The Story So Far

The BWL Collective was born in 2019, and Mick Kelly (Ashoka-fellow, and founder of Grow It Yourself) participated in the beginning of the concept. From this, a BWL Waterford was launched in 2022 (being hosted by GIY). The initiative began with the employment of one weaver (Sarah Prosser) to sense the need and interest for a BWL with local stakeholders.

From there, we held workshops for sensing the bioregion’s people, places, and projects for potential systemic change and collective impact.  We used maps and systemic innovation tools and methods for collective visioning. We asked: 

  • What are the challenges of our landscape and our communities within it? 
  • What has been done already? 
  • What is needed next?

The knowledge was then harvested and trends were identified from the discussions that emerged from this workshop, to reveal patterns of where there is a need and motivation to do more. System leverage points that were identified by participants were then clustered into common themes. This fed into the possible actions that we identified, including possible pilot projects and investigations for an evidence-base to the work.

In order to carry out collective impact, we need a common vision and principles. For this reason, we asked what is our common intent? Our common principles? and more simply, who are we? So in September 2022 we met to write a co-owned vision, a manifesto. We used personal manifestos (what I know, what I believe, what I want) and the Four Returns framework, finally arriving at our co-written Food Manifesto

In early 2023, we asked, what pockets of the future do we want to lift into the mainstream, and how? This reinforced the need for the BWL as a support platform, which supports an ecosystem of innovations led by local communities. 

From all of the work in 2022 and early 2023, emerged our portfolio of concepts, which were collectively developed overtime through smaller group meetings and individual conversations.

Later in 2023, as our partnerships expanded and developed, we began the process of establishing ourselves as a separate entity, no longer being hosted by GIY, and we developed a 3 year perspective.  

We also began our workstream in the Dairy Deep Demonstration Flagship, led by Climate KIC with Dept. of Ag., Food and Marine, which ran from September 2023 to March 2024.

In early 2024, we combined the emerging ideas and manifesto into a Landscape Plan (as proven effective in other regions), which is divided into an analysis of the bioregion (Part A), and a strategy going forward (Part B). In this process, we drew learnings and inspiration from knowledge exchanges with other bioregions in Europe, on their pathways to change, and inspiring social innovations.

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