The days are long, the sun is hot, and we’re catching our breath here at GwyrddNi after our first round of Community Assemblies on the Climate.

The first assemblies were all about setting the solid foundation that’s needed for long-term co-working, co-creating and co-acting. With fifty members in each assembly we needed to get to know each other, to understand who everyone was, where they call home, why they joined the assembly.

It was truly an honour and a pleasure to meet so many people – some old friends and some brand new – in Bro Ffestiniog, Pen Llŷn, Dyffryn Nantlle, Dyffryn Ogwen and Dyffryn Peris. Each community made up of smaller communities, made up of talented, passionate and knowledgeable individuals. People who know their land, their people, their patch; people who want to protect it.

We started reflecting on our own experiences of climate change on a local level. What changes had people seen during their lifetimes? With time and space to give this thought each assembly came up with a raft of examples, from erosion of the coast with the ancient hillfort at Dinas Dinlle falling into the sea, to a garden fishpond that hadn’t frozen in five years. From the noticeable decline of insects on windscreens during the summer months to reading poetry about nature and realising that it didn’t feel relevant to our world today due to change in the seasons and biodiversity. Things are changing and people are noticing. 

At the first assemblies it was also important to hear about the projects and work of our partners in each area – Cwmni Bro Ffestiniog, Ynni Llŷn, Yr Orsaf, Partneriaeth Ogwen and Cyd Ynni. We also heard from other locals, Duncan Brown, Nia Williams, Bini Jones, Ceri Cunnington, Siôn Williams and Dr Gareth Wyn Jones to name but a few. People who shared knowledge, information and experience with us about biodiversity, changes in fishing patterns due to climate change, potential agricultural adaptations to climate change, community initiatives to reclaim the highstreet. You can head over to GwyrddNi’s YouTube channel to watch the presentations yourself – just go to YouTube and type in GwyrddNi. There are English and Welsh transcriptions available of the talks.

It was clear to see that there is an abundance of action already underway in the five communities, and that there is appetite for more. And so this is our springboard as we plan and prepare for the second round of assemblies where we will start to co-imagine the future. How might our communities look in 20, 40, 60 years’ time? How do we want them to look? And how do we get to that place?

They are big questions, but I have no doubt, based on our first assemblies, that the fifty people in each area can answer them, and can then work together to set out a path that will start our journey there. I think that Wales’ football team may well have been on the money when they said it; Together Stronger.

Grant Peisley
GwyrddNi Director – 21.07.22

Whatever your beliefs or walks in life, there can be little doubt that we are living in unprecedented times. Many are calling for unprecedented levels of change and innovation. The phrase ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you get what you’ve always got’ goes round my head a lot these days.

If we want to change our future in ways (and at speeds) that we’ve never had to before, then it would follow that we probably need to go about that change in less familiar ways too (like Community Assemblies for example)

You might see three simple phases to the difference: seeing, being and doing; Seeing differently, Being differently and Doing differently (like Community Assemblies for example.  

How might we ‘see differently’?

The part of society that GwyrddNi is working in is community. Could it even be the most important part of society? After all, it was through communities that society developed into what it is today.

And somehow, community, and that connection between us all, has been overlooked and undervalued. And I count myself guilty here too. Somehow, along the way, we’ve been divided. 

So what if we started seeing differently the ‘space between us’? Our community. What it is to be here (in Bro Ffestiniog in my case). What if we stepped into that space, and saw everything and everyone differently?

We recently held an online event called GwyrddNi: Ar Agor, to launch GwyrddNi in Bro Ffestiniog. It was a chance to talk for two minutes about ‘what’s getting under your skin?’. This is a tried and tested ‘testimony’ technique in People’s Assemblies and is about giving an equal voice to everyone in the group. It takes some getting used to for sure. But the principle is to open up a space where everybody’s opinion and experience are equally valid.

We talked about a bunch of stuff; funny, silly, serious and concerning.

Litter and dog foul seems to almost always come up in community meetings. So let’s jump into that for a moment and try to see differently. Litter and dog foul actually sit in the literal space between us. Could it also be a symbol of what gets in the way of us connecting with each other in this place? There are those who find it incomprehensible and infuriating. And those that don’t. This is impossible positional thinking in our very town, dictating our relationships, or lack thereof. It’s as if two tribes of the same human species are separated by a raging river, both set in the impossibility of a shared existence.

(I mean – look at the faces on these guys! What could happen next?)

Maybe that raging river wasn’t engineered by the two tribes, but grew there through inequality, a huge patchwork of traumas, gaps in opportunities, lack of positive experience and connection with everything.

Perhaps we could see differently, the invisible or less clear stuff: the litter and dog foul that actually gets picked up or wasn’t thrown in the first place. People that pick up the foul of others. Even to have a think about how we might be contributing to air quality and emissions and the ecology around us in less visible and in ways that are not as east to clean up. 

And there perhaps is our shared need. The reason to build bridges in the space between us all: the survival of our community. Because our inter-connections to each other could fix all this. Because then the next bit could start: Being differently and Doing differently. Whatever you imagine could be done. Just…differently.

Community Assemblies: Bro Ffestiniog – https://bit.ly/GwyrddNiFfestiniog – sign up for a chance to help shape the future together. 

What is a Community Assembly?

Assembly. It’s a word we hear often these days, and a word that conjures images of the Senedd in Cardiff Bay or a school hall I’m sure. But what does the word assembly actually mean? 

The Oxford English Dictionary states that in essence it’s a very simple thing; a group of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose. And that’s exactly what we’re planning at the moment; Community Assemblies. There are other names given to these types of democratic groups working together, such as jury, panel, or forum, but for us it’s the community that’s at the heart of it all, so we’ve called ours Community Assemblies. 

We plan on hosting four Community Assemblies on the Climate in five areas of Gwynedd in 2022-2023, and those areas are Pen Llŷn, Bro Ffestiniog, Dyffryn Nantlle, Dyffryn Ogwen and Dyffryn Peris. The Assemblies will be an opportunity for people to come together to share, learn, listen, talk and plan, before taking action, and the topic of the day is the climate emergency. 

It’s important to note that we, GwyrddNi, are a movement that’s part of social enterprise DEG (Datblygiadau Egni Gwledig), and GwyrddNi is funded by The National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund. So the Assemblies are not of a political nature – the aim is to create a clear set of positive actions for the community, to be delivered by the community for the benefit of the whole.

This way of working together already has, and continues to work successfully around the globe. Did you hear about the Climate Assembly UK? Their aim was to make recommendations to the UK Government of how to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050, and was made into a TV programme on the BBC, ‘The People V Climate Change’. Or you may have heard of the Climate Jury held online in Kendal, or the Decitizenship in Brazil, which looked at access to culture. The first assembly of this nature held in Wales was the Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly, which took place in March last year. If you’re interested you can find more examples of such assemblies across the UK here, and across the world here. 

Clearly there is no way of getting all the people of an area such as Pen Llŷn into one room, so say if 500 people register an interest, who gets to attend? Well, people are chosen to take part in order to ensure that the Assemblies reflect the wider community, taking into account demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity and so on, and sometimes opinions as well, for example your view on climate change. But if you’re not chosen to attend, don’t despair, there will be opportunities for the wider community to take part before, during and after the assemblies too. 

We hope you agree that this is an exciting and interesting opportunity for us here in Gwynedd! We’re working on the logistics at the moment and look forward to sharing more information very soon, but in the meantime, if you live in one of these areas and you’d like to attend your local Community Assembly on the Climate please contact your local Climate Action Facilitator on email or phone to let them know – they’ll be happy to hear from you.