Exciting news from The Disability Community! 🇨🇦

The Disability Bulletin Issue #1 is now out – a grassroots Canadian newspaper created by (ODSPoor) & (emilypot)

Read it here 👇
https://linktr.ee/thedisabilitybulletin

https://3mpwrapp.pages.dev/community/

#CommunityLed #Disability

We are *super* excited for this event
on Friday, teaming up with Cooperative Alternatives and Positive Carrickfergus to share and explore the glimpses of a better, thriving, resilient future already emerging across community projects in Northern Ireland.

It's not too late to join us for The Future's Already Here: Communities Stepping into their power, a lively one-day event in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, to connect, inspire and make visible the change that's happening.

Hear projects reinventing food systems, land and energy, showing the power of collective action, and our awesome keynote Anne Ryan, author of Enough is Plenty and an advocate of the care economy.

Find the programme and link to book here: https://events.transitionmovement.org/transition-together/futureshere/ . and if it's too far to travel, we'll be sharing some of the highlights next week.

#northernireland #carrick #transitiontown #communityled #communityaction #communitypower #climateaction #communityenergy #futureshere #inperson #changemakers

I've volunteered at past work parties at #WellandCommunityOrchard in the past.

This Sunday, I'm taking Mom there for a Summer trees pruning workshop. It's free for seniors & disabled folks to attend 🙂

Gather, harvest, and learn at one of the largest and most diverse #CommunityOrchards in #Canada. Once the backyard of local #conservationist Rex Welland, the #orchard is home to nearly 200 #FruitTrees and vines, including many rare varieties of apple, pear, plum, fig, grape, hazelnut, kiwi, paw paw, and more.
It was Rex’s vision to have his land loved, used, and #stewarded by the public, and since 2013 we’ve been working with the Town of #ViewRoyal to turn the orchard into a #CommunityResource.

https://lifecyclesproject.ca/our-projects/welland-community-orchard

#CommunityBased #CommunityBuilding #CommunitySharing #Wsanec #LekwungenTerritory #Saanich #VancouverIsland #VanIsle #FoodSecurity #PacificNorthwest #PNW #BritishColumbia #CommunityLed #LifecyclesProject #YYJ

Was really sorry to have missed the actual event, but glad there's a video recording available which I'd highly recommend to everyone interested in #communityled open access:

"Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About #OpenAccess Publishing (but were afraid to ask)"

a wonderful and inspiring conversation between esteemed former @copim and @openbookcollect colleague and co-Director of punctum books, Eileen A. Fradenburg Joy, Matthew Cheney ( @melikhovo ), Director of Interdisciplinary Studies, and Robin deRosa ( @actualham ), Director of Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative @OpenCoLab at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire, USA, discussing their experiences with #OAbooks publishing.

Some important truths mentioned in here, e.g. the notion of Neoliberalism, which Eileen, via Wendy Brown, neatly summarises as "everything can, and will be monetised", and which is the main characteristic of large commercial publishing conglomerates such as #Elsevier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhqEOgc9Gsg

And the wheels of the conglomeratisation machine keep turning ...

Following the recent (2022) acquisition of Ubiquity,

DeGruyter and Brill now "have joined forces to form De Gruyter Brill" ...

Purportedly, this "also allows the publisher to accelerate the transition to open access and fund technology investments for the benefit of the scholarly community".

Read: their shareholder's profits. 😑

Yet another step towards the corporate enclosure of publishing

... and another reason why our work to establish alternative #communityled #nonprofit #openinfra initiatives such as @copim's @openbookcollect and @Thoth_metadata
is so important!

https://www.degruyter.com/publishing/about-us/press/press-releases/de-gruyter-brill-begins-here

Putting justice at the heart of Transition - what does that really mean? How does it show up in our community-level action? What do we need to change to make it happen?

Just Transition Lead Rona Hardie joined us in the autumn and has been exploring these big questions:

“I want to work alongside those engaging in community-led change to see how a Just Transition approach can be so much more than a tickbox exercise. Rather than being a barrier, it’s an opportunity to strengthen and grow our work for transformation. It is an opportunity to hear and embrace the full range of life experiences and needs, so that we can work to transform the inequality and oppression in current ways of doing things into a better, thriving, resilient future for everyone.”

https://transitiontogether.org.uk/putting-justice-at-the-heart-of-transition/

#transitiontown #justtransition #socialjustice #justice #equity #transition #transitiontowns #communityled #resilience

Really excited to have a number of blog posts out today!

First of these is a brief recap on the Thoth Publishers' Workshop held on Nov 16, 2023

We're grateful for all participating publishers, and are looking forward to more workshops to discuss publishers' needs, and potential #communityled solutions to the issues of #OAbooks #metadata creation, management and dissemination, as well as archiving options for small and #scholarled presses and publishing initiatives that otherwise wouldn't have an option to cover these topics. #MetadataMatters

https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/thoth-publishers-workshop-2023/release/1