Aaron Perry
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[Building Conviviality & Strengthening Communities]
Matthew Derr, Trustee and Executive Director of the Chelsea Green Foundation and Editor at Chelsea Green Publishing, shares his vision for our evolving world and the role of the foundation in helping to make it a reality. With a background in higher education and publishing alike, Matthew’s expertise, leadership, and perspectives are grounded in hands-on practices and in the sophisticated work of knitting the fabrics of community, learning, and cultural evolution together. Now, as executive director of the new Chelsea Green Foundation, Matthew is spearheading the nascent organization’s mission across three key programmatic areas: advocating for good ideas; curating community gatherings; and creating programming that features unconventional voices. He discusses philanthropy, employee-ownership, the importance of joy, conviviality, and stewardship, and the process of healing post-modern estrangement and strengthening each other through community connections.
About Matthew Derr
Matthew Derr is Editor at Chelsea Green Publishing and a Trustee and the Executive Director of the Chelsea Green Foundation. Previous to his roles in the Chelsea Green ecosystem, Matthew was the President of Sterling College in Craftsbury, Vermont, where he established the Wendell Berry Farming Program. He was a Visiting Fellow of the Great Lakes Colleges Association, and was the Interim President at Antioch College. Additionally, Matthew has served as Treasurer for the Center for an Agricultural Economy, as Secretary and Treasurer of the Work Colleges Association, as the Chair of the Vermont Food System Higher Education Consortium, and on the National Advisory Board of the Sphinx Music Organization. He has a Master of Social Work degree in Community Organizing & Social Systems from the University of Michigan School of Social Work, received his Bachelor of Arts in History as a Social Science from Antioch College, and has a Professional Fundraising Certificate from New York University’s George H. Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising.
About Chelsea Green Foundation
The Chelsea Green Foundation is a New Hampshire-based private operating foundation that has a unique place within the mosaic of not-for-profits engaged in the sustainability space. Leveraging the expansive community of practitioners who have written for Chelsea Green, the foundation has a unique place within the mosaic of not-for-profits engaged in the sustainability space. It supports activists, artists, farmers, writers, and other practitioners to challenge orthodoxy by exchanging creative and critical thinking that inspires ecological and societal resilience through hands-on knowledge of soil, food, water, health, economics, energy, politics, and local communities.
About Chelsea Green Publishing
Founded in 1984, Chelsea Green Publishing is recognized as a leading publisher of books on the politics and practice of ecologically based living, publishing authors who bring in-depth, practical knowledge to life, and give readers hands-on information related to organic and regenerative farming and gardening, ecology and the environment, healthy food, local economies and resilient communities, and integrative health and wellness. An employee-owned company, Chelsea Green publishes authors that empower and inspire individuals to reduce their ecological impact and to participate in the restoration of healthy local communities, bioregional ecosystems, and a diversity of cultures. Chelsea Green promotes better understanding of natural systems as a global-commons and to empower people to participate in restoring those commons, to serve as its effective stewards, and to help mitigate worldwide social and environmental disruptions.
Chelsea Green Publishing is a Partner/Sponsor of the Y on Earth Community Podcast and offers our audience a special 35% discount on books and audiobooks with the code: YOE35. Go to yonearth.org/partners-supporters for more information and to get your discount.
Resources & Related Episodes
Chelsea Green Foundation: chelseagreenfoundation.org
Facebook: chelseagreenpub
Twitter: @chelseagreen
Instagram: @chelseagreenbooks
Chelsea Green Publishing – US: www.chelseagreen.com
Chelsea Green Publishing – UK: www.chelseagreen.co.uk
Ep 142, Maria Rodale, Author, Love, Nature, Magic (a Chelsea Green publication)
Ep 136, Ben Raskin, Author, The Woodchip Handbook (a Chelsea Green publication)
Ep 35, Ralph (“Bud”) Sorenson, past President, Babson College and Author, An Entrepreneurial Journey
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth Community Podcast.
I’m your host, Aaron William Perry, and today we’re visiting with Matthew Derr, the executive
director of Chelsea Green Foundation and the editor and acquirer at Chelsea Green Publishing.
Matthew, how are you doing today?
I’m doing really well, Aaron, and thanks for having me.
I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
I am as well, and we’ve got a lot of really fun and joyful topics to cover today that are
essentially storytelling regarding your career, your work, your service in the world, and
you’re connected to so many thought leaders and change makers and have done so much in your
own right in that regard.
It’s a real joy to have this opportunity to visit with you.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, I really think a lot of the work that you’re doing and the conversations you’ve been able
to pull together and some really remarkable people.
So humbled to be among them and to have some time to sit with you.
It’s going to be fun.
Matthew Derr is a trustee and executive director of Chelsea Green Foundation,
and also, as I mentioned, editor and acquirer of Chelsea Green Publishing.
He also served as president of Sterling College in Vermont where he co-founded the Wendell
Barry farming program.
