Paul Chatterton

Here is an article I wrote in the run up to the UNFCC conference in Copenhagen happening right now. It has been published on the Red Pepper magazine’s website here.

ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies
Volume 8, Issue 3, 2009

www.acme-journal.org/Volume8-3.htm

Corporate Involvement in Geography

Guest edited by Paul Chatterton and Larch Maxey

Introduction: Whatever Happened to Ethics andResponsibility in Geography?
Paul Chatterton and Larch Maxey, Pg. 429

Dancing on a Double Edged Sword: Sustainability within University Corp
Larch Maxey, Pg. 440

Education and the Enclosure of Knowledge in the Global University
Silvia Federici, Pg. 454

Teaching What We (Preach and) Practice: The MA in Activism and Social Change
Stuart Hodkinson, Pg. 462

Corporate Social Responsibility in Higher Education
Ed Brown and Jonathan Cloke, Pg 474

Spies in the Information Economy: Academic Publishers and the Trade in Personal Information
David Murakami Wood, Pg. 484

Lessons from the Campaign against Elsevier. “We won, but how did we win?”
Tom Stafford, Pg. 494

In Arms’ Way: Arms Company and Military Involvement in Education in the UK
Anna Stavrianakis, Pg. 505

Time to Shell Out? Reflections on the RGS and Corporate Sponsorship
David Gilbert, Pg. 521

Corporate Social Responsibility: Between Civil Society and the Oil Industry in the Developing World
Felix Tuodolo, Pg. 530

Everywhere You Go, Can You be Sure of Shell?
Emily Johns, Pg 542

Tools for Social Change

A Trapese Short Course at Ragman’s Lane Farm, Easter 2010

Sat 27th March- Sat 3rd April 2010

Drawing on the ‘Do It Yourself Handbook’ (handbookforchange.org) this week long
course will provide training in grassroots organising, including consensus decision
making, popular education and effective campaigning. It will also explore how these
tools can be used to set up long term projects e.g. land projects, social centres, community
gardens and how we can work together effectively to achieve social change.

Who: Trapese is a popular education collective who have been organising interactive workshops
which aim to inspire action since 2004.

To register please contact us before 27th

January 2010 at www.trapese.org

Cost: £175-350 pounds depending on income.

Location: Ragman’s Lane Farm Forest of Dean, a sixty acre farm in

Gloucestershire teaching people how to use land sustainably.
More info: www.ragmans.co.uk and www.trapese.org

There is a pretty amazing event on this Saturday organised by the New Economics Foundation amongst others. Its all at:

http://thebiggerpicture2009.org/

I am doing a couple of things there which include:

1. Speakers corner: Resistance is futile? Can protest save the planet in time? 14.00 – 15.15

Direct action from environmental campaigners is increasingly hitting the news, and there are victories to be claimed. Media coverage from high profile cases such as the Kingsnorth Six and the Drax coal train mean protest is rarely out of the news. With Ed Miliband claiming he wants a movement akin to a new suffragettes, is this wave of protest having an impact on policy makers- and can it make a difference in time?

With John Sauven, Executive Director of Greenpeace, Ann Pettifor, member of the Green New Deal Group and nef fellow and Dr Paul Chatterton, Leeds University.

Chaired by Nick Deardon, Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign.

2. Workshop Building Your Own community: a DIY Guide 15.30 – 16.30

START PRODUCING THE FUTURE
Experiments against Enclosure – Tools to reclaim the Commons

All round the world, there are thousands of projects and people working from the bottom up, creating and resisting the system that is causing climate change and building a more just and sustainable world, right here and now. As part of the 100 days run up to the Copenhagen Climate summit, The Trapese Collective invite YOU to three days of of practical workshops, trainings, discussions and inspiration on everything from crash technologies and local food to campaigning and building alternatives. Come to just one workshops or the whole three days. Check out our mid week film programme. Join the real green (grassroots) shoots.

When? Saturdays 17th October, 31st October, 14th November 2009, 10.30 – 6pm.

Where? Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA www.arnolfini.org.uk
How? Register via Arnolfini box office or phone, T: +44 (0)117 9172300 / 01 E: boxoffice@arnolfini.org.uk .

Please say which session(s) you plan to attend.Or simply turn up and register on the day. Some sessions are ‘closed’ once they start, others are drop in, (see programme)

How much? Participation is not dependent on paying but we suggest a donations from £5 to £15 per person, per day, depending on income. This will go to the workshop facilitators, who are offering these sessions for free, or to the projects of their choosing.
Food? Bring food to share or there are plenty of local eateries.

Who? Trapese are a popular education collective who among other projects edited the Do It Yourself -handbook for changing our world, in 2007. This project which draws on the themes from the book will be co-ordinated by Alice Cutler, Natasha Machin and Steve Stuffit, from Bristol with input from Paul Chatterton, and Kim Bryan and many
other Trapese friends. www.trapese.org

Click for leaflet

I am running a short course in November. We have a great line up of speakers. Spread the word.

EMERGENCY PLANET EARTH! Environmental crises, definitions and responses Tues 10 – Sun 15 Nov 2009

———————————

NEW SHORT COURSE in November 2009 led by the University of Leeds @ the Centre for Alternative Technology, Wales – the UK’s leading ecocentre

——————————–

• Want to learn more about the urgent environmental issues of our times?

