Changing Lifestyles with Globally Local

• Jun. 8 by Oliver Appleby (0)

‘Globally Local manages a number of businesses and social activities directly, and supports and promotes others who are in the business of changing the world for the better’

I caught up with Spearhead of the initiative Malcolm Currie yesterday in the new premises of ‘Changing Lifestyles’ in Birmingham’s Lower Loveday Street, to discuss what he hoped to achieve both in the short and long term of the project, and what steps were being made to promote the alternative lifestyle of “clean, sustainable living”.

The premises themselves are a hive of activity as I ventured further from the shop front to the back yard where many sculptures and decorations were being produced for various Birmingham school sustainability competitions the cause was supporting, into the workshops where I met placement students Taslim and Susie who have been working at the initiative to support their degrees in Fashion and E-Business at BCU and Aston respectively. Showing the variety of activity of local expertise in use at Globally Local.

Malcolm stated Globally local is about  ”linking the thinking and the principles about sustainability to the practice. We’re not terribly good at that, so we use the four ‘F’ themes; Food, Fashion, Fuel and Finance as a means of delivering that message, but under each of those we do something practical”

The Changing Lifestyles building will host workshops aimed at building up and strengthening relationships with the local community.

“We seem to have lost a lot of basic craft skills in this country, for instance Terra Planna had to go abroad to get their shoes made because we’d lost a lot of our shoe making skills, so the workshop will help people regain some of those basic skills”

Promoting  basic craft skills as well as susatainability and recycling, through fashion and crafts, examples of which are displayed and for sale in the shop front on the bottom floor. Ranging from trainers made from recycled goods, to cork umbrellas, plates unbelievabley made from recycled cardboard, upholstery made from disgarded Saris and handbags made from old Virgin Atlantic seat covers, well worth checking out.

A veritable museam of resuable – recycleable wonder.

“The Cork range also promotes the Cork/Oak eco system which is under threat as people are buying plastics for use where cork was used previously, so we’re opening up a new channel for Cork, fabric”

The group is working to help small companies with the same vision of a sustainable future co -founding the Midlands Eco-Partnership, which Malcolm describes as;

“a small business network, just off the ground, small companies who are making sustainable products or developing sustainable practices, waste vegetable oil is one example, recycled printing inks, one member is developing packaging to substitute biodegradable polystyrene used in the food industry, it’s at that sort of level we would work with and support these small companies”

“teaching the world how to look after trees, rather than cutting them down, we neglect trees, they’re central to most eco-systems in the world”

When asked what aspirations the Changing Lifestlyes project has withinh the grander scheme of Globally Local “We felt the need to take on the premises as a base, and to showcase and retail products that we like, office space and somewhere to launch our magazine ‘The World of Trees’ developing it into an Eco-magazine online, globally teaching the world how to look after trees, rather than cutting them down, we neglect trees, they’re central to most eco-systems in the world, i think the names quite appropriate” ”

“We want to change the world, my view is that the real changesare from the bottom up, byand large with a few exceptions they are coming from small activities, small scale, small businesses, community groups. Unfortuneatley most big institutions are moribund beauracratic, and frankly belong to a previous age, they don’t function the way we need things to function, you proliferate, have offshoots you don’t simply go bigger and bigger and bigger because you’ll end up doing what everybody else does”

The variety and scope of the globally local enterprise extending way beyond our shores with links into Japan, Portugal and South Africa.

“The Japanese CTXs bring together local government; large and small businesses; university research programmes; community activists; media, with the aim of sharing advances in cleaner and low energy technnologies.

The West Midlands region hosts research and development in a number of new environmentally friendly materials, and new energy systems.

The aim of the meeting is to forge new partnerships to develop these energy systems, and new products, by exchanging technological information and manufacturing know-how”

ile:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/a06349841/Desktop/Globally%20local%20vidcast_0001.wmv