Matthew has also been a visiting fellow at the Great Lakes Colleges Association,
an interim president at Antioch College, and has also served a number of NGOs in the capacity of
Treasurer, Secretary, Chair, etc., including Treasurer at the Center for an Agricultural
Economy, Secretary and Treasurer at Work Colleges Association, Chair at the Vermont Food System
Higher Education Consortium, and National Advisory Board at the Sphinx Music Organization,
which I’m really, really excited to talk about.
And so, Matthew, maybe just to dive in here and kick things off for us.
Tell us, what is Chelsea Green? What’s happening at this organization that’s so special,
and why are you drawn to be a part of the leadership at Chelsea Green?
Yeah. It’s a little daunting to hear your whole professional life listed in that way.
I started to feel a little tired listening to it because there’s a lot of work
and many relationships, and then all of that entails, and I’ve had the chance to work with
really terrific colleagues all along my professional life.
And the transition to Chelsea Green was another part of that story.
I had the chance, well, I was president at Sterling to be able to interact with a lot of the authors
who were writing and publishing books with Chelsea Green.
You know, they’re amazing practitioner writers, people grounded in hands-on learning,
which is very much the mode of education at Sterling College.
And so, in that context, I was exposed to some really sort of leading edge thinking among these
writers. And so, when the opportunity came, and it was time for me to become president of
a Maritist, and I had a chance to begin some consulting work with my friend and colleague,
Margot Baldwin, who co-founded Chelsea Green Publishing, I left at the opportunity because of
the richness of the conversations that I’d experienced.
And my own experience with Chelsea Green’s books they published over the years,
and the way in which my life was informed by the authors that I’d read.
You know, I think there’s an obvious connection between the world of publishing and higher education.
But what I think helps colleges like Antioch and Sterling stand apart is their focus on mission.
And Chelsea Green, you know, and its long standing conviction about the politics and practice
of sustainable living, or ecological living now, reminded me a lot of the ethos and culture
of a mission-driven institution, though, for a profit company. And so, to be able to actually look
at how that kind of vision and mission could be applied in a different kind of context,
a different sector of the economy, but with great thinkers and ideas was really compelling for me.
Yeah, it’s absolutely tremendous. And, of course, we’re very happy to share that the YonEarth
community is in partnership with Chelsea Green Publishing around the podcast. We’re doing a number
of episodes with Chelsea Green authors, and so happy to share their expertise and wisdom, and
just recently recorded with Maria Rodel, her entry book.
I love nature magic. Yeah, I have the three words locked. I just haven’t locked the sequence
in my memory yet. I love nature magic, and that’s such an extraordinary reading that book is a
really extraordinary experience. The connection between the two organizations is so clear. I mean,
you have stewardship, well-being, prosperity, or all parts of your mission. And, you know,
for the foundation, which we haven’t yet really talked about, the Chelsea Green Foundation,
which is sort of new in this world, it’s all about ecological and societal well-being.
So, the work you’re doing and the work Chelsea Green Foundation, the work Chelsea Green
the company is doing, it’s not a big surprise that they’ve come together and that you’re talking
to a lot of authors. Yeah, absolutely. And no doubt it’s such a joy getting to read the books and
chat with the authors in that way. Well, mentioning the foundation, let’s hear about it. Why
why did Chelsea Green create a foundation? And what are you guys doing through the foundation?
Yeah, the company is nearing, you know, 40 years of existence that they’re marking that moment
in its history. And it’s just to be clear, I work with a team of editors and with Margot,
people who are acquiring and working with writers around the world, we have an office in London,
an office in the United States. And it was a maturing, independent mission driven publishing house
that reached a certain point in its development where I think founding, creating a corporate
related but independent foundation made sense as a way to concentrate its philanthropic commitment.
Chelsea Green has always been, I think, a generous corporation. It’s an ESOP so it doesn’t have
the tax advantages that a lot of companies have around philanthropy. So it’s really from the heart,
it’s really from the mission. And the vision for the foundation was to really take what
that corporation, ethos, the culture of Chelsea Green was all about and apply it in the world
of philanthropy. So much of what we’re doing in the foundation, it’s work sort of falls into
three different categories. You can see history and the legacy that it’s supporting in its connection
to the history of the company. So the initial gift from the company founded got us underway.
And we devised a sort of a three-part approach to our work and we decided that much like Chelsea
Green, the company, which is very much a hands-on organization and business, that we would be
an operational foundation, a private operating foundation rather than just the foundation that awarded
grants. And the difference is, you know, an IRS code that operating foundations actually create
programming. And so part of what we do is to work with people who might have unconventional voices
are at a point in their writing or thinking where they need a little bit more support in doing
their work or their organization within that context. And the foundation will award them grants.
And then we worked with those granting partners to create programming, that gatherings,
events, content that we promote. And we’re really just at the beginning, so people begin to look
at what we’re doing. We hosted a series of interviews with Vanya Shiva not too long ago.
