Environmental History: Our Places, Our Stories

Recording and celebrating 50 years of change

April 22nd 2020 marks the 50th Anniversary of the first ‘EARTH DAY’ in 1970 – seen by many as the start of the modern ‘environmental movement.   From early days of ‘Save the Whale’, self-sufficiency and ‘The Good Life’, through campaigns on nuclear waste, rainforests and much more, to today’s global concerns about the climate crisis, the desire to protect our planet has led millions of people to take action.

Learning from the past – shaping the future  

A group of us (see below) are developing a project to record the development of the UK environment movement since the 1970s – the campaigns, the projects, the victories and sometimes the defeats.  

At the core of this is our ‘time-line’ charting what happened and when.   Click here to see it.

This is still under development, and we welcome more stories. Email us via: info@communityenvironment.org.uk if you’d like to contribute a story or be involved in this project as it develops.

Our Places, Our Stories – the project

This simple time-line is a starting point for what we hope will become a much broader project.      We’ve all been involved from the early 1980s, and we know that former colleagues and friends are getting on – some have sadly died. We are working out how to best record their history and memories & archive key materials – in what format and how. 

Right now, with Covid-19 raging around the world, it seems inappropriate to be seeking funds for such a non-essential project.  And yet we think there are lessons to be learned from our pasts which can help shape the future of campaigns  in the future.   If you’d like to contribute, please get in touch with us.

We are:

Chris Church (see here)

Jeremy Iles, former Director of the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens

Dr Barbara Brayshay, JustMap Project