A documentary film about people-powered change to be worked with, not consumed.

Down to Earth is the story of one family’s call to freedom after questioning the home, school, work system. As they quit the rat race we follow them on a five year journey in search of the wisdom of sages and shaman, or Earth Keepers, hidden in remote tribal communities of Australia, the Amazon, Africa, the Andes, India and Ireland.

Gaining access to tribes never filmed before in the outback, desert and jungle with just a backpack and camera each was no mean feat. Despite the different locations, the family kept making the same connections, having the same conversations, just with different faces. And the Earth Keepers sharing their insights and wisdom for the first time with outsiders acknowledge that now is “the time for change.”

We are family

The film grew from director Rolf Winter’s dream of finding a retreat in nature for his wife and three young children, then aged 6, 7 and 10 (see his TED talk below) After spending a year in Hiawatha Forest, Michigan they encounter Nowaten, a medicine man living there in isolation. He reluctantly agrees to being filmed, becoming the film’s main contributor.

Nowatan (He who listens) believes there is no purpose in living if you lose the land and forests. We depend on forests for our spiritual connection and wellbeing. People are lost because they have lost connection with nature, and we are all members of nature, he says. “Life is simple, we complicate it, take only what you need.”

But, as Rolf says, we can’t all go back to the forest. So the film asks how do we lead a connected life in a fast-paced world? Real change is only going to happen with a changed mindset of you and me. The diverse problems facing humanity can no longer be delegated to our politicians and scientists, who ultimately are a reflection of us, the people. The time has come to transform our lives and create a new story, our own story. How exciting!

Read more: Down to Earth

The Lush Summit 14th-15th February 2018

Lush is a global soap franchise with 105 stores in the UK, its flagship store on London’s Oxford Street. Known for using primarily ethically sourced ingredients in bath bombs, bubble bars, floating islands oils and the like, its charity arm holds an annual summit for some of its international staff members from 900 stores in 49 countries to learn more about key environmental and social issues.

This year Chris Packham, zoologist, BBC personality and birder, was Lush’s on-the-spot reporter covering the two day event. He tirelessly patrolled the cavernous building on the former site of Billingsgate fish market talking to campaigners working to conserve the oceans, whales and other marine, animal, plant and bird life. I was part of this unique atmosphere with Pat Thomas, director of Beyond GM and GM Free Me, who gave Chris a great interview for broadcast on the Lush Summit livestream. Pat also chaired a roundtable discussion finding that young people are concerned about GM food and trade agreements with the US since UK’s Brexit from Europe.

Lush does not test on animals and in 2015 co-ordinated a march on Downing Street to protest animal rights with Common Decency, The League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid. Sourcing most of their ingredients from fruits and vegetables, Lush no longer puts palm oil into its products and invests in small scale producers growing and processing essential oils and other materials in Guatemala, Pakistan, Kenya and the Lebanon. The Summit also showcased responsibly managed cork, cotton and paper. Founded by a small team in Poole, Dorset originally supplying fragrances to The Body Shop, which was one of the world’s first ethical high street cosmetics businesses. 

Doing its bit for charity, Lush launched Charity Pot hand and body lotion, donating 100% of the sale price to grassroots organisations working for environmental conservation, animal welfare and human rights. Since 2007 Charity Pot has given $10 million to 850 charities in 42 countries. Lush donated a further £3.8 million to charity in 2014. An avid supporter of peaceful direct action: anti-roads, anti-incinerator campaigns, raising money for Syrian refugees and a One World freedom group in Palestine. Lush also launched a ‘Gay is Ok Soap’ and is also active in protecting Hen Harriers from illegal persecution, providing funds to satellite tag these Scottish upland birds. 

Chris Packham enlightened his captive audience about a teenagers battle to save the Honey Buzzard in Sicily and promoted his own passion project to protect the Golden Eagle, showing his short film called Fred the Golden Eagle. Fred was hatched in the only breeding nest on the Scottish border and named after the landowner's son, his movements tracked by tag in the woodlands around Edinburgh. But in February 2018 Fred's signal mysteriously disappeared. More than forty Golden Eagles have vanished under suspicious circumstances in recent years in the region. Merlins and Ravens have also been persecuted in areas close to driven grouse moors. A review of grouse moor management has been ordered by Scotland’s Environment Secretary and Chris repeated his vow to protect the Golden Eagle, of which there are only 440 pairs in the UK. He also flagged up his concerns about the effects of palm oil production on communities in Indonesia illustrated by his own stunning photographs.

