Growing the Gift Economy in Fife
While the official government of the U.K. is caught up in the fear-based mentality of scarcity and austerity, ordinary people are quite happily tending the seeds of a much happier and healthier society. As the Labour party threatens to sell off allotments in their ideas of a ‘realistic’ economy, groups in Fife are demonstrating how gardening and radical self care offer another way of being.
CLEAR - Community Led Environmental Action & Regeneration – began with a couple of blokes in a pub setting the world aright. These guys, along with their wives and friends, put their talk into action by starting with cleaning up their local area. What is now a vibrant organisation, which currently hosts two community gardens and has planted thousands of trees and flowers across Buckhaven & Methil, has humble roots with a just few folk doing volunteer litter picking. From there, the focus on the group expanded outwards making connections both with those most in need and those who might be able to give support.
Teaming up with Fife Council, CLEAR was granted a playpark in Buckhaven which the local community were more than happy to see converted from a site of antisocial behaviour into a thriving community garden with a good strong fence to protect the plants and people within. As the gardens have grown, antisocial behaviour has dropped. Regular open days make it clear that everyone is welcome to participate. Volunteers are made up of retired folk, excluded school children, people with various disabilities and/or mental health issues and others who have time to share and feel drawn to these safe and uplifting spaces.
CLEAR have been very successful at funding bids to support cultural and education projects, including beautiful murals, which link the economic history of Buckhaven and Methil in fishing and coal mining industries, with the beauty and abundance of nature. Kalyani Pauline Normand, who worked for CLEAR for 12 years, tells me how she’s seen a shift in the culture with more people eating fresh fruits and vegetables and generally caring more for themselves and those around them. As we all know, economic and other forms of oppression are traumatic and can lead to harming self and others. This community project is helping to heal intergenerational trauma and supporting local people, especially young people, to thrive.
The fire brigade in Methil observed that within six months of the CLEAR community garden’s establishment in the community, the regular fires set by disaffected and youth disappeared. The fire station is now surrounded by a community orchard and planters growing vegetables for the local community to harvest. The project continues to grow, developing a bike workshop and woodworking space to help others develop empowering skills and connect with others. CLEAR was also instrumental in encouraging local people to speak up and help bring back train services to their communities.
In addition to her gardening skills, Kalyani is a heart meditation facilitator. She is part of a team of heart teachers, including myself, which are organising a weekend of fundraising yoga fun days on the Falkland Estate on 23rd and 24th August. Enjoying heart yoga and mediation, singing and dancing, earth connection and more, we are raising money for both for CLEAR and for the Heart Of Living Yoga Foundation which supports similar self-sufficiency and empowerment projects in underprivileged communities in Sri Lanka, Brasil, India & the U.K. Heart Of Living Yoga also funds mini-retreats for NHS staff and other carers, including one on the Falkland Estate on 4th September this year.
Heart Of Living Yoga was founded by Padma Devi whose call for a new economy is “I give, you give, we all receive.” This gift economy approach is part of traditional yoga which is an indigenous science open to anyone. Potawatomi ethno-botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer offers a similar take in her brilliant book on gift economies, The Serviceberry:
“The next stage of human economy will parallel what we are beginning to understand about nature. It will call forth the gifts of each of us; it will emphasize cooperation over competition; it will encourage circulation over hoarding; and it will be cyclical, not linear. Money may not disappear anytime soon, but it will serve a diminished role even as it takes on more of the properties of the gift. The economy will shrink, and our lives will grow.”
Padma also emphasises the importance of “Creating and connecting circles of coherence.” She adds, “Heart-centred yoga and meditation, and other forms of radical self care can often help to soothe over-anxious brains and nervous systems and even rebalance behaviour patterns that may stem from past experiences. These ancient heart-centred teachings from India bring us into coherence and reconnection with ourselves, our relationships with others and our relationship with the earth.”
To find out more about the upcoming heart days in Fife on 23rd and 24th August, as well as the NHS and carers day in September, please visit https://heartoflivingyoga.com/scotland
And if you would like to explore revolutionary love and gift economies, in a two part discussion of The Serviceberry with Vishwam and friends online, you can find out more and book your place at https://flowingwithlife.org/events
