This week, I gave a talk at the first (and there will be more) Wilding Gardens conference in Manchester. My slides and a few notes are here. And it might have been recorded, so I will share that if/when something appears.
I talked about our local Nature Group (yet another side project that has grown out of hand). Our story really seemed to resonate with a lot of people, and I had a lot of questions afterwards asking how people might do something similar where they live.
A lot of those questions were looking for the moments that mattered in our project – what made it matter for more people, as the community grew.
There really isn’t an easy answer to this, because it is lots of small moments and interactions, events and opportunities that you just react to in the moment. If there’s an opportunity to do a thing, just do it.
But then with a few folk I half-remembered something, and couldn’t quite recall where it is from at the conference, but remembered on the way home.
It’s this idea about magic, from Teller of Penn and Teller:
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” – Teller
The first time you do something to start a nature community, nothing might happen. Or things might die down a little after a couple of events. But if you keep going, and finding new little things to do, then in my experience others start to think ‘oh, actually, this must be a thing because it’s still going’.
Spending more time on something than others might reasonably expect is a great way to unlock the magic of communities.
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