And so we create content, video content, not as rich as what you’re doing, or as mature as what
you’re doing, but very much in the same vein of trying to capture the ideas of people who are
really thinking critically about this particular moment, not only in our social history, but in our
history and connection with the natural world. And then finally, we’re trying to advocate for good
ideas. And then that’s something that Chelsea Green and the publishing company has always done.
You know, I know that you had been asking on here recently. So these are
you know, that’s a book about woodshifts. Those are really good ideas and really important ideas.
And they’re also, you know, that what Vanya Shiva is talking about which of these really
big ideas, Chris Smaj and others, big ideas about the future of agriculture. So
just as the company does the foundation sort of stands at that galaxy as well.
That’s so wonderful. And I’m wondering, you know, for individuals or organizations out there who
think they might want to engage with the foundation, what’s the best way for them to go about,
you know, ascertaining whether there might be a fit or learn more about what you guys are focused on?
So, you know, I personally respond to queries about ideas and funding things that
may align with our mission. I think that part of what someone needs to do is to begin to become
really familiar with the foundation through its website and I sort through all of those emails.
The actual formal process and this won’t surprise anyone listening is that we have a
nominating board and the nominating board is anonymous. Many Chelsea Green authors and
and people who are not affiliated or haven’t historically been affiliated with Chelsea Green
who are out in the world and in the spaces where we think interesting ideas will originate from
are the formal way that a proposal for funding would come forward. But I think what’s really
interesting about being a private operating foundation is there isn’t just one way that we’re
partnering with folks who share in our vision and in our work. So granting is one part of it,
creating gatherings, it’s another part of it and then advocating for good ideas is that third part.
That’s so exciting. Do you have a sense for what we might expect in upcoming gatherings and
like where are these held like virtually or in person or both? How does that work?
Yeah, so we hosted just our very first gathering in March and it was it was a real it was a success
but it was the first one and as you know from any kind of series of things that you do you learn and
you build as you go along. So this was a small gathering. We had 12 people at the Canelo project which
is in Elgin, Arizona just outside Patagonia outside of Tucson and Bill and Athena Steen who founded
the Canelo project were some of the first authors you know talking about the legacy in this 40 year
history. Their straw bail house book was one of the really first big bestsellers at Chelsea Green
and so they’ve been important to the company and they hosted the very first gathering and that
conversation was devoted to thinking about tools for conviviality and we at the foundation we developed
a pretty deep interest in the writing of Ivan Illich and so we brought people together who had
an interest in Illich and who had an interest in explore and particularly of this technologically
accelerating relationship that humans have with technology in some ways that are pretty
disconcerting to have a deeper conversation about tools for conviviality and so I think the foundation
has a vision for these gatherings is formed around particular ideas. I think we’ll continue to have
conversations about the writing of Ivan Illich but given my background and one of the reasons that
John Ray who was the president of Schumacher College joined the board of the foundation the reasons
we’ve come together is that we want to talk about education we want to talk about higher education
what’s wrong and where there are some models of hope like Schumacher College and like sterling
college and like Antioch and a few other places where we think good practices timely practices for
the ecological circumstances we face are being forwarded so I’m imagining that in this next year
our focus will be on education and specifically higher education. Yeah well it’s so exciting to
hear about and we’ve had a number of other guests on the podcast series who have done amazing work
in higher education including I’m thinking of Bud Sorenson who led a Babson College for many years
and also did a lot of work at Harvard and has been instrumental in the conscious capitalism
movement and I’m curious to get your thoughts on you know the state of higher education and where
you might see things going with maybe some optimism as the world continues to evolve so rapidly
or perhaps some of the things you’re seeing that might cause a little more pessimism than optimism
what you’re like assessment of where we’re at with higher ed right now. Well higher ed’s a mess
I’ll work backwards from that but there are some examples of really terrific work being done
in higher education and some really remarkable people who only want to do good in their work
and you know the the Babson example is an interesting one you know what he was able to accomplish
there was transformative to that institution but also recalibrated other institutions to think
about entrepreneurialism differently and in the way that could be informed by a deeper set of
values and convictions than a bottom line and so my question is you know that’s a very successful
example so I sat on the New England higher education commissioning a crediting body and it gave
me a view of a lot of different institutions. Babson really successful institution I’m really
every measure that you could come up with a transform institution from what it was you know 30, 40,
50 years ago. What topic would be more important right now than the human relationship with the
natural world and where are those colleges that are going to focus time and attention on stewardship
as their principal reason for being as their mission for being so I’m very much you know come from
the tradition of the liberal arts and so stepping outside of the model of STEM or very focused
training not that there is anything wrong with training as a part of education and thinking about
the way in which colleges could begin to focus on the critical thinking citizenry both in the
sense of the planet and our communities as the reason for being versus what seems to have happened
which is to take a look at from place like Babson and say well what they’ve really been successful
as building buildings building endowment building chair positions and missing the point of actually
I think what was important about what they accomplished and so the sheer competitive nature of higher
education for enrolled is undermining its integrity because these smaller institutions that actually
had different kinds of opportunities to distinguish themselves as it’s throwing it around ecology and
agriculture and that human relationship with the natural world I mean it can be nursing it can be
any number of different kinds of areas of focus but what has ultimately happened is that the
smaller colleges that could have had that kind of mission driven vision became many universities
trying to do everything to expand the net and capture as many enrolled students as they possibly
could and at the same time they worked to drive down costs by converting their faculty to add to
faculty and making smaller and smaller faculty so you asked me a very big question what’s wrong
with higher education that is that is a small list but I would say it’s lost its moral compass which
