In early June, we gathered a group of farmers, conservationists, policymakers and philanthropists at Black Mountains College in Wales. Our challenge for the day was to think about the future from the perspective of this very particular and dramatically beautiful place, the hills and farmlands of South Powys. The overarching theme was how to regenerate this landscape, particularly through farming but also through new approaches to the commons, through better governance of headwaters, through food, finance and language. People asked: How can we adapt to the speed of change that’s coming? How can farming be a form of public education? And what is the purpose of a river?
How can we adapt to the speed of change that’s coming? How can farming be a form of public education? And what is the purpose of a river?
This was the South Powys Design Lab, the third in Future Observatory’s series of place-based ‘design labs’, following Sheffield and South Devon. The labs are part of the UK 2040 project, a piece of strategic design research that we are conducting in collaboration with Indy Johar at Dark Matter Labs and Dan Hill at Melbourne Design School, funded by UKRI’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The aim is to consider the challenges facing the UK over the coming decade – from climate breakdown and technological disruption to energy and housing – and to explore the deep structural and systemic changes required to even begin addressing them adequately.
The methodology we have been using in all of the design labs is the devising of questions. Asking the right questions – ones that challenge the assumed answers and that open up new possibilities – is the essential first step in avoiding seizing upon the wrong solutions. But, more than that, we have found the framing of questions a deeply generative process, one we conduct in a collective way, with an interdisciplinary group made up of people from the place we are discussing as well as from outside. As described in lab’s framing document: “Questions expand civic options, and create space for possible futures. Questions are not an idle pursuit – they help form better briefs, strategies and networks.”
Wales is a particularly conducive context in that it has arguably the most future-facing legislative instincts in the country. The Well-being of Future Generations Act was a groundbreaking piece of legislation that considers the rights of our descendants. Meanwhile, the River Wye – which we crossed many times on our visit – was the first river in the UK to be granted legal rights.
Of the three design labs, South Powys was most focused on our relationship with the land. The themes we set out to explore included food security (can this bioregion feed itself?); headwaters as a form of governance (Powys is the source of the Wye, the Usk, the Severn and the Towy, with little say in how that water is used downstream); farming through the transition (how can farming steward soil and pasture in a way that is independent of subsidies?); and the commons (given Wales holds some of the largest stretches of common land in the UK, how can commoning be treated not as heritage but as a collective practice capable of shaping alternative futures?).
The invitation to host a design lab in South Powys came from Cassie Robinson, who had attended the South Devon Design Lab and was planning some research in the region with the Netherlands-based regenerative landscapes non-profit Commonland, funded by the Roddick Foundation. And from the outset, this design lab was always going to be different: instead of a three-day event attended by a close group of participants, thinking as they go, it would be a one-day session opened up to many more local participants.
Despite the compressed timeframe, with Cassie and Commonland we did take some time beforehand to visit a number of local initiatives between the Rivers Wye and Usk. We began at Wilder Pentwyn Farm, where Victoria Heffer, CEO of the Radnorshire Wildlife Trust, showed us a farm that is in the process of being rewilded in a passive way. And from there we went to a regenerative farm called Penpont, fifty miles away, where the approach to introducing biodiversity is more proactive, and cattle roam among planted orchards rather than blank pasture. In Penpont, the farmers have been working with an anthropologist to understand how an incredibly diverse patchwork of small fields with rich historical names became rationalised into a few numbered monocultural fields with the arrival of industrial agriculture. Indeed the farmers have been working with local youth to map and rename the more complex field pattern that is being reintroduced.
From there we visited Black Mountains College, in nearby Talgarth, which is dedicated to ‘learning to live in a warming world’, and teaches agroecology in combination with the arts. Ben Rawlence, the school’s founder, showed us from polytunnels to woodworking shops where only traditional hand tools are allowed, explaining an ethos of futures literacy based on systems thinking and an understanding of the land.
About the lab
Our one-day lab was introduced by the writer Angharard Wynne, who situated us in the territory in which we were gathered, shifting seamlessly between English and Welsh. She invoked Powys’s ancient inhabitants as well as more recent histories. Duly grounded, we embarked on a series of presentations by practitioners who offered a range of different approaches to working on and learning from the land. Hilary Cottam spoke about the work she is doing for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to consider the future of upland farming on Dartmoor. Her process has involved mapping the flows of Dartmoor and hour upon hour of walking with farmers to understand their precarious circumstances. Hilary raised a question that resonated throughout the day, which was: How do we make change happen at pace when you can only move at the speed of trust?
Dr Louise Bodnar, also known as the Voice of the River Wye, spoke about what it means to formally represent the Wye’s interests in Herefordshire Council meetings. And it turns out that what it often means is being the inconvenient voice of dissent, expressing the fact that, no, the river does not want that particular development to take place because it will increase the pollution of her waters.
One argument that was aired a few times, mostly in private, was that there should be a transition away from sheep farming to cattle farming, because cattle grazing is less damaging to the landscape. Given that Wales has been heavily associated with sheep farming in recent generations, this point comes with some politics. However, Adele Jones, a sheep farmer and the former director of the Sustainable Food Trust, presented the highly contemporary way she farms, revealing how important data is to her process, and how important data is to others along the value chain. She also explored what resilience looks like for farmers, given that years now alternate between flooding and drought.
Ellie Percey and Pieter Ploeg from Commonland, along with Ele Saltmarsh from the Roddick Foundation, spoke about what drew them to Powys and what Commonland is working to achieve. Its approach to landscape restoration, which it called the 4 Returns Framework, requires a degree of system change that moves beyond short-term gains to long-term prosperity. They asked ‘What landscapes do we want in 200 years?’ And ‘If we get this right, what will people thank us for?’
Liz Hutchins, senior policy advisor at Brecon Beacons National Park, spoke about the Future Management Plan for the park. This has involved treating the park as a holistic system that is under extreme stress, evidenced in biodiversity decline and polluted rivers. The plan does not just focus on regenerative approaches to the landscape but, critically, also addresses the social needs of communities living in the park, from affordable housing to sustainable transport and renewable energy.
A genuinely generative question is neither too abstract nor too precise
With those presentations providing the context for the afternoon’s question-drafting session, we split the thirty participants into groups and set them free around Talgarth to devise a set of questions that frame the issues they are grappling in their own work. But first we armed them with a sense of what a good question looks like. A genuinely generative question is neither too abstract nor too precise; it carries the potential to ‘multi-solve’, implying an answer that would address more than one problem; it should have a trajectory beyond the immediate present, towards 2040 and beyond; and it should be suggestive, indicating a vector of change, like a seed planted in fertile ground.
Within an hour we already had a list of more than 20 questions. These included: What are the models of stewardship and succession in South Powys in 2040? What does it look like to integrate emerging technology with ancient knowledge? What is commoning in the 21st century? How do we align the many small initiatives already underway so that they are greater than the sum of their parts? And what does it mean to create work that can sustain all life in South Powys?
Further updates will be shared on the Future Observatory website about the UK 2040 research strand as work progresses.
