Our promise to our children:  We will do whatever it takes to nurture an intimate, intuitive and integrated understanding of the beauty, the capacity, complexity and the limits of our living planet and find ways to come to live within earth's bounds to the enduring benefit of all life.

 “Gardening class is where we learn how the world works” 

Year 4 Foodweb Education student describing the program to a new classmate.

Relearning how to live in and create cultures that are connected to and responsive to our biophysical conditions has been the foundation of our garden-based program for children called Foodweb Education and the driver behind our latest offering for parents and educators called Here. We. Are.

The Here We Are project is an invitation to be present, curious and humbled by both the awe and challenges our children and world offer us in every moment. Here We Are is an offering for time and resource poor parents, carers and educators; a heuristic to carry in their pocket to bring point and purpose, presence and connection with our children and life; a series of invitations to engage in bite-sized, rigorously researched but non-academic content; inspiring and practical exercises to guide ourselves and our children towards an integrated and intuitive understanding of how life and our world works.

As co-Founder of Foodweb Education I have now been working for over 20 years in ecological education, listening to and learning from my students and the gardens we grow together, as well as more recently, parenting my own two curious humans. The Here We Are project offers parents, carers and educators a roadmap for guiding children’s curiosity as we grow together. This is not a list of things we should and shouldn’t do but an attempt to acknowledge that the way we think needs to change. The roadmap I’m using to explore and catalyse this change is the phrase Here. We. Are.  Alive. At this place. In this moment. Together.

It seems incredibly simple but it can carry you to complex places, thoughts and feelings. Give it a go. Where does this phrase take you? 

 As part of this latest project I conferred with a number of insightful and well researched people to share how they sit with, play with and utilise the simple yet potent phrase Here. We. Are. as a poignant yet playful, succinct and exponentially expansive expression for exploring all that matters.

Here. We. Are. provides the roadmap I needed as a young person and I want to share it with others. This is an invitation to help me explore, develop and present this work so that it can be a part of as many people’s lives as possible. I have been reframing the content and pedagogical aims of our ecological literacy program to be captured by this phrase for eg.

Here -

belonging; brings you into your location and the present and opens up questions, observations, sensations of place, space and time

We -

relational, ecocentric worldview and challenging individualism, identifying who is here (human, more than human) and how are we in relation.

Are (To be, being, becoming) -

being; becoming; process philosophies; captures existential questions from science of living systems through to what it means to be a human.

Here. We. Are. is a collaborative project and I have not done this alone.  For this project I have drawn on and generously received contributions from some of the key figures that have inspired our work over the years from physicists to philosophers, authors to deathwalkers, First Nations thinkers to micro, bio and geo -ologists.  The amazing folks that have already contributed include Biochemist and author Professor Nick Lane, Geologist Marcia Bjonerud, Philosopher Biologist Andreas Weber, Yale Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Brandon Ogbunu, Astrophysicist Tom Murphy, Microbiologist Siv Watkins, systems ecologist Professor Bill Rees, Paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and senior editor of the scientific journal Nature Henry Gee, Writer and Executive Editor Humans & Nature Press Books Center for Humans & Nature Gavin Van Horn, Co-creator of Permaculture David Holmgren, author and thought leader Jeremy Lent, Deathwalker Zenith Virago, Eco-philospher Glenn Albrecht, proud First Nations K/Gamilaroi complexity thinker Josh Waters, botany professor Dr James White, educator extraordinaire Dr Cher HIll, wildlife biologist and author Dr Fred Provenza, Award winning science fiction author Laura Jean Mckay, ecological storyteller Sophie Strand, Biologist and author David George Haskell, theoretical physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad, mother-daughter Permaculture practivist team Morag and Maya Gamble and regenerative agriculturalist Charlie Massy.   I am so grateful for their efforts in the world and deeply humbled by their support for this project.  We cannot wait to share it with you all. 