is the most important problem and it’s now a race to cutting in order to become more effective
rather than applying a vision of what’s good and what can be done with the resources at hand and
there are many complications certainly as a college president interim president and president
added a couple different institutions and an accrediting board member I saw those complications
and navigating this time not to mention a global pandemic that really underlined higher education
this is a really hard time for college that’s been nothing to do with my transition I’m sure
but it is a moment and the reason the foundation wants to have this conversation it is
moment in which we should have already taken stock and be planning and thinking about what
higher education looks like next and I think that’s that’s the conversation that the foundation
wants to to engage in putting everything that we thought about higher education on the table
can I give you one more example please yeah this is great I’m curious what your questions are but
what the pandemic did to higher education in an economic sense and in student confidence sense
I think it’s clear you can read that major publications the New York Times and other places where
there are all kinds of alternative use about what that was about and what happened but most
importantly I think it said in this connects to the reason why I think we’re looking at tools for
conviviality of knowledge is that all education doesn’t say no matter how you get however you’re
exposed to the ideas whether that’s online and the pandemic with online courses even for the
most hands-on of colleges was a gutting experience it was tremendously difficult for faculty to make
that transition you know I friends who were teaching opera by zoom not an easy thing to do agriculture
by zoom not an easy thing to do and what it’s done is it sort of exposed and I think some good
can come from this it exposed the the critical nature of hands-on education as what I think
students really aspire to find as opposed to what we were able to cobble together many institutions
during that that that COVID experience so it’s it’s a really shaken higher education to its core
and especially small colleges yeah yeah wow this is this is bringing up for me two different
different thoughts and you know one might my son Hunter had his freshman year of college during
COVID he finished high school during that first spring of COVID right a very strange kind of
graduation ceremony and then a few months later started college and he would wake up in his dorm
you know go to the cafeteria to get a food come back to his dorm and then have anywhere from
seem like eight to ten hours of online screen time learning and not surprisingly he got pretty
depressed thankfully he was located close by to me here and I could easily go grab him and we go
up in the woods or head into town or whatever to mix it up a little bit but even for a resilient
and resourceful young man like him it was a very challenging time and I know one that he probably
won’t won’t soon forget you know and go ahead no I you know I’m glad you brought up that that
social piece because I was really focusing on the classroom experience was was formed in ways that
I think were not progressive not forward yeah yeah the other piece of it of course is you know
any of us I’m I’m in my mid 50s now that reflect back what do I remember from my undergraduate
experience I remember the relationships I you know there’s some lectures that were
impactful and I certainly remember some of them I remember books that I read if you really press
me I can think of those things but what leaves to mind is the maturity that came about as a result of
being in spaces both academic and social spaces with with my peers with with faculty and that
wasn’t that couldn’t be replicated in the context of the changes we made for public health
history reasons and so yeah I I’m so sorry there were so many problems with higher education
before the pandemic so those who say well this is really the origin story is 2020 I don’t think
I write but your son and a whole cohort of students really missed out on an experience that I
certainly cherished myself and I know you and others do from state universities to to small colleges
what I think is really important to remember is that you know the vast majority way many many more
students are still impacted by it nothing it hasn’t gone back to what it was and and I think
those in the tension of fitting pieces back together in higher education being in flux there is
some opportunity to talk about what should come next very interesting yeah the the the other thought
that was triggering for me as as you were describing this is a little essay I came across I think
back in graduate school by William Irwin Thompson when he was at MIT Massachusetts Institute of
Technology back in the 1970s and he was already for seeing the advent of global communication
connectivity through the internet and describe this in the title of his essay meta industrial village
he foresaw an opportunity for us to relocalize our connections with soil and food and water and
land stewardship and community while essentially each engaging as a unique node in this global
globally connected you know quote unquote village if you will for learning and for idea sharing and
for devolved or evolved democratic governance and so on and you know I’m curious if you can wave
your magic wand and you know take the best that the technology has to offer right now or what
it might be offering in the near future and and blend that with some of the other needs and
opportunities you’re seeing as an educator like what would you love to see play out over the next
5 10 15 20 years in education yeah you know I it comes back to this idea what is it what is a
convivial tool right yeah if if I think about the ways in which technology and advancing technology
became increasingly important to the ways accentuated the ways in which good teachers taught
that’s the sweet spot right you know you take an iPad into the field in a soil science course and
you have access to this really wide array of information that you did not have 10 years earlier
but when the background of that use of that tool is not a deeper relationship in level of
a connection and hands on experience with a mentor it it’s not a convivial tool if it replaces
that relationship or so blends in mold or to melt the the relationship that it can’t be identified as
as a student teacher student student relationship anymore you know because it’s replacing expensive
parts of that with a new tool you get into trouble so I’m not a a luttie but I do look back
at the way even at Sterling we applied these tools to our educational pedagogy and our model
in which that we’d ask some different and deeper questions because it’s quite a luring
and in a panic like the pandemic it really risks that ahead of our judgment of how
meaningfully or badly even that it was impacting the education so access to information and
accentuating the student teacher relationship with the use of technology to me as a convivial use
another piece of it of course is this technology whether it’s you know AI or any other form
we need citizens community members who understand it and and so it’s here we’re living in this
complex technological world and not all of it’s convivial but we can still inform people about
not just how to tell the difference that that should be relatively easy for critical thinkers to
do but how to form the values to know how to use the tools and I think some of the smaller
colleges are doing this but really thinking deeply about the values proposition behind
limiting and controlling and understanding the impact of technology.