For further information on Chris Packham https://www.chrispackham.co.uk/news/golden-eagle-fred

More information on Lush Summit https://summit.lush.com/en

Photo: Chris Packham with Sam Burcher

1st December 2017

As Europe renews glyphosate’s licence for another five years, a timely documentary on the International Monsanto Tribunal shows the devastating health impacts of Roundup taking us to the brink of a public health crisis. Sam Burcher 

Le Roundup face à ses juges (2017) [1] is Marie-Monique Robin’s second documentary film exposing the activities of agri-giant Monsanto. Her earlier film, The World According to Monsanto (2008) [2] dealt with the hold the multi-billion dollar corporation has over the global food system. This one documents the Tribunal Against Monsanto at the Hague in 2016, which followed the format of proceedings of the International Courts of Justice. Five eminent judges heard compelling evidence of damage to human, animal and environmental health by Roundup, the company’s best-selling herbicide from witnesses, experts and lawyers [3]. Monsanto declined to attend. 

Roundup contains 41% glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine), together with adjuvants, chemicals that are added to enhance its effect. Monsanto patented glyphosate first in 1974 as a broad spectrum weedkiller [4] to be sprayed from a bottle, backpack or tractor, or from low flying aircraft. Glyphosate was patented again in 2010 as a general human antimicrobial/antibiotic. [5]. In 2016 it was classified as “probably a human carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the part of the World Health Organisation (WHO) whose task is to conduct and coordinate research into the causes of cancer. Over half a century, the IARC has assessed nearly a thousand substances.

The film takes us to the Hague, to the towns, villages and homes in France, Argentina and Sri Lanka, to see the effects of exposure to glyphosate ranging from rashes, skin lesions, mouth ulcers and swollen joints. We hear of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, miscarriage, kidney and liver disease, and death in shocking testimonies given by victims of glyphosate.  

Impact of glyphosate on children

The film opens with testimonies of adverse health effects in children. Sabine Grataloup is a mother who used glyphosate over a 700m2  paddock around her home in France during the early stages of her pregnancy [7]. Since her son Theo was born nine years ago he has undergone fifty operations, including a tracheotomy, to help him breathe, and a gastrectomy tube to feed his stomach. Now he can do without the feeding tube, but will depend on the tracheotomy and an oesophageal voice box until he is eighteen and fully grown.

Maria Liz Robledo lives in Baigorrita, an agricultural province of Buenos Aires. Her daughter Martina was born with an abnormal breathing condition: oesophageal atresia with a tracheoesophageal fistula, as a result of glyphosate being routinely sprayed in neighbouring gardens and fields, “which for us is normal,” she says. Canisters of glyphosate are piled high in a barn next to her house. Another child in the locale was born with the same condition as her daughter, and neither mother carry the gene that would cause that malformation. She wants to see changes in the law regarding spraying public places that is making people sick [8].

Read more: Roundup Facing its Judges

30 Sept 2017 

The V&A distinguishes itself with yet another fantastic exhibition, Jane Wallace reviews.

Today marks the preview of Opera:Passion Power and Politics, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s autumn exhibition in collaboration with the Royal Opera House. Probably the coolest museum in the world, the V&A is placing itself at the cutting edge of art, fashion, history and more recently music. Under the direction of Nicholas Coleridge, the Chair of Trustees, Conde Nast Chairman and ancestor of the poet, the V&A is a veritable goldmine.

It was in 2013 that the now famous David Bowie Is exhibition blossomed, decorating the hallowed walls with everything David Bowie. From stage costumes to blotchy penned lyrics,to “Life on Mars” Major Tom to much more, all charting the seamless shift of personas from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke et al. To be there was to know this chameleon-like pop star so much more intimately. Mothers from the provinces brought their teenage sons to peer into the memorabilia. 

Savage Beauty, Europe’s first major retrospective of Alexander Macqueen’s exquisite couture, followed hot on Bowie’s heels in March 2015 breaking all previous records for ticket sales. In all, 493,043 people saw the show and over the last two weekends of its run the V&A remained open all night.  

Read more: Opera: Passion Power and Politics

8th July 2017

A new campaign using portraits and selfies is letting the UK public have it's say about GM crops 

GM Free Me is an online visual petition for people  concerned about the effects of genetically modified food and farming. So far, more than 2,250 people have put their faces, names and comments about the subject on the website http://www.gmfreeme.org. The campaign is the brainchild of Pat Thomas, a former editor of the Ecologist, and to get things rolling Pat and I toured farmers markets, health food shops, conferences and cities across the UK to find out how ordinary people feel about GMO's (genetically modified organisms).

