Vision
We Are Avon envisions a bioregion that is coming back to life through regenerative agriculture and community river guardianship. By 2030 we will not only shift the region’s food supply towards majority local and regenerative, but we will also transform together our connection to place and belonging, shifting the story of humans as consumers to humans as regenerators and citizens of place.
The broader vision is for this to inspire (through example) a web of regenerative bioregions across the UK (e.g. We Are Exmoor) that are together modelling the transformations of agri-cultural systems. This ecological and cultural regeneration work is being led by diverse communities of landworkers, citizens, emergent organisations and custodians of a human-earth relationship worth salvaging, restoring and enlivening towards beautiful symbiosis.
Community-led action
There is a great power in community solutions rooted from the food on our plates and the land on our doorsteps. This is a grassroots place-based project that can complement and feed into the necessary global/systemic shifts. Not everyone has great access to nature, but we all connect to food in some way and can create opportunities to connect to land we stand upon. From this reconnection sparks engagement, solutions action and collaborative transformation of the nature ‘crisis’ into active hope.
Regional Resilience
This project is rooted deeply in community need and directly responsive to this as it evolves with the context. We cannot tackle and address all needs in the old mechanistic way of problem-reaction-solution or linear thinking. The ‘threats’ to communities and people do not exist in isolation and neither do their solutions, but we can facilitate the underlying conditions whereby communities are more resilient to the challenges and injustices of this century.
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For example we can meet the cost of living crisis better together through the sliding scale producer co-operative proposed in this project, and support those in need as the diverse challenges emerge. We Are Avon is defined as a project of community resilience, but not in a prescriptive, paternalistic or charitable way.
The fundamental premise of We Are Avon is instead the belief in the gifts and potential of humans as regenerators and active participators in life. A fundamental human need exists within the right to a healthy environment, bioregion and social context within which they can thrive. These enabling conditions can be cultivated through collaborative action starting with the land and our food systems, thus allowing for community and individual needs to be met within a flourishing biosphere.