Yeah so fascinating and it’s so important right now and gosh I’m struck by the
by the term convivial I actually studied some Latin and high school and I imagine the
the the etymology of this term has something to do with living together and when I hear the term
used it brings up a sense of joyfulness of of simpatico and at the end of the day we really
are talking about living together right so many of the ecological challenges we’re facing are
our challenges where the balance of living together with ecosystems with each other with
the various creatures in happening are shared mother earth are not in balance are not
stewarded in an ethos of love and care and compassion and kindness and so I’m curious how
did you guys come up with conviviality as as the focal point in my goodness it’s it’s such a
beautiful potent word to to focus on yeah you know I’m rather than in it it’s an undergraduate
and graduate school that sort of thing I I hadn’t really come across community in 30 plus years
of working in higher education which might also that’s another conversation but what I
I was reintroduced to it conceptually by the book that Chelsea Green published lean lean logic
and surviving the future which was edited by Sean Chamberlain and David Fleming an economist
talked about the ways in which conviviality were important to our understanding of how we would
survive in in the future how we should live and how we should survive and then you know the
connection to illegitimate building on that you know the use of the word is is is complicated
you’re what you’re drawing from it is you know part of the the intention that I think all colleges
and universities should have foundations should aspire to mission driven companies like Chelsea
Green should put forward in the way that they they profit in their businesses and if we do that if
we are conscientious about building conviviality strengthen in communities as a result then you know
what we do is we we we create a sense of connection and we limit the the sense of
a strange that that we have you know the decisions that we need to make about pesticide use
have to do with our estrangement from each other and the national natural world you know you see
in your yard and you use a herbicide to take care of that it’s using a set of values that it
really is one could argue selfish one could argue also about creating a vision of what you think
nature should look like but what’s behind that is an estrangement from nature right and an estrangement
from the care of what it would mean to someone else’s health to be using that product
um that’s that’s where I think you know do we want to take care of our yards in a more ecological way
and are there tools that we can use to achieve that absolutely maybe you can convince people
to make that transition but why are they making the transition do they feel a deeper sense of
connection to to their neighbors being the animals and and insects and plants as well as as
the actual physical neighbors at the next address is is where the work needs to be done.
Well and in one of the things I love about Chelsea Green publishing and the ecosystem of authors
and thought leaders at Chelsea Green and have loved for years and years is there’s a very real
focus on what can be done in our own yards our own neighborhoods our own communities
there really is this very practical hands-on some of it kind of fulky in a way and much of it
very science informed how beautiful and it’s I love that it’s you know it’s not a bunch of
techno-centric or you know whizz-bang you know here’s the latest it’s it’s it’s it’s a lot of
very deep thoughtful behind-tested wisdom and knowledge that is shared through this publishing
company and that’s really a curriculum if you if you think back on what drew me to to making this
personal transition you know Tara Viva the book not an issue of a published not too
not too long ago with us the big ideas of a lifetime of commitment to the earth and our connection
to it and then to be able to you know pick up a book like the art of fermentation and and create
something delicious like that’s the world we want to live in right like we need to think the big
thoughts we need to make the grand and firm commitments that need to be made in order to make the
planet livable for all species and we also need to as a species as humans as primates to find a way
to live in a world that is full of joy sort of a conversation you and I’ve had before
and all of that’s important and all of it is is related and colleges should think of their
curricula in that way lifelong experience and development of of of people who are going to be in
our communities and you know thankfully there are there’s a publisher like Chelsea Green and
other publishers who are taking that from that that politics to the practice of the things that
make our lives better and more meaningful I love it just right yummy I mean the cookbooks I think
I mean just soon I’m going to have the opportunity to to edit a cookbook and I need a little bit
of a break from some of the deep things that some really cool recipes and I think you know I would
imagine your book shelf looks like you’ve got a lot of books there I don’t know if you have any
cookbooks behind you but we all need that you actually yeah in here is one there you go yeah yeah
yeah thank goodness for the good cook cookbooks out there in the in the kitchen time that we get
yeah yeah my friends part of why I loved you know and my professional life has been in the arts
and it’s been in the sort of agriculturally focused educational model is you know it really is
all about joy and the human experience and and moving yourself through life based on you know
your values and values that are informed by others but it’s also hands-on and I and I think all
of us you know you’re saying how things you need to think about our own personal way of impacting
these these bigger challenges that we face it’s it’s just so much more joyful and more profound
when you can find the way to deal with with your intentions daily your hands and in the way that you
do your work yeah here here I wholeheartedly agree with that statement I loved when when I you know
is it sterling and I would see students working with the draft forces those studio classes you
know it’s a very inefficient way one faculty member and a student on a wagon not not cost effective
in the way the colleges and universities think about education and I remember encountering
that that learning model and thinking this is private lessons you know challenge right it’s
one-on-one it’s a faculty member expressing their passion their vision for how this work should
be done and a student screwing up you know eliminating you know a row of carrots that we’re not
ready to be harvested average going off all the ways and then you know a musician giving a recital
where no it’s it can’t be perfect yet it takes it takes practice and it takes a relationship
to faculty that I think is is unfortunately under threat you know in a lot of ways yeah
you know you’re really you’re hitting on something here for me with this notion of practice this
experience of practice and cultivating practice in my sense is that we’ve we’ve transitioned into a
world now where we’ve developed some false expectations around immediacy of results and you know
I’m just thinking about how important it is for each of us to engage in the cultivation of
a practice or many practices whether it’s cooking or tending to the carrots or practices of
conviviality I think even the the social infrastructure of conviviality perhaps has attributes
quite a bit in our in our culture especially here in the United States in recent years and I’m
very curious to hear from you as both a publisher well I guess all three a publisher a philanthropist
and an educator what can we be doing other than getting more folks to read more Chelsea green books
right and what can we be doing to to cultivate much more conviviality in our world in our
communities in our society yeah you know it’s cliche that you’re acknowledging that it’s important
right yeah you know if you think about our civic dialogue right now I think most of us would
agree that it falls below the standard of civility and conviviality in any you know any meaningful
way in the media sure but among our neighbors does it have to I think you know there that there’s
a lot loaded in into that but it is a re establishing of priorities that I think is important is it
important to me that these people I encounter in my daily life who are members of the community with
me and the ways in which I move through the world are strengthened by their exposure to me
um and again that’s a complex you know who’s measuring that and and how much privilege is
backed in all I do understand that but living conscientiously I think is is a really important
piece of it as I think about how institutions could make those change you know institutions are
tools as well you know colleges and universities are tax exempt because they serve a social purpose
they are a societal tool to achieve on hand and so we’ve decided that what is really important is
you know the ways in which I’ll just use this it’s not a silly example but an example around
food since we’ve talked about food already no how many choices of breakfast boxed breakfast cereal
are you going to find in the the dining hall how many different global cuisines can you have
from which to choose regardless of what resources it takes to deliver that what’s much more
interesting and what we can do is do dishes together right we can actually fit it out and have
a shared meal maybe based in the same ingredients where that’s possible and food allergies and all
these other things that come into play but like a shared communal experience around food
is just one example that I think is powerful and when one commits oneself to it really does begin
to transform how we relate to each other so it is in these important but small acts that I think
we make a contribution to the change that you and I are sort of referencing and you know each one
of those examples that I just shared you know you could begin to look at the sourcing of
where those boxes of cereal come from and then you could begin to look at the sources of the meal
that that you might prepare that is a little bit more academically sensitive and that you share
together and so there are many layers to those acts of values of application and decision making
about how you guide yourself through your life and through your day yeah and that’s that’s the
you know you in the context of publishing and the context of higher education that is really
that daily act I think is really important oh so beautiful yeah yeah I have to acknowledge that
the digging of of the message is not a convivial tool right like things overwhelm us every day yeah
and the last thing I would want to do is give anyone the impression that by publishing books
we’re providing a certain kind of education that it’s easy right you know if I think about the
kinds of ways I was living in my 30s how I’m living now and how I anticipate I will live in the
future they’re they’re pretty radically different I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to
live here at Michigan because that’s where my family is that is not a decision I would have made
at 22 but the things that I’ve done between then and now have prepared me to to play my part here
my my home community so beautiful let me let me remind our audience that sorry go ahead Matthew
that I hope that it has we’ll find out I just got yeah yeah yeah I’ll remind our audience this is
the YonEarth community podcast I’m your host Aaron and William Perry and today we’re visiting
with Matthew Derr the executive director of the Chelsea Green Foundation and editor and acquirer
of Chelsea Green publishing and Matthew I want to make sure to mention a few of the links you’ve
provided Chelsea Green.com is one in the United Kingdom it’s Chelsea Green.co.uk and we’ll
include these links in the show notes of course you can find information about the foundation at
Chelsea Green Foundation.org and you can also connect with the Chelsea Green community on Facebook
Twitter and Instagram Chelsea Green Pub on Facebook at Chelsea Green on Twitter and Chelsea Green
books on Instagram and want to be sure to give a shout out to our several sponsors and partners
who make the YonEarth community podcast series possible along with the rest of our regeneration
Renaissance work in the disciplines of culture economy and ecology and this includes of course
Chelsea Green Publishing and we’ve got a wonderful offering for our audience a 35% discount on the
books the audio books that Chelsea Green provides you can go to our partners and sponsors page
at why-honored.org to connect in and see the deal and link through and so forth you’ll see other
special deals and discounts from other partners there as well including Purium Organic Superfoods
Walei Waters, soaking salts, earth heroes, sustainable products, soil works, biodynamic garden
preparation, earth coast productions and of course a special shout out to our many ambassadors and
our growing global network of ambassadors who are doing work community leading work thought leading
work organization leading work all around the world and many of our ambassadors have joined our
monthly giving program and if you haven’t yet joined in you’d like to you can sign up at any
level that works well for you on our donate support button at YonEarth.org if you’d like to
support at the $33 or higher level we will happily send you a jar of the Walei Waters hemp
infused aroma therapy soaking salt and holding it up to the camera here or eucalyptus blend as an
example this is a beautiful way to enhance our personal self-care practices farm to tub we like
to call it and we source our hemp from a few different regenerative and biodynamic farms here in
Colorado so a great shout out and thanks and gratitude to so many of our friends and colleagues
and supporters and with with Chelsea Green so central in the regeneration renaissance movement
Matthew that from my preview seems to be not only emerging but really activating and amplifying
now worldwide it’s awesome to see not only the thought leadership in the marketplace of ideas as
it were but also the way in which Chelsea Green has an organization is embodying and demonstrating
some of the best practices including for example you guys are now a 100% employee owned company
and I wanted to be sure to ask you about this and have you tell us a bit about some of the
corporate practices that Chelsea Green has has committed to yeah you know when when you talk
about a company a for-profit company you know what I think comes to most people’s minds a board
room and a group of small group of people who have ownership and a bigger group of people who
work for them what I find really fascinating and somewhat familiar that the sense of agency
and ownership that faculty and people feel in higher education I also see at Chelsea Green among
my my colleagues as employees they are owners in the company they own the stockets their retirement
and then so in every decision that we make you know I’ll talk about the ways in which I’m most
involved in in the company is a consultant I sit with the editors and we decide which books
we make publish why we want to publish those books but the relationship with the author will be
like and and how we arrive at a decision to publish or not publish something has everything to do
with the ways in in which we want to further the mission of the business we also need to make
sure that the books that we choose are profitable and that the company is profitable for everyone’s
benefit and so there’s a kind of ownership and my ownership I don’t mean the actual ownership
though that is true as well but the kind of ownership that we have for the decisions that that we
make and the interaction and engagement of of the editors the design the publicity the marketing
team have there’s a kind of a spread of core there that I think is it really deeply informed
by the fact that that Chelsea Green is an ESOP big step for an independent publisher to make
and but if you think about what publishing is about you know ideas and and and again a deep
sense of conviction the fact that Chelsea Green is is one of the few independent publishers out
there that is an ESOP I think has a lot to do with with its success you know you as you would
imagine you know we we try to do our printing in a way and choose both distribution and
publication practices that are our consistent with the ecological values that that we write about
and publish and so we’re one of the very first publishing companies to have made those commitments
and and to sustain those commitments and you know in some ways that’s just so obvious that it’s
not remarkable that’s where that’s the sweet spot of where you want to be right and I and I feel
that way often at that Chelsea Green that we’re in sync with one another we care about publishing
with integrity and we care about business practices that that are based in that same
conviction about integrity. Just a beautiful idea.
40 years it’s nothing to me it’s it’s not certainly there are many many publishing houses
independent otherwise they’re older but the space that you’re describing or what was formerly
just called the sustainability space and of course those words are all evolving and changing
organic you know I think I’ll go with LA Coleman it’s sort of organic is the is the way to go
and say that you know this is a publishing house that sort of been on that that leading edge of that
language and that idea of what sustainability organic thinking meant and means and so the fact
that it’s flourishing we hope the companies had a lot to do with it its authors have had a lot
to do with it yeah it’s an incredible ecosystem of thought leaders and folks doing this amazing
work in the community and a lot of people who have their own beautiful farms and live
lives that very much you see on the pages of the books it’s a kind of authenticity
that that I think is hard to find hopefully easier and easier to find as as we go forward and I’d
love I love your when it’s so obvious that it isn’t remarkable I mean may that be one of our
you know rallying cries perhaps with many of these threads that we’re all working on in different
ways yeah yeah absolutely and I think that’s what what you’re doing with in leading these
these these conversations right but you know how how do you in in the context of a short time
talking with someone really under understand what seems obvious to them and and how does that
inform the the choices people who hear them will will make going forward and I think you know
publishing is a sector of of the economy and enterprise that I think wins itself well
to to not bringing those ideas forward just as these kinds of conversations too yeah absolutely
yeah absolutely it’s uh and you know one of the things just because you mentioned it Matthew
that I love about podcasting that we we kind of like stumbled into it we were out visiting our
friends at sustainable settings one of the biodynamic farms here in Colorado and and uh
Artem was with me nickel cob the CEO of uh of uh uh earth coast productions and we thought hey let’s
bring the video cameras and we’ll interview Brooke Levan right and we we did this a little sit down
interview under the apple tree with the birds chirping and realize afterward wait a minute we’re
we’re actually connected with a lot of people doing a lot of really important work and we can
probably help share their stories and messages and amplify their voices out into the world let’s
do this and so it’s just sort of organically there’s that word again um evolved and I have to say
as a as a lifelong learner and and passionate reader and and writer um preparing for a podcast
interview is one of my very favorite modes of learning actually it’s it’s it’s like I get to take
a crash course on on you and many of these other you know Chelsea Green authors and and farmers
and herbalists and executives and scientists and indigenous wisdom keepers and youth activists
and so forth and so it’s it’s such a beautiful way for me to experience this this connectivity
that I think more and more of us are now cultivating in our lives and our communities locally
regionally and globally and and it I just I end up feeling such a joy and nourishment from this
type of connection and you know we could we could just be chit chatting about anything but we’re
instead uh you’re having some fun and maybe you know telling a joke or two but we’re staying pretty
focused on our core purpose and mission in the work we’re we’re filling up our years and decades
with and so yeah there’s a there’s a depth of I guess meaning and acknowledgement and
visibility there that um boy for me it it’s just it’s so wonderful to be able to share that with folks
yeah you know what I have encountered just listening to a few of the podcasts that that you shared
with me is you know you move beyond the abstract experience of the podcast right you know
it matters how prepared you are for the conversation that that’s a kind of
application of of learning and knowledge that is really hands on right you know
there are plenty of things that I read and I’ll never encounter the author and that’s gratifying
but when you’re actually confronted with the opportunity and I use confront the Benzo
with the opportunity to sit with one and someone who really talks through with with they have
been doing and what they’ve been thinking about that that supplied you know that that’s putting
your experience with the written word in this instance to good use to to inspire a conversation
which is really what I think that kind of conversational storytelling makes for a really rich
podcast really rich interactive kinds of experiences for listeners there’s that
conviviality again it is yeah doesn’t mean that we can’t have conflict but you know
in the context of ideas you can have that conflict in ways that I think are
are gratifying as as well as convivial so I’m like getting this new tagline like cultivating
culture of conviviality and then maybe side note like and occasional conflict so we can’t
navigate cause yeah yeah that’s so wonderful well Matthew I know that we’re probably about at the
time we can wrap up our podcast and I’m so happy that you’re willing to take a few extra minutes
for our quote unquote behind the scene segment that we share with our ambassador network exclusively
and again folks if if you’d like to engage with our ambassador network and and become an ambassador
please go to YonEarth.org and start your journey there you’ll find the become an ambassador page
and for our ambassadors not only do we have a number of recorded behind the scene segments with
our special podcast guests we also have videos from a variety of conferences and workshops that are
not available another way and because we also host a monthly online meetup with ambassadors world
wide that gets recorded those are available in the archive as well so there’s a lot of additional
value there for folks who would like to access that and yeah we’re Matthew gonna transition in
just a few minutes to our behind the scenes segment and before we do that I just I want to first
of all thank you for being a guest on our whyon earth community podcast and secondly want to open
the floor if there’s anything additional you’d like to share with our audience calls to action
whatever it might be words of wisdom please the the floor is yours oh that that’s generous and you
know I I really do feel honored to to be able to have the conversation you and I’ve had a couple
of opportunities to catch up with one another and I was excited to have a chance to sit down with
you today words of wisdom you know I’ve been around so many people who I thought were wiser or
or smarter or you know more accomplished than than I am that I don’t ordinarily think about
having the floor and holding forth but I think that surround yourself with people good people
it’s so important be challenged by them in your daily life and if there’s anything that I took
from 30 years in higher education and again at Chelsea Green it’s how fortunate I am to be surrounded
by really interesting people not all of whom I agree with all the time but but people who who are
driven by conviction even when their convictions are different than mine inspire me and that’s an
important part of of doing good work you you mentioned earlier this the motto of anti-op college
which is be ashamed to die until you’ve won some victory for humanity and I chuckled because
of course it’s such a Victorian nonsense be ashamed but I think if you surround yourself with
interesting people and you think about the time that we have on this mortal coil and the desire
to do good to actually do something victorious for humanity or humanity’s relationship with the
natural world then one can live a meaningful life and a gratifying life and not always an easy
life but one that you can be proud of. It’s so beautiful thank you so much Matthew it’s really
joy to have this opportunity to visit with you yeah thank you I appreciate it take care
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