RoSY2.0 Warren Draper
“Regeneration involves seeing things as they could be, while resilience requires dealing with things as they are.” Ben Falk “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
Alice Walker
Doncaster was once, and should still be, one of the wealthiest regions in the UK. Essentially a collection of semi-rural towns surrounded by arable farmland nestled in a valley which provides one of the best microclimates in the north of England, the shops should be brimming with fresh, healthy local produce. With engineering and industrial traditions second to none, and with a large percentage of the population being from hardy mining stock, we should be able to build all the vital local infrastructure and industry we need for ourselves - and what we cannot create with our own hands can easily be shipped in via our fantastic transport links. In short, we should want for nothing. And yet Doncaster is still officially one of the most underprivileged regions in the UK. It is not the intention of this article to simply moan about our lot. In fact moaning is part of the problem, not the solution. We have a fatalistic tendency in Donny to think that if we moan hard enough and long enough then somehow things will change. But change will only come when we quit whining and start dreaming – and designing, and building, and planting, and growing, and bonding, and mending, and crafting, and all-round
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making – our own future. The real premise of this article is to ask what are the changes we would like to see in Doncaster and throughout South Yorkshire? And, more importantly, how are we, the people of Doncaster in all our glorious diversity, going to make those changes happen? What if South Yorkshire were planned from the bottom-up instead of from the top-down? What if it were shaped by a diverse selection of permaculturalists, makers, artists, artisans, dreamers, bodgers, builders and doers from all walks of life? What if - together - we built a new South Yorkshire? The Republic of South Yorkshire version 2.0 - RoSY2.0. I’m not talking a ‘People’s Republic’ here, we don’t need any more ‘ideology’ (left or right), we just need a healthy boost of ‘I-do-ology’. Nor am I going to try to present a blueprint of what I think the future should look like, I’m just going to introduce some tools which we can use to help plan and build our own future on our own terms. The techniques, technologies and practices I’m going to outline are wide-reaching and diverse, but they are united by a single ethic – the DIY Culture. We’re all familiar with the concept of DIY with regard to home
improvements. Literally meaning “do it yourself,” the DIY ethic promotes the idea that absolutely anyone is capable of performing a wide variety of tasks if they put their mind to it and household DIY enthusiasts are well aware that doing things for yourself can save you a whole heap of money while rewarding you with new skills and the priceless satisfaction of being able to say: “I did that.” What’s true for home improvements is also true of the wider DIY community. A strong DIY ethos offers greater self-reliance, resilience and sustainability at both an individual and a community level – it also saves you a shed load of money. One of the DIY culture’s most interesting spin-offs is the Maker Culture which has taken on a life of its own in recent years. Maker Culture focuses largely on new and emerging technologies such as 3D printing, laser cutting and CNC milling, as well as computer based projects including coding, Free Open Source Software, digital art & design and the use of ARM-based computers such as the Arduino or Raspberry Pi. What we’re seeing emerging from Maker Culture is the ability to design, prototype and manufacture an incredible array of items on a hyper-