INSPIRE: Recent Episodes
Ginninderry
Brought to you by Ginninderry, an innovative and sustainable community in Canberra, Australia, the INSPIRE podcast series is born out of the belief that we can all contribute towards a more sustainable world. We talk to experts, visionaries and locals who share how they are making positive changes, both big and small, to inspire a new way of living.
Australian botanical artist Sharon Field is waging a personal protest against global warming through her project "3000days ... and counting", an artistic response to the urgent call to address climate change.
Sharon’s ink and watercolour-on-paper scroll is a massive undertaking, involving a commitment to paint small segments of nature each day until the year 2030. That will take 3000 days.
The artwork connects the point at which, towards the end of 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the world it needed to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030, and the cut-off date for action.
Canberra is known as an affluent city, but as the cost of living bites, more and more Canberrans are going hungry each day. That’s where HelpingACT, led by retired biochemist and former Multicultural Volunteer of the Year, Mohammed Ali, comes in.
For the last five years, the charity has provided food security to vulnerable Canberrans including refugees and asylum seekers, homeless people, international students, and anyone else in need.
How can public art enrich the liveability of a community? We speak to Ginninderry’s Arts & CulturalPlanning Advisor Tom Gray about how art and design can be valuable placemaking tools to tell stories of landscape and culture.
We all know the importance of reducing our ecological footprint – but how can we, as individuals, create a more sustainable life?
We talk to Canberra Environment Centre Executive Director Fiona Veikkanen about the practical, small steps we can take to create a more sustainable future.
It’s often said that you can’t be what you can’t see – it’s a sentiment that’s especially true in the construction industry. 2024 ACT Australian of the Year Joanne Farrell is working to change that – the founder of not-for-profit program Build Like a Girl facilitating opportunities for women in construction.
Located in the gallery space of the historic Strathnairn Arts Homestead, Café Stepping Stone founders Vanessa Brettel and Hannah Costello are doing more than serving fantastic vegetarian food. Their business model employs migrant and refugee women to give them hospitality experience, learn and improve their English and obtain a Certificate III in commercial cookery or hospitality to advance their skills further.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
Could your money help save the world? Dave Rae, Financial Advisor at Ethinvest, believes it can. He talks us through why it’s important to invest ethically and how we can go about it, from identifying what issues are important to you to changing your super fund investments and making informed decisions on our everyday purchases.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
New York’s famous High Line Park (which used to be a train line) and London’s Tate Modern (formerly Bankside Power Station) are great global examples of adaptive reuse projects – an approach that breathes new life into empty or unused structures and places. Stuart Harrison, Architect and Good Design Advocate, talks about the key considerations and examples of adaptive reuse both globally and locally.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
Walkability, green spaces, access to nature. These are some of the elements that, if incorporated into our community, can enhance our wellbeing. Imogen Featherstone, Planning Development Manager and Tulitha King, Community Development Manager from Ginninderry, talk about how this development has created the infrastructure that allows for greater community interactivity and events.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
While Australia is home to some of the world’s most dangerous snake species, they play a vital role in maintaining our delicate ecosystem. Dr Gavin Smith, Associate Professor in Sociology, despite hailing from Scotland, has gained a local reputation as being a ‘snake whisperer’. Through his research on the Eastern Brown snake, he hopes to help humans and snakes to coexist better.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
No matter your age or ability level, play is important for your health, wellbeing and sense of community. Through her Play, Creativity and Wellbeing Project, Dr Cathy Hope is partnering with Ginninderry to push the boundaries of traditional park infrastructure by creating vibrant, fun spaces that cater to everyone’s needs.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
Australia is the second-largest consumer of textiles globally, with 93% of non-renewable, non-degradable, and synthetic materialsending up in landfills, taking hundreds of years to break down and releasing carbon emissions. But Emma Batchelor, Author of Building a Conscious Wardrobe (and other fun things), shows us how to enjoy fashion in a sustainable way.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
Frogs are the most threatened species group globally, and their declines and losses of species have been described as the single biggestthreat to our biodiversity. But Anke-Maria Hoefer, ACT & Region FrogWatch Coordinator with the Ginninderra Catchment Group explains how we can all do our bit by volunteering to become a FrogWatcher. It’s easy and fun.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here.
A return to work after a career break can be daunting for anyone. And research shows that these career interruptions are much more common for women.
With this in mind, Ginninderry has created a program specifically aimed at getting women back into the workforce, in partnerships with Empowered Collective and the ACT Government Office for Women.
Head of Ginninderry’s Community, Training & Employment, Emma Sckrabei, says that the program is free for eligible women and is part of the suite of courses offered by Ginninderry’s award-winning SPARK Training and Employment Program.
Run by Deborah Fulton, CEO of Empowered Collective, it’s designed to support women who are entering or returning to the workforce, and is made up of three separate workshops, covering the essentials for women hoping to return to work.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/
As Australia rapidly moves towards a renewable energy future, the excess energy that household solar panels are currently producing is creating instability for the grid. But community scale batteries offer a solution, bridging the gap between large utility-scale grid storage systems and costly household battery systems
According to Michael Jansen, Managing Director of PowerTec Engineered Solutions, they offer energy storage for around 100 households, with power capacities up to 5MW and have the potential to play an integral role in Australia’s transition to a decentralised grid.
Ginninderry is trialling Canberra’s first community-scale storage battery and Jessica Stewart, Ginninderry’s Sustainability Manager, says that they will pass on learnings to help lead the way for other community batteries to be built around Australia.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/
Urban agriculture is already taking off in our cities, our suburbs and our backyards – challenging the big supermarkets and the energy and waste generated by industrial agriculture.
Ginