming stronger, more connected with each other, more resilient as our love for each other and the world grows more dear and fierce.

Join us IN PERSON or ONLINE for this panel presentation and community dialogue featuring an array of the west coast’s leading changemakers!

OUR PANELISTS:

STARHAWK | www.starhawk.org
Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing and City of Refuge. Starhawk founded Earth Activist Training, teaching permaculture design grounded in spirituality and with a focus on activism. She travels internationally, lecturing and teaching on earth-based spirituality, the tools of ritual, and the skills of activism.

MARK LAKEMAN | www.cityrepair.org
Mark always gets out of bed in the morning excited to take down the patriarchy by repairing cities. He sees placemaking as restorative work, reacquainting people with how many complex dimensions of urban life can rejoin and then become simple together. Mark loves watching people create together and enact ecological and community repair as a way of finding their power. Mark loves building, designing, drawing, helping, using his hands in a zillion creative ways. He also loves being a son, brother, dad, husband, a friend, and an old growth activist.

BRANDY GALLAGHER | www.ourecovillage.org
Brandy has worked in Community Development circles for the past 24 years with a focus of ‘recreating the commons’ and having alternative economy as a basis within trade/barter, gift economy and service to the common good. Her work includes mobilizing tens of thousands of peoples to work together towards a seemingly impossible vision to rebecoming villagers, urban or rural, in a way that regenerates land and attempts to protect our collective future for generations to come.

Moderated By:
MAYOR LISA HELPS | www.lisahelpsvictoria.ca
Lisa Helps became the 52nd Mayor of Victoria when she was elected on November 15, 2014, and was sworn into office for her second term on November 1, 2018. Mayor Helps works hard at City Hall and in the community to ensure that the city is prosperous, affordable, sustainable, and ready for the future. Taking a long-term, big-picture perspective, she looks both around the city and around the world for innovative solutions to the pressing challenges facing us including climate change, lack of affordable housing, and growing social isolation and loneliness, especially among youth and seniors. She’s honoured to have been elected as Mayor of Victoria and to serve her community in this capacity.

TWO WAYS TO PARTICIPATE!:

Join us in person at Sunset Labs!

400 Herald Street, Victoria (behind Value Village)
Sliding Scale – $10-$30, you choose
Limited seating so RSVP is required.

Join us online via Stream of Consciousness!

Can’t join us in person?
We’ll be hosting a digital ticket of this event via Stream of Consciousness.
Livestream tickets & details are here!

♥