The growing SolarPunk movement is very much about creating a dialogue about a possible positive future – in other words, it’s very much about ‘education for sustainability, education for hope’:
We now live in an era where pragmatism is a radical stance. Thus Solarpunk seeks to cultivate a positive, hopeful, vision of a future rooted in technologies and culture of sustainability, yet in the context of what it acknowledges will be dramatic changes in our way of life due to Global Warming and the environmental malfeasance of the past, the transition to a renewables-based infrastructure, and the collapse of Industrial Age paradigms. A culture that has weathered the dramatic disruptions coming with the end of the Industrial Age, taken its sometimes bitter lessons from that, and found a way forward.
Solarpunk: Post-Industrial Design and Aesthetics | by Eric Hunting | Medium
It is deeply political – but in a deeply engaging and positive way:
Solarpunk as a deeply liberal, participatory movement for ecological sustainability / resilience / regenerativity. With its aesthetics, its design patterns, its budding architectural visions, its spirit of reconciliation between nature and tech, the solarpunk movement bears massive transformative potential.
Solarpunk can do what merely intellectual arguments of better governance, of democracy, even of ecological collapse and the natural sciences, cannot: entice the average person, in particular, the established and new middle classes from across the world.
10 Ways to Thoroughly “Solarpunk” Society | by Hanzi Freinacht | Jul, 2022 | Medium
And perhaps a way to ‘entice the average person’ can be done in the Sid Valley – with Sidmouth Solar Punk:
It is increasingly being seen as an alternative message to that of Extinction Rebellion. Solarpunk believes individuals and communities can make a difference. Sidmouth already has many of the things which a Solarpunk community would have on its wishlist but it hasn’t adopted the label.
Why Solarpunk? – Sidmouth Solarpunk
Is Sidmouth already Solarpunk? We believe it is.
Once you strip out any overtly ‘political’ aspects of Solarpunk what you are left with is something which is almost quintessentially British, at least for our older generations of which we have a good complement!
The underlying beliefs of Solarpunk are very much ‘mend and make-do’; prepare food from scratch; use local and seasonal food supplies; support your own community and try not to depend too much on the outside world; keep your area (the bit outside your house and any shared areas) clean, tidy and maintained; look after your environment and your neighbours both young and old.”
We have so much that fits the Solarpunk ideal.
Sidmouth being Solarpunk – Sidmouth Solarpunk
Solarpunk isn’t against innovation, in fact it embraces both it and new technology:
Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have (instead of 20th century “destroy it all and build something completely different” modernism).
Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto | Project Hieroglyph
In other words, this is all about ‘education for sustainability, education for hope’.
With some ideas here:
Sidmouth Solarpunk: project ideas – Sidmouth Solarpunk
SolarPunk and food waste – doing it locally – Sidmouth Solarpunk
SolarPunk and e-waste – doing it locally – Sidmouth Solarpunk