We had two talks to focus the event...
...one was from Crispin Hayes, who told us about the Scottish Orchard Inventory project he's been working on. The other was a summary at the end of the day programme, by Mike Small. Here are notes from both talks.
Crispin Hayes' talk: The Scottish Orchard Inventory
The Scottish Orchard Inventory has been logging the state of Scottish Orchards and has found 1728 possible sites, everywhere from Dumfries to Orkney, which are to be further explored. Here's the slide presentation that Crispin gave.
Mike Small's talk: Learnings and reflections on the day
Mike spoke at the end of the day, drawing together strands that had emerged most clearly for him over the course of the event.
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The morning was dominated by understanding what had previously been achieved and celebrating and recognising the work - often by people actually in the room. We later heard a clear and urgent desire to make a better orchard culture, one that:
* offered fresh fruit to people at low cost
* formed part of a local economy
* created and maintained better biodiversity
* maintained and preserved a rich diversity of fruit heritage
* was part of a shift to a low carbon food economy
We also agreed that there is a political appetite, will and energy in the movement and beyond for real change to happen. There was excitement that we had brought together practical people, growers, community activists, commercial operators, business people, farmers, horticulturalists, artists, researchers and educationalists.
It would seem that in this hall we had several key pieces of the jigsaw – but despite these individual pieces, the network remains incomplete. The consensus seemed to be that no one person can be a network.
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The morning was dominated by understanding what had previously been achieved and celebrating and recognising the work - often by people actually in the room. We later heard a clear and urgent desire to make a better orchard culture, one that:
* offered fresh fruit to people at low cost
* formed part of a local economy
* created and maintained better biodiversity
* maintained and preserved a rich diversity of fruit heritage
* was part of a shift to a low carbon food economy
We also agreed that there is a political appetite, will and energy in the movement and beyond for real change to happen. There was excitement that we had brought together practical people, growers, community activists, commercial operators, business people, farmers, horticulturalists, artists, researchers and educationalists.
It would seem that in this hall we had several key pieces of the jigsaw – but despite these individual pieces, the network remains incomplete. The consensus seemed to be that no one person can be a network.