INTERVIEW / 05
LANDSCAPE Barry Lupton interviews Sarah Prosser, Collective Impact Weaver at GIY
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arah Prosser has recently moved from Norway to take up an exciting new project post connected to GIY in Waterford. The project, centred on the development of a bioregional weaving lab, will seek to weave together the related but often disparate activities of communities and individuals who are seeking to give back to the landscape. I got a chance to chat with Sarah recently about what led her to Ireland and the project, and how the wider horticulture community might engage in this significant endeavour.
CAN YOU PROVIDE A LITTLE BACKGROUND ON YOUR WORK PRIOR TO ENGAGING WITH THE BIOREGIONAL WEAVING LAB PROJECT? It’s a bit of a mad mixture of things, but there is a common thread through it all to do with really seeing, believing and supporting people that want to make change for the common good. Immediately before the BWL project, I was working in Norway (where I lived for over 20 years) supporting community-driven social enterprises, affordable housing policy and an initiative called Partnership for Radical Innovation, which is about how the public sector can work for real long-term systems change. A jazz/oil/ geology art performance and the importance of sitting on doorsteps also featured.
YOU’VE HAD A VARIED AND INTERESTING CAREER TO DATE. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENTS? Probably the network of neighbourhood incubators, under the umbrella of Norway Unlimited, that proves what can happen if residents are provided with long-term support to start local initiatives and social enterprises based on their own experiences and passions. This work also influenced the whole field of social entrepreneurship and public participation in Norway. I’m also quite proud of the Human Rights Human Wrongs film festival I started that is now pretty impressive, and of an academic article I once wrote about ‘syn-rift sequences’ that has held its own over
10
HC / Summer 2022
the years and become a key reference for geologists!
YOU’RE TAKING A BRAVE STEP IN TAKING UP THE POST AND MOVING TO IRELAND. WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO DO SO? It doesn’t feel so brave, more like exciting. What motivated me was the chance to work in, and get joy from, the direct contact with a beautiful landscape and the lovely people that live within that, and yet at the same time be linked to a wide international network I knew from before and have real respect for. A second aspect was a desire to get a break after so long in Norway and to move to a country that is perhaps a closer emotional home to Scotland, where I grew up. Finally, I had looked around my flat in Norway and realised that if the time had come when my two children could move out, then so could I.
WHERE WILL YOU BE BASED WHEN YOU MAKE THE MOVE TO IRELAND? So far I have been incredibly lucky to have lived with two of the best views in Ireland. First, in a remote cabin near Graiguenamanagh looking out at the Blackstairs Mountains and, as I write, I’m in a ‘homestay’ flat overlooking the mesmerising Tramore Bay and strand. What comes next (July onwards) I don’t know – accommodation is a hard nut to crack in this country. I dream, maybe naively, of a tiny rural cabin turning up somewhere with some contact with nature.
A TOUGH CALL, BUT CAN YOU BRIEFLY EXPLAIN THE INTENTION OF THE PROJECT? This project looks at bioregions in different settings across Europe, and what it would mean to ‘weave’ local people, projects and places into a kind of movement that gives back to the landscapes and communities. Our vision is a biodiverse and climate positive future with healthy ecosystems, regenerative economies and thriving communities, where solutions that work with nature and communities in landscapes are the norm and scale widely. The mission of the overall project is to mobilise 1 million
