Chris Wright: Manchester Green Pioneer
Article published: Tuesday, January 13th 2009
Last month Hulme-based charity Action for Sustainable Living (AfSL) beat off 550 nominees to win the Guardian Charity of the Year award. Mule talks to the charity’s founder Chris Wright about what this award means to him, the future of AfSL and the world…
Q How long have you lived in Manchester and why did you come here?
I was born in Nottinghamshire but spent a lot of my childhood in London. I moved here to take up a job as a social worker. I had previously worked in Suffolk and thought ‘Moss Side’ sounded equally rural!
Q When did you get involved in environmental campaigning?
My awareness goes back to the 70s with publications such as The Limits to Growth and the Ecologist’s Blueprint for Survival, but my active involvement came about in a slightly oblique way. In 1988 a colleague and I started a business providing support to people with learning disabilities (when I left in 2002 it employed over 500 people). Our main goal was to support people to access their local communities. That proved difficult, not least because, as I came to realise, it’s difficult for all of us because ‘community’ has all but disappeared. That led me to write a book called The Sufficient Community (Green Books 1997). Through writing that I came to realise that ‘community’ and ‘sustainability’ are opposite sides of the same coin. I also realised that the whole issue of how to change the way the world worked was so scary for most people that they either didn’t know where to start or they just went into denial. That led me to start a series of workshops called ‘But what can I do?’ in which participants were helped to work out their own personal action plan for living more sustainably. AfSL grew out of that experience. It’s amazing how, in the five years AfSL has been going, sustainability is now a word that is on everyone’s lips. That’s progress!
Q What environmental or social justice campaigning had you done before AfSL?
As a student I was actively involved in the anti-racist movement and then, as a social worker (and particularly running my own business) I was very much involved in how people with disabilities can realise themselves and participate equally in society. I also got involved in Manchester LETS – the alternative currency system. I’ve never been one to join mass movements and, while I can see their importance, I feel that my contribution is much more around working creatively with small groups of people.
Q What does this award mean for the charity?
Any social enterprise worth its salt believes it has something unique to offer, convincing the world of that is another matter entirely. This award is primarily about recognition and the confidence that brings that what we are doing is actually important and worth doing. It will also hopefully open doors so that we can both expand our activities and also participate in the wider debate about how to move towards a sustainable future.
Q What next for AfSL?
My vision would be that AfSL or something similar would be supporting projects around the country. That wouldn’t mean a corporate AfSL occupying a glass skyscraper called ‘head office’, rather it would be an umbrella under which a family of projects, sharing the same vision and values, could inspire and support each other. We are actively looking for opportunities to begin to translate that vision into reality.
Q What other are you involved in ?
AfSL is pretty much a full-time commitment right now – although I do have a number of other things I’m involved in. One scheme I would like to pioneer at some stage is the idea of a Community Trust; it is a common complaint that our high streets all look the same and that when one of the few remaining local businesses, greengrocers, butchers, etc. close the properties are immediately re-let as estate agents or restaurants. If there was a fund that local people could get money from to secure the premises then they could reopen as community facilities – a bit like Unicorn or The Eighth Day – that could be run with an input of volunteer labour – like charity shops – that would mean not only would prices be lower than supermarkets but food could be sourced locally (with maybe even the community providing labour on the farms to keep the costs even lower). Once it was up and running the community could purchase the shop via a community bond and the Community Trust could be paid back to help another local project.
Q How do you rate Manchester’s city councils’ approach to tackling climate change?
A sustainable future is going to be different from the kind of society we see today, much more community focused, so some of our existing ways of doing things are going to be redundant. As you would probably gather from the foregoing I don’t expect a great deal from the ‘big battalions’ whether that be national or local government, corporate business or whatever, apart from not putting too many obstacles in the way of what people are trying to do to create that new kind of future. Having said that we very much appreciate the financial and practical support that Trafford MBC have given us; they have shown real vision in recognising what we’re about and that we can reach people and organisations they can’t and, in the process, help them to meet their own targets. I’m afraid Manchester City Council have not shown similar vision which is sad considering we started in Chorlton.
Q What are your hopes and fears for the future?
For AfSL, as with any charity these days, there is always the very real possibility that we will run out of money. Our existence really is on a knife edge every year. That’s not a good environment in which to think about the future. Having said that I’m amazed at how far the debates about climate change and peak oil have penetrated into the national consciousness and I’m optimistic that we are on the threshold of real people taking real actions to change the way they live. Whether that will be enough to avert the kind of disaster that the doomsayers are prophesying, I don’t know; what I do know is that if we don’t try and make the effort, their predications almost certainly will come true.
Q Are you optimistic or pessimistic for the future in terms of the environmental and social justice movements?
I’m broadly optimistic. I believe people can do amazing things individually and collectively and that major change is possible very quickly
Q If you could give a message to people about tackling climate change what would it be?
My analogy would be think about the early days of the Industrial Revolution. A lot of individuals and groups were experimenting with the new insights that science was providing. Mainstream society thought they were mad and many of the projects did indeed verge on lunacy. Gradually, however, a consensus emerged about what worked, and a new language and way of looking at the world emerged, sweeping the old order away. We are in the same situation today. I don’t think anyone knows which of the very many experiments in sustainable living will succeed and provide the template for the future, but we are forging a new language and a new consensus. So my message would be if you have an idea, follow it up. It may not ultimately work, but it will undoubtedly have contributed to our overall knowledge and you will have been part of the solution rather than the problem.
Chris set up AfSL in 2006. To find out more visit www.afsl.org.uk.
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