Dark Optimism is the not-for-profit public interest research, activism
and writing of Shaun Chamberlin, working with
a wide network of friends and partners around the world.
We are unashamedly positive about what kind of a world humanity
could create, and unashamedly
realistic about how far we are from creating it today.
After all the hard work, my late mentor’s astonishing books are now available.
There’s nothing I’m prouder to have been involved with, but several readers, understandably keen to avoid Amazon, mentioned that it wasn’t easy to find the books elsewhere online. So I’ve created a new, straightforward page with all you need.
Just look under “Order the books” at this link
(for books or e-books, delivered anywhere in the world)
Thurs 30th Nov 2017 – 6:30-9:30pm – To mark the seventh anniversary of David Fleming’s death, I will host an evening with The Gaia Foundation at the beautiful Burgh House, honouring their late friend and fellow Hampstead resident. London, UK. Capacity limited. Full details to follow.
Fri 1st Dec 2017 – Sterling College will host an evening dedicated to David Fleming, with five influential devotees of his work – Peter Buffett, Chuck Collins, David Bollier, Margo Baldwin and Matthew Derr. Craftsbury Common, Vermont, USA. Full details to follow.
A screenshot from my latest missive to the swelling ranks of fans of David Fleming’s now award-winning books. Including details of the film now in production, eye-widening reviews, book giveaways, a Spanish translation, an American symposium, a Malaysian reading group, an Australian interview, a piece in the UK’s Guardian and much more globe-spanning excitement!
Just click the image above to read the update in full, or subscribe to receive future updates direct to your inbox by clicking here.
I have a passion for tracking down that elusive rarity – eco-songs that don’t suck! And thanks to several Dark Optimism readers, my collection’s growing, from a wide range of genres.
Back in 2011, I published the first ‘Dark Optimism album’, but sadly it was lost due to my using an external MP3 player which later disappeared. Hit play below for the 2017 edition, with a few more recent favourites added to the mix:
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Honourable mentions also to these pieces from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Akala and RapNews, each brilliant in their own way, but not quite hitting the spot for this collection. Enjoy!
And any more songs (or other creative responses) that you’d like to share greatly welcomed in the comments below.
In a couple of weeks (Feb 6-10) I’ll be leading a week-long course at Schumacher College based on David Fleming’s legacy: Community, Place and Play: A Post-Market Economics. It will be an exploration of what ‘life well lived’ looks like in a world of ecocide and collapsing civilisational structures, and a call for those present to ramp up their involvement in the informal economy of relationships and Nature. The key resources for a thriving future.
Myself, Rob Hopkins and Mark Boyle have all been walking variants of this path for at least the past decade or so, and are much looking forward to discussing and debating the most delicious, enlivening ways forward in today’s world. And all of us are deeply inspired by the work of David Fleming, the mentor I first met, along with Rob, when they taught me at Schumacher College ten short years ago. It feels a great honour to follow in his footsteps and continue his work.
A personal post this, on the sixth anniversary of my dear friend David Fleming’s death. A mournful day, but also one of great satisfaction, as his incredible books finally spread their wings and find the audience his genius always deserved.
Ten years on from our first meeting, on the Schumacher College course that utterly reshaped my decade since, and six years on from his death, I carry simply this immense gratitude for all that David was in my life and in our world.
What I wouldn’t give for one more side-splitting, enlightening conversation. And what an absolute honour to have been invited to teach a week’s course on his work at Schumacher College in February, a decade on, with fellow friends like Rob Hopkins, Mark Boyle and Stephan Harding alongside. May its ripples spread as far as its ancestor’s, which also gave birth to the Transition Towns Network.
At the top of this post I release footage of Jonathon Porritt discussing David Fleming’s legacy at Oxford University. And I hope David will forgive me and Schumacher College for having unearthed his below slightly nervous, rather endearing, rather brilliant public talk from the week of that course (immortalised in Rob’s foreword to Surviving the Future). Rest well, dear man.
At recent events I have played clips from interviews with the late, great David Fleming, and a few people have asked me to make the full footage available. So here it is:
So, after years of work from me, and decades from David, the day is finally here – the official publication date for his astonishing lifework!!
In truth, demand has already been such that the distributors have been struggling to keep up, but they’re ramping things up now, and the real promotional push starts here 🙂
Last week the wonderful Brianne Goodspeed of Chelsea Green Publishing interviewed me on my late mentor David Fleming and the astonishing gift he left to the world.
In it, Fleming examines the consequences of an economy that destroys the very foundations—ecological, economic, and cultural—upon which it is built. But his core focus is on what could follow its inevitable demise: his compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to.
And since his death, I have edited out a paperback version—Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy—to concisely present his rare insights and uniquely enjoyable writing style in a more conventional read-it-front-to-back format. Chelsea Green are simultaneously launching both on September 8th, but since I have just received my first copies, I believe some bookshops may have them already…
For more about the man, the books, and the hippo, read on!
On the eve of the #Brexit referendum, I have found myself struck by the juxtaposition of two exceptional pieces of writing which run somewhat deeper than the ‘lowest common denominator’ debate running in the mainstream media.
It wasn’t immediately clear to me which way I would vote, but reading these nuanced pieces – which draw out sensible reasons for considering both sides of the argument – helped me to make a decision.
The first is this piece by Giles Fraser in The Guardian. I believe Fraser has declared that he will vote ‘Out’, yet unlike many ‘Brexiteers’ his piece makes a crucial argument in favour of free movement for people: Read more »
