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The Futures We Make: How our hobbies help make us whole and heal the planet

Author: Paul Wildman
Epub ISBN: 978-0-6451128-1-8

Ebook available:

 

About the project
Paul Wildman first approached us about editing The Futures We Make in April 2020. The manuscript was highly complex and went through numerous rounds of line editing and revision before it reached its final form. In 2021 we did the cover design, then converted it into an ebook and distributed it via our online distributors.

About the book

Hobbies—now that sounds like a great idea. We all have them in various guises. Most of them are hands-on and can be done in our spare time. So can we harness our hobbies to help the world? To help save our planet? Not only is this eBook a call to celebrate and recognise the importance hands-on craftwork plays in humanity, i.e. craft as play (adults) and play as craft (children). It is also a call to use this craftwork for the planet’s future! This eBook responds with a resounding YES!…

Yet but how? The way we are purchasing our ‘stuff’ wastes millions of dollars we spend on gadgets and increases pollution and surveillance encouraged through expenditure tracking. All this is taxing the limited resources of our planet. All the while, this enhances the position of corporations and governments in controlling our day-to-day lives yet does nothing to help our families and ourselves even in the short-term. A handyperson, jack-of-all-trades and master of none, kitchen whiz, undertake hobbies green thumb, geek, hacker, IT nerd, wilder, prim-itive/prime-itive, survivalist and so forth. We can find them in sheds, kitchens, intentional communities, eco-villages, hackerspaces, gardens and IT labs. All these folks use a horizontal way of innovating, learning, sharing information—peer-with-peer. For too long, our hands-on hobby skills have been overlooked and therefore not recognised for the positive contribution they can offer to our planet’s problems.

Towards the end of the eBook, we undertake a fill-it-in step-by-step ‘action plan’ where one can help take your day-to-day hobby and use it to help save the planet! A big ask? Well, maybe. A bit silly? No way. You are already well on your way with your present hobby. Give this step-by-step process a go and let us know the results on the eBooks Facebook page. Our planet deserves our crafty help!

About the Author

Paul has an extensive record of accomplishment in the areas of adult learning, the bush mechanic and futures. He has a Ba Economics (Hons) (1975), Masters of Social Work (1984) and a Professional Doctorate in Community Economic Futures (1997). He has worked in the adult and vocational educational area concentrating on apprenticeships and traineeships interfaced with TAFE Qld, ultimately as Deputy Commissioner for Training and Director Employment Directorate (Queensland Government) from 1984 to 1994. From 1994 to 1997, he worked as a lecturer at Southern Cross University (SCU) where he developed and lectured in Futures Studies. Subsequently, his interests include peer-with-peer praxis projects, transhumanism and action learning circles.

He has undertaken several bricoleur exemplar projects from restoring three historic motorcycles to boat building. These have been the practical basis for his research into the Bricoleur known as bush mechanic in Australia.  He is currently concentrating on crafters-connect, an eZine he established in 2013 (http://www.crafters-connect.com), Kids and Adults Learning (vertical learning), an early childhood development business which he runs jointly with his wife, Annette (https://www.kal.net.au/).

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Published on 26th April 2021. Tags line editing, book cover design (ebook or print), ebook, ebook conversion, ebook distribution.