There was an interesting thread on LinkedIn last week, discussing things like Wales’ relience on imported fruit and vegetables. Predominantly Brexit-related issues, but it did spark a few comments about what Wales could and should be producing. And it led me to consider whether public procurement in Wales should only incorporate vegetarian or vegan products đ¤
So, after posting on LinkedIn that I was thinking about starting a petition, I did it.
Petitions in Wales
The petition functionality on the Senedd website is really user-friendly. I think that this system can help our elected representatives judge the mood and salience of particular topics, and it also helps citizens feel as though topics of interest are being properly considered, and could even be debated in the Senedd.
The process was straightforward; write some text about the petition, along with any supplementary information. Then find two people who are prepared to support your position.
We know that around ÂŁ85 million worth of food is procured by the public sector in Wales every year. This presents a brilliant opportunity for Welsh food producers. It also provides public bodies with an opportunity to influence the eating experience and the health of some of the most vulnerable in society (including people in hospital and people in schools); and to influence the strategic direction of food and agricultural policy in Wales.
My petition asks the Senedd to consider making all public procurement of food in Wales vegetarian or vegan, and there’s a few reasons for that.
The climate impact of meat
The fact that meat products produce much greater amounts of greenhouse gas emissions is well known.
A 2023 WCPP report highlighted that farming in Wales consists of mostly sheep and cattle grazing, with just 6% of farms devoted to crops and horticulture. This is despite the classification of 20% of land in Wales as grades 1-3a in the Agricultural Land Classification, defined as ‘best and most versatile’, that can sustain food and non-food crops.
Only 5% of the beef and lamb produced in Wales is eaten here; most is eaten in the rest of the UK, with significant amounts exported.
Astonishingly, given the increasing awareness of the climate crisis, emissions from agriculture in Wales have increased since 2016.
If the public sector in Wales procured only vegetarian or vegan food, it would signify a strong policy shift, and help support fruit, vegetable and dairy producers in Wales.
Some hospitals in England have recently been discovered to have been serving meat with chemicals associated with the development of cancer.
Eliminating meat products from the procurement chain of the public sector would improve the health choices of thousands of people in Wales, improving the long-term outcomes for individuals, and also for demand on the NHS.
Use your democratic mandate!
If, like me, you believe that every policy lever on health, well-being and climate change, needs to be pulled simultaneously, it’s hard to get away from the fact that Wales’ agriculture system will need to be re-tooled, away from predominantly meat production, and towards more fruit and vegetables.
The Senedd petitions platform gives the people of Wales the opportunity to pressure politicians directly about the sorts of changes we believe need to take place.
I’d appreciate you lending your support to this petition đđ
Update 5 September
One of my friends kindly brought to my attention that a similar call has been made by hundreds of academics, to the food served by UK universities. The link to the Guardian article is here.
A radical digital syllabus for primary education in Wales
I recently undertook some training on futures thinking. I was struck by the following statement about how to consider ‘futures’:
Start with where you want to be, not where youâre coming from.
The basis of this post is the sort of skills and confidence that I would like my children to possess within the digital space. And the digital head-start I want to see for my own children, I’d also like for every child in Wales âĽď¸đ´ó §ó ˘ó ˇó Źó łó ż.
I want kids to feel comfortable in an increasingly digital world; to understand the concepts that underpin the systems we use every day; and to question established ways of doing things.
I know next to nothing about formal education, but I’m passionate about digital, and particularly about equity in digital. I believe that open source software can be an astonishingly powerful ‘leveler’ for those who lack access to financial or hardware resources. (Hint – that’s many tens of thousands of children in Wales, and it’s billions across the world).
Why open source? Well – it’s free from licensing or restrictions, so there are no financial implications from using it. The code is also open, which means that learners and teachers can play with the code. In the Welsh context, I think this means better learning outcomes, as well as the potential to translate any open source tools or platforms into Welsh. Neat!
Within the European context, Wales is a poor country within a unitary state that seems to be getting poorer by the year. We don’t have the luxury of being able to throw limitless cash at our education system. While I’m certainly not advocating short-changing the sector, I do feel that embracing open source software and learning does give us the opportunity to radically change our approach for low cost and positive outcomes.
Once we accept that premise, the next logical step – specifically when considering our approach to education and digital/tech – is to embrace open source software at all stages of education. And why not start with primary school?
My influence in this sector is pretty minimal. Yes, I sit on the Welsh Government ‘Equity in STEM Board‘, but I’m not an educationalist. In reality my influence is limited mostly to how I can support my own children in their understanding of digital tools and techniques.
And that’s what brings me to the focus of this post; how can I best support the learning of my own children; and what could that lead me to suggest for others?
The current approach
Before I describe my own manifesto, I want to be clear that this isn’t a criticism in any way about how tech is currently being taught in primary schools.
Educators can’t possibly be specialists in every topic, and it’s only by luck of my own career path, intense curiosity, and suggestions from others, that I’ve learnt as much as I have.
However I believe that everything I describe here is implementable within any small educational establishment anywhere in Wales. I’d like to describe the possible, in the hope that somebody is interested in discussing what it would take to pilot the ideas, or to take them and run with them in a different form.
Step 0: Reusing old hardware by installing Linux
Before going any further, I should let you know what hardware my kids are using. They’re both on laptops that are reasonably old – nearly ten years in one case, and nearly fifteen years in the other.
A windows installation on either would render them more or less unusable. However a 10-minute process is all that’s needed to pop a linux distro onto them.
An additional bonus of using Linux is that they are already ready to question why they should use windows or other systems.
The first thing I’m expecting of my own kids is to be able to touchtype. Nothing radical about that perhaps, but I’m directing them towards the Dvorak keyboard.
It’s entirely possible that tech advances will render the keyboard obsolete in the next decade or two; but still, in the interim, I am keen to maintain healthy and pain-free hands, wrists and arms for my children. If there’s no downside to Dvorak touchtyping, and a possible upside with reduced health problems in future, why not?
An additional bonus of this approach is to imbue in young minds the understanding that it can be a benefit to do things in a way that’s different to the dominant way of doing things.
Step 2: Logseq
I’ve had it with linear documents. We generate documents that have to be read top to bottom; we make notes on them that go into other linear documents that we then forget about….it’s not how our brains work.
That’s why I love tools like Logseq. It enables notes and journals to be taken that are then linked to existing knowledge, allowing the creation of incredible knowledge graphs.
How hard is it to use? Well, one of my children started using it when they were seven, so if you’re able to read this blog post, it’s not beyond you either!
My personal Logseq knowledge graph. Each blob represents a person, organisation or concept, and the lines are the links between them.
I’ve found Logseq an invaluable tool to support managing meetings, research, information….my top tip for productivity in fact! I wish it had been available for me when I was in primary school.
I think the use of this tool can help with learning to learn; with making connections between concepts, people and personal experiences.
Step 3: WordPress website
Noting that my kids are still at step 1 or 2, and that all the rest of these ideas have yet to be tested, my third step would be to spin up a WordPress website.
(I would get them to install on a subdomain via cpanel on my existing shared server, but for most people I understand this would be a stretch. That’s why I would recommend using Pikapods (or another one-click installer) to do the heavy lifting for you.)
For just over ÂŁ1/month, you can have your own WordPress blog and website to play around with. A great way to experiment with themes and blogging – and more important still, to have the conversation about what’s appropriate to publish.
Step 4: Minecraft server? Video production? Animation?
Once my children have got the basics of Linux, touchtyping and web publishing, I would be guided by their own interests. I hear that Minecraft is a popular platform and is used in existing education settings. Why not download and install on a raspberry pi on an online server?
An image generated by the open source Blender package
By this stage, I would hope that they are starting to take their education in their own directions. I think some of the most powerful educational motivators are curiosity and success, along with support and guidance. By taking these steps, they will already have glimpsed some of the possibilities of the digital world, empowering them with the confidence to ask their own questions and set their own challenges
Where does Wales want to be?
I started this blog post with a provocation; where do we want to be? What we want for the children of Wales will be what decides their future – and the future of Wales itself.
I’d like to see our education system truly reflect the ideals of the Future Generations Act. Let’s embrace open source as part of our education, and give young people the best possible start đ§đ§đŚđ§ âđ´ó §ó ˘ó ˇó Źó łó ż
Culture has a uniquely defined place within Walesâ statute, being defined as one of the Well-being Goals within the Well-being of Future Generations Act [1]:
A Wales of Vibrant Culture and Thriving Welsh Language: A society that promotes and protects culture, heritage and the Welsh language, and which encourages people to participate in the arts, and sports and recreation [2]
Nature is also embedded within the same legislation, although somewhat more nuanced; I read the two goals of a Resilient Wales and a Globally Responsible Wales as having significant weight for the protection and enhancement of our natural environment.
Both culture and nature are interconnected with every other Future Generations Goal. Enhancing both improves the ability of Wales to achieve the ultimate goal of well-being for all our citizens.
So far, so positive. However, the difficulty with policy is, as usual, in the implementation. Although public sector bodies are obliged to report on their progress against sustainable development and the Well-being Objectives [3] there are doubtless numerous challenges in undertaking this assessment, not least because some things, such as the value of culture and nature, are so hard to quantify.
The Well-being of Future Generations guidance gives a potential âloopholeâ for those public bodies that are unable to – say – achieve significant progress in promoting culture and nature, because the requirement to take âall reasonable stepsâ to deliver progress is a fairly subjective approach. An entirely legitimate strategy to deliver against public sector obligations could therefore include strong progress against âhardâ goals or objectives such as âprosperityâ, âequalityâ or âhealthâ, all of which can be measured to a reasonably objective standard; and less progress against more challenging goals such as culture.
I make this point for purely illustrative purposes; I have no reason to believe that any public sector body in Wales takes a cynical approach to their obligations. However I think the illustration is useful because it highlights that the âmeasurabilityâ of objectives or goals is also a lever with which progress can be mandated. Galileo Galileiâs aphorism of five hundred years ago is still relevant today:
âMeasure what is measurable; make measurable what is not soâ.
Culture is hard to define and considerably harder to measure. Building on the thoughts of others, and in particular on UNESCO definitions [5], I have created a mind map that attempts to contain cultural sectors that could – in principle – be valued to help us understand impact.
The Cultural economy as defined by Afallen. Note that this economic sector is just one component of a âfive economiesâ model that we are developing that includes a Just economy, a Foundational economy, a Planetary Health economy and a Well-being economy. The well-being indicators [6] are highlighted in yellow; the Welsh TOMs [7] components are highlighted in purple.
Even with the work of reputable organisations that try to support the valuation of socially valuable contributions, such as the National Social Value Framework for Wales [7], very few of the cultural components within our cultural economy mind map have a monetary value associated with them.
This is despite the fact that, as with nature, culture provides extraordinary benefits to health and well-being that far exceed the investment needed to allow culture to flourish.
An example particularly pertinent to Wales is the value of the Welsh language. Derided for centuries as an irrelevance or worse by some, the Welsh language is now being rightly cherished as a wonderful community and social asset in its own right. Furthermore there is now a mountain of peer-reviewed evidence demonstrating that bilingualism offers a whole host of benefits to health, educational attainment and well-being.
A systems map demonstrating some of the benefits of the Welsh language to a range of socio-economic and well-being outcomes [8]
If itâs true that bilingualism offers so many benefits, how can we evidence this in a way that increases the perceived value of the Welsh language to public and private sector organisations in Wales. And the bigger question; if some of these benefits also arise for other cultural aspects, how can the cultural sector as a whole improve the evidence base for outcomes that benefit every one of us? For example, how can we ârewardâ culture and society for playing a crucial role in mitigating the loneliness and isolation that occurred during the pandemic lockdowns? How do we value the interventions that reduce the future burden of mental health on our health services and on society more generally?
I donât pretend to have the answers, but I do have some ideas about things that may help guide us.
Carry out a project to collate the peer-reviewed evidence on the benefits of bilingualism, and to try to develop a metric for assessing the value of different interventions to support or facilitate the use of Welsh language. This could be done in partnership with established âsocial valueâ organisations, or as a stand-alone
Take the latest evidence from international bodies such as the G20 [9], UNESCO [10] and the OECD [11] that carry out work to examine the accounting of cultural value, and use the best international practices in cultural accounting to supplement existing frameworks in Wales
Incorporate the outcomes of the above two projects into the Future Generations guidance to support public sector bodies in understanding and appropriately valuing their contributions to culture, and therefore wider society, economy and well-being
In a previous life, I worked at the European Environment Agency, an organisation which helped translate science into policy. I was part of a fierce internal debate about the merits of trying to assign a value to nature and ecosystem services, and at the time I was convinced that we needed to engage with the world of âaccountingâ (in its most general sense) in order to make the case for valuing nature more highly.
Notwithstanding that myself and a colleague were able to demonstrate the staggeringly powerful impacts of the Montreal Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as showing the terrible price paid for the use of lead in petrol [12], I now believe that I was wrong. Attempting to value nature, and ecosystem services, feels as though it is a trap laid by an extractive system that attempts to create a framework of worth against which everything can be bought and sold.
But the value of a tree, a woodland, a river, an ant colony; these things have intrinsic worth, and the myriad of inter-relationships between them and the rest of the ecosystem (and hence to human society) are truly impossible to calculate. We know that experiencing nature, even in the most ephemeral ways, improves physical and mental well-being [13][14], so there must be an âin principleâ metric that enables us to value the reduced need for medical intervention, that would enable us to argue more effectively for increased green space.
My contention is that, due to an inefficient understanding or methodological approach, we will always be playing âcatch upâ on the valuation of our natural resources. This raises the risk of âplaying the gameâ of an accounting system that systematically undervalues nature, so that decisions continue to be made that jeopardise Walesâ ability to provide well-being to its citizens..
I think the same argument can be made about attempts to assess the economic value of culture. In doing so, we run the risk of reducing the argument for a strong and thriving cultural sector to a game of numbers, where winners and losers are apportioned according to their ability to navigate different accounting systems.
And yet; decisions are made within frameworks that use accounting to apportion effort and resource. If we resile from making arguments within those institutions and frameworks, we might obtain outcomes that are not conducive to creating the conditions that allow a flourishing of both culture and nature.
I can see the inherent contradictions in wanting to value the intangibles such as wonder, companionship, and fulfilment that arise from participation in culture or nature, but for now I can see no way out of the conundrum.
Perhaps by travelling a little further down the road of seeking to assess and account for these things, we can develop our understanding and make new connections between groups, communities and concepts that will strengthen societyâs appreciation of culture and nature.
Nature provides every single one of our most basic human needs; food, shelter, water and air. It provides incalculable joy and wonder. Culture elevates us as thinking, caring beings of community, providing cohesion and enabling us to communicate and coordinate in mind-bogglingly sophisticated ways. In our quest to ascribe value, we must never lose sight of the intangible.
I’m late to the VUCA party – the acronym was coined in 1987 to reflect Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity1. I’ve since come across it a few times in relation to the nature of society, with particular regard to the rate of change in the digital world and the natural environment.
It’s hard to disagree; the Climate Emergency will cause much larger fluctuations in our ecosystem than we have been used to, requiring us to throw out much of our experience of dealing with relatively benign and predictable climatic conditions, and forcing our communities and organisations to be able to deal rapidly with complex (rather than complicated!) systems2.
This will require new forms of leadership, governance and system management. It will also require us to produce young people (or old!) who have new ways of learning that build on new digital tools for information management; and new ways of acting that build on soft skills of empathy, understanding and story-telling.
I’ve been thinking about this recently with a specific example. I’m a keen user of Logseq, a non-linear note-taking app that is quietly creating ripples in communities of learners and practitioners online. Having experienced the power and elegance of the platform I’ve added it to the list of open source projects to which I contribute financially.
My Logseq information space after 10 months
Some people describe it as a ‘second brain’. One is enough for me, but there have been instances where it’s helped me recall people, organisations or concepts in a way that my real brain would have struggled.
Logseq – or other non-linear note-taking apps – can be used systematically to build insights and understanding. And it could be part of a digital curriculum in Wales. Why not start in primary school?
Some readers might think this is far-fetched, but my experience from letting my own daughter loose on the platform shows that the concept is quickly understood, and in that one case study has led to near-delight in seeing how the information space evolves and grows.
A primary school student’s first attempt playing with Logseq
I know next to nothing about formal education. But with the things I’m doing at home (including encouraging learning the Dvorak touchtyping method3), I’m hoping to help shape people who think beyond ‘normal’; see that systems are often in place due to inertia, and that there are a myriad of ways of approaching problems or situations, some better and some doubtless worse than ‘business as usual’.
How to take these conversations to ‘real’ educators, to see whether there’s any benefit to wider society. Is there a benefit? How can educators participate in this new digital world of learning?
I have very few answers. I will try with my own children, and I am enthusiastic to work with others to consider how these concepts can become part of a more mainstream discourse in education. Could Wales leap-frog other countries in the rate of adoption of these new tools?
Greater VUCA demands more powerful ways to handle data and work with others. We must move more quickly to equip the people of Wales with the tools to match the challenge.
If I tell you that Itâs not often Iâve found myself excited by a piece of infrastructure policy, Iâm sure Iâll be in good company.Â
Hold on to your hats; the just-published Wales Infrastructure Investment Strategy (WIIS) is about to smash your concept of what infrastructure policy can mean to the environment, well-being and social justice.
What can I mean by that? Well, take this direct quote for example:
âInfrastructure investment programmes must embody the value of social justice and move to eliminate inequality in Wales.â
Itâs true:, this strategy explicitly sets out Welsh Governmentâs intention to use a strategic approach to infrastructure investment to help tackle social inequality.
In fact, the themes of social justice, environment and place are embedded throughout the document. There is frequent reference to the foundational economy; to the âTown Centre Firstâ approach; and to green infrastructure and natural solutions. Sustainability runs through the whole thing like electrons in a wire.
The increasing focus on improving well-being outcomes from infrastructure isnât âjustâ a Wales thing. If you look through some other recent infrastructure strategies, such as the New Zealand draft infrastructure strategy, the preliminary stage on Canadaâs Infrastructure Assessment, and the 2021 Australia Infrastructure Plan, youâll see that well-being is becoming less a peripheral âbolt-onâ and more a core component and desirable outcome of infrastructure delivery. Indeed – not that we should be evaluating strategies with this sort of metric – Australiaâs Plan contains the word âsustainabilityâ no fewer than 614 times.
The New Zealand draft infrastructure strategy clearly links infrastructure with well-being
But the WIIS goes a bit further; there is a very tight integration between the well-being goals, the nature and climate emergencies, and infrastructure, throughout the document. It appears to explicitly set out to break down the walls between âhardâ and âsoftâ infrastructure, demonstrating that social and natural infrastructure are of equal importance to what might be perceived as âtraditionalâ forms of infrastructure such as roads or buildings.
This aligns with my personal âphilosophyâ of infrastructure that prioritises happiness, health and long-term sustainability over more straightforward but less helpful indicators such as GDP. This is not to say that economic indicators are irrelevant; but to accept that the playing field has been highly skewed towards increasing outputs that are tangential to well-being, at least once a certain amount of wealth has been achieved at a country-level.
In order to redress the balance – as required by our understanding of the near-unbearable pressures that our activities are causing to local and global ecosystems – we must therefore radically amend every policy, budgetary and social tool at our disposal.
Readers of the WIIS will probably be pleased to see frequent mentions to the transport hierarchy and to Llwybr Newydd (the Wales Transport Strategy). The circular economy is also a significant beneficiary of focus, with support earmarked for repair and reuse-type projects.
Other sectors receiving considerable attention are housing (particularly with regard to decarbonisation efforts), biodiversity and natural capital, and the revitalisation of town centres.
In the foreword to the WIIS, Rebecca Evans AS says:
âInstead of thinking first âwhat infrastructure should we invest in?â the question must be âwhat should investment in our infrastructure enable?â.
Itâs exactly the right way to structure the discussion. Walesâ infrastructure needs to enable, empower, support and safeguard. In a complex world, replete with wicked problems, we need to create a framework that provides us with the principles and guidance to deliver long-term improvements across every facet of society.
The Well-being of Future Generations Act is that framework; and this Infrastructure Strategy is a worthy complement to it.