• Want to engage with practitioners who are at the forefront of developing solutions?

• Want to tap into cutting edge, radical teaching and research with one of the UK’s most respected universities and the UK’s leading ecocentre?

Then this module is for you!

Teaching staff from the MA in ‘Activism and Social Change’ (www.activismsocialchange.org.uk) based in Geography at the University of Leeds are beginning an exciting new partnership with CAT to deliver this short course. CAT is one of Europe’s leading ecocentres, undertaking practical research and teaching into ecological issues. It is based in the town of Machynlleth on the edge of Snowdonia National Park. This collaboration is particularly timely as CAT is launching a major new educational initiative and resource this summer called WISE (the Wales Institute for Sustainable Education). WISE will provide a state-of-the-art environmental education centre, featuring 24 en suite study bedrooms, 200 seat rammed earth lecture theatre workshops, seminar rooms, laboratory, restaurant and bar.

++ Module Logistics and costs

This course will take place in mid November 2009 and will be taught over one week, from Tuesday evening to Sunday afternoon.

Registration for this course costs £300 unwaged, £475 waged and £650 company rate and includes full board accommodation, tuition and materials.

Accommodation will be on our main site, in small simply furnished rooms, which contain 2-5 bunk beds. We have a few single rooms available for an extra £10 per night. There are common rooms available for relaxation, with facilities for making drinks. Meals are served in our wholefood vegetarian restaurant.

++ Module Content

The module will be delivered by staff from the University of Leeds and CAT and will involve a mix of lectures, seminars, evening reading groups, debates and films, student led presentations, guest speakers and site tours and a social on Saturday evening.

++ Sessions include:

Issues

1. Introduction: understanding rapid change

2. Climate Change: emergency code red?

3. The Energy crisis and peak oil

4. Environmental Justice: living in a toxic society

5. Land matters: the industrialisation of food and agriculture

6. Mid point reflection and summary

Responses

7. Green capitalism and the corporate response

8. Government frameworks for change: from the local to the global

9. Grassroots civil society responses: localisation and transition towns

10. Social movements for change: radical ecological direct action

++ To register

Tel: 01654 705981 Email: course@cat.org.uk or www.cat.org.uk/courses for online booking.

To reserve a place, send a non-returnable deposit cheque to CAT Charity Ltd for £100 or ring or email with credit card details. Further details and invoices will be sent shortly before the course. The balance of the course fee is due before the start of the course. Residents of SY20 or SY23 should enquire about special non residential rates.

++ More information

For more information on the MA in Activism and Social Change see: www.activismsocialchange.org.uk or email the Programme Director: Dr Paul Chatterton p.chatterton@leeds.ac.uk

Alice Cutler and I, two members of the popular education collective Trapese, have just reprinted our booklet ‘THE ROCKY ROAD TO A REAL TRANSITION: THE TRANSITION TOWNS MOVEMENT AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE.’ It is our contribution to the evolving ideas within the excellent transition towns movement. You can download the booklet via my publications page and the new preface we wrote for the reprint appears below. Get in touch if you want some hard copies. They cost £1 each to cover production costs.

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I’m involved in a journal called City, and we have just published a really good series of conference papers from a conference in Berlin last November called ‘Right to the City’

It is part of a special double issue of our journal and you can view it here

This special issue of City (volume 13, issues 2-3) explores the theme ‘Cities for people, not profit’ through wide-ranging contributions by a diverse group of European and North American urban theorists, sociologists, planners and activists. The issue is guest edited by Neil Brenner, Peter Marcuse and Margit Mayer. If you don’t know their work you shuold check it out, especially Peter’s.

You can view the Editorial, Introduction and Tom Slater’s paper on ‘Missing Marcuse: On gentrification and displacement’ for FREE online here.

You can purchase the issue at a one-off rate from the journal homepage here.

Happy reading…

The image below is from the cover of the journal.

I have found myself commenting a fair bit recently on the links between climate change, class and coal. This is both a painful and essential task, made all the more personally challenging and confusing given that my grandad was a coal miner (at Hatfield main colliery in Yorkshire).

I talked at a conference last November in Newcastle at the Bridge Inn organised by the Newcastle Branch of the International Workers of the World (the wobblies). It was an amazing day (it was also my 36th birthday) and the panel of speakers included Arthur Scargill (who I assume needs no introduction), Dave Douglass  (ex miner and more recently trade union activist whom i deeply admire), Paul Morrozzo (from GreenPeace and Climate Camp),  and Ian Lavery (current President of the National Union of Mineworkers).

I made a brief 10 minute speech, the jist of which can be read here:

http://www.paulchatterton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/pdf-anti-coal-article-cat.pdf

This is also on my publications page (The emerging anti-coal debate).

Mute magazine has just published a fairly comprehensive write up of the day which can be found at:

http://www.metamute.org/en/content/a_climatic_disorder_class_and_climate_change_in_newcastle

This is a crucial area of debate given that new and old coal fired power stations are still firmly on the agenda, and one which i imagine will be revisited at this year’s Camp for Climate Action.

Tues June 30th 2009. Yorkshire Evening Post

Weds 1st July 2009. Guardian

Thurs 2nd July 2009 Guardian

Friday 3rd July 2009 Guardian

Sat 4th July 2009 Guardian

Sat 4th July 2009 Yorkshire Post

Sat 4th July 2oo9 Yorkshire Post (Part II)