The Here. We. Are. project is diving deeper into where this phrase can take us as parents and educators and will involve:

• Reframing and redeveloping the Foodweb Education curriculum and pedagogy.

• Creating Here. We. Are. video and audio content.

• Creating an open source website for the sharing of our resources.

• Releasing Here. We. Are. recordings from academics, educators, scientists, artists, activists dedicated to this work.

• Expanding and supporting our community for sharing, learning and unlearning together. 

So, here WE are. I need your help to make this happen.

Please consider supporting us to launch Here. We. Are. by becoming a founding member.

I am aiming to generate enough income through your support to dedicate one day per week to working on Here. We. Are. which means a community of around 100 people at $3 per week or a one off donation. So to become a founding member and key contributor to making this happen please follow this link

Please become a supporter and join this Community Supported Education project HERE or make a direct debit donation to

Foodweb Education

ML Floris

BSB: 633000

Account Number: 155 107 154

Thank you so much for your love and support.

Megan

What is Foodweb Education?

The Foodweb Education program aims to offer experiences for children to embody interdependency through gardening and cooking, eating and composting. Through gardening we become aware that we are participants in an integrated, complex, interdependent world, a living system whose processes, relationships, regulating properties, patterns of organisation are transferable to the wider world we live in. Our aim is that our students nurture their curiosity and develop an intimate understanding of the beauty, capacity and limits of our planet and acquire the confidence and skills, habits of mind and body to be creative with that knowledge. For more information of the Foodweb curriculum and pedagogy go HERE

We are now proudly in our 12th year of delivering a constantly evolving but rigorous program dedicated to providing educational opportunities to children through gardening that aim to transform our relationships to life and our understanding of the world. 

Recently we facilitated a free, online ecoliteracy community of practice in an attempt to ensure our work continues to evolve and be accessible. Understanding the mounting pressures on parents and educators, but also the overwhelming desire and drive for change amongst many in this cohort I have boiled our program down into three simple words that can capture the content and pedagogy of our program: Here. We. Are.

 We are building an open source website to house this exploration and provide activities and resources to help embody these understandings as well as build community around this. Aimed at resource, time and financially stretched parents and/or educators Here We Are will come as an invitation, invocation, investigation, meditation, incantation, provocation and inspiration  for learning and growing ourselves with our children and human and more than human communities.  From the science of living systems through to the universe story, from place based philosophies and pedagogies to permaculture. All of the resources and practices we have drawn on, developed and practiced over the last 20 years as ecological educators and also as parents will be offered within this exploration of Here We Are. It is a phrase for people to carry in their pocket and play around with or dive into and create entire educational or parenting frameworks around.  

YOU CAN BECOME A FOUNDING MEMBER HERE

Here We Are - with and for my brother Joel -

This project was started as a collaboration between my self and my two wonderfully talented and skilled brothers - Daniel and Joel. Shortly after starting my younger brother Joel was diagnosed with cancer. Three months later he died. Little did I realise how much more potency and depth the statement Here We Are would take on during this time and after and how dedicated Dan and I now are to making it happen - in memory and honour of our incredibly loving and beautiful brother Joel. Thank you again for your contribution.

What and how are our children learning about life and reality? Whether you are a parent, carer or educator you are teaching them about their reality and how to think about their reality so it’s important to interrogate exactly what are we teaching them. As systems ecologist William E. Rees. Professor Rees says “We have created a global culture which is antithetical to the function and constructs of the natural world” Are our children provided with opportunities to build their reality on how the world works? to observe and participate in the patterns and processes of the natural world rather than just on how we have socially constructed it?

We have all been gifted the privilege of life which should mean we learn and develop an integrated and intuitive understanding of how life and our world works. We should feel a part of it and be able to make decisions that ensure life on earth is nurtured not destroyed. This is a challenge for parents and educators, especially as often we ourselves have not been raised with such understandings and opportunities.

Here We Are is a chance for us to embrace this challenge.