A Collective Project
The Islands Institute library is a collective project to gather, create and maintain a wiki database of resources that encourage us to envision land use planning and social issues in new and surprising ways. With your help, the library can become a working database that is useful to schoolteachers, artists, scholars, planners, volunteer organizations and the press as well as Islands Institute students. When crafting your contributions to the Islands Institute Library, please consider these guiding principles:
New Models for Culture: The Islands Institute encourages the practical and theoretical exploration of alternative models for culture. Can the paradigms we hold of nature, culture, economy, community – and their interrelationships – be challenged and changed? How do we situate art, activism, economy and governance in the particularities of our home place and integration with natural systems? How do we make community joyful and sustaining? Using the model of Transformative Projects, we will initiate, value, support and document artistic efforts and community actions that explore these questions. We will also document the Philosophy and Approaches that invite new models for culture.
Bioregionalism and Internationalism: The Islands Institute is based in the soil and the culture of the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island. It is rooted in the notion that "free people, freely associating, informed by the biological truths of their home places, will bring the best within themselves, along with the health of their lands, to full flowering" (S. Mills, see Bioregionalism). We are interested in linking people of the region in unexpected ways and Transformative Projects. We therefore encourage all citizens of the bioregion to contribute their ideas, practices and projects. We also invite people to speak for Environment and Nature in the region. The Islands Institute opposes the corporate globalization that exacerbates existing social, economic, cultural inequalities. We insist on a democratic internationalism that respects and cultivates cultural pluralities based in bioregional citizenship.
Guiding Questions: The Islands Institute guiding questions are: “How can creativity be employed to alter harmful land use trajectories?”and "How can we generate creative, empowering solutions to environmental and social problems on the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island, along with other places experiencing related challenges?" We will undertake and disseminate critical analyses of current land use trajectories on the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island, scrutinizing their impact on local ecologies, economies and societies. We will draw on critical and creative work from around the world in areas of Agriculture and Food, Art and Architecture, Economy,Infrastructure, Maps and Mapping, and Planning and Building to find new ways to address these guiding questions.
Democracy and Inclusion: The Islands Institute supports the fundamental democratization of existing institutions of Education, culture, communications and Governance. Under subject areas including Community and Society, Environment and Nature, First Nations, History, Identity and Difference we will support cooperative collection, organization and preservation of documents pertaining to the natural and cultural life of the bioregion. We will aim to make available alternative materials representing a wide range of progressive viewpoints often excluded as resources from the debates of our times.
Interdisciplinary Research and Cooperation: The Islands Institute encourages interdisciplinary research into fundamental issues on the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island in order to lay the basis for effective action in various spheres. We will organize and work in common with other progressive people and Community Groups locally, nationally and internationally.
Links, Images and Documents:
Please do, upload relevant documents and images to the library, especially if the material is not already available online. When writing your articles for the library, please link when possible to other relevant materials and sources already available on the Internet. For techniques, see How to edit.
What belongs here?
Part of the excitement of co-creating this library is envisioning what it may "hold". You are invited to join ongoing discussions on what belongs here - see Events. In addition to user-written contributions with links and images, we hope the library will also house relevant articles, unpublished papers, project documentations and research reports.
What is not eligible for inclusion in the Islands Institute Library?
This is not a place to advertise your business, although many businesses and economic approaches have obvious relevance to the Islands Institute.
If you want to talk or argue with another contributor rather than edit what they have written, we hope that you will engage in a discussion at the Islands Institute Café.
All contributions can be be edited by you or any other visitor to the library.
Material that is deemed irrelevant to the life of the bioregion or the concerns of the Islands Institute may be deleted by the librarian or others.