Well-known supporters of GM Free Me include fashion leader Vivianne Westwood, increasingly outspoken about protecting the environment, TV gardener Alys Fowler, organic cosmetics producer Jo Woods and musicians Don Letts and Bez. Westwood commented on her GM Free Me page, “GMOs are a democratic issue. They are a massive, unethical experiment in human and environmental health. People are voicing legitimate concerns about why, if so many unanswered questions remain about GMOs, our government is continuing to try and force them on the British public."

Read more: GM Free Me

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the best-selling weed killer Roundup, widely used as a crop herbicide and drying agent is classed by the WHO as a probable human carcinogen. California State agency orders danger labelling. Should the rest of the world follow suit?

Roundup is ubiquitous and much like fast food chains can easily seep into communities. In Corfu, men in hill villages stagger along the road, trembling with each step. In the olive groves plastic canisters are strung about the olive trees emblazoned with the words Roundup Gold. The containers are perforated to let the toxins leech out (see photo).Trucks are loaded with spraying gear. Could these damaged men be agricultural workers suffering from tremors, a sure indictor of coming into direct contact with a powerful nerve agent such as glyphosate, the principal ingredient of Roundup?

In October 2016, a Tribunal Against Monsanto in the Hague heard testimonies from all over world about the dangers of Roundup from academics, toxicologists and victims [1]. In April 2017, after months of reviewing the evidence the Tribunal Judges found that glyphosate negatively impacts human health and the environment [2]. Their findings are a vindication for thousands of farmers, agricultural workers, their families and members of the public all over the world who claim to have suffered a range of adverse health effects, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, from short exposures to Roundup.

In February 2015, Monsanto executive William Heydens emailed his staff to ghostwrite a scientific study saying Roundup is safe, and that he would tell scientists to “just edit and sign their names, so to speak.” [3]. It was a strategy that worked for their initial safety study in 2000 when Roundup was successfully launched onto the market. In 2017, it's sales account for around a third of Monsanto's $15billion annual revenue. To counteract Monsanto’s safety claims, a group of leading international scientists have written a letter in support of banning glyphosate [4]. This is an excerpt from their letter:

Read more: A Worldwide Ban Glyphosate?

3rd June 2017

“You are part of the very weave o silken thread,” Rainer Maria Rilke

On the way to the Writing on the Wall festival, St John’s Church, Waterloo, I saw heavily armed police officers at the train station. Within hours Britain’s latest terror attack had claimed innocent lives at London Bridge. Amidst troubled times and with the currency of care and consciousness as their starting point, living Poets are asking this important question.

Caduceus poetry Editor Jay Ramsay gathered the influential speakers togeher each one prefacing their talk with a poem of choice. Giles Hutchins, business leader and author of The Illusion of Separation and Future Fit read Rilke's Sonnet to Orpheus who is entreated to be transparent, transformed and aware of the bigger picture. Giles does not doubt that this is the hour of humanity’s reckoning, a moment to rejoin the hands of science and spirituality. He said timeless wisdom and long understood deep interconnectedness and sacredness replaced in the West by materialism and reason is causing separation and increasing fear, anxiety and individualism. A poetic way of being in the world of harmony, compassion and wisdom is the ground on which we now must walk.

Read more: How Can Poetry Save the Planet?

 13th May 2017

Jane Goodall, a leading primatologist, conducted a 50 year survey of chimps in Tanzania. Now a Dame and recently named one of the world’s top 100 important scientists of all time, she has turned her attention to the Genetic Engineering debate.

Jane Goodall saw farmers in Africa and Asia experiencing problems with a genetically modified crop during her travels. A bacteria called “bt” (bacillus thurungenesis) inserted into the crop had failed because the insect pests developed a resistance to the insecticide inside the plants. But non-target butterflies and bees were harmed instead. There are other problems on farmlands in Africa, Asia and USA plagued by superweeds caused by the horizontal transfer of genes from engineered crops to native weeds growing out of all proportion and impossible to control or contain. Dr Goodall condemmed the plight of farmers intimidated for taking legal action against genticially modified crop manufacturers Monsanto, whose contaminated crops and superweeds have spread onto their land.

At the launch of lawyer-turned-activist Steven Druker's book, Altered Genes and Twisted Truths for which Goodall has written the introduction, she recalled the independent scientific studies on rats that developed tumours as well as kidney and liver malfunctions when fed a diet of GM crops (see the independent studies of Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini). She expressed her concern about Roundup, the world's top selling herbicide, also used in agriculture as a crop drying agent and available over-the-counter as a garden weedkiller. Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides and spray-resistant crops have played havoc with the health of lab rats as well as sows and piglets on farms is banned in several countries including Sri Lanka because of high rates of kidney disease in farmers. Glyphosate was recently the subject of an International Tribunal at the Hague and found to be harmful to human health and the environment.

Read more: Jane Goodall on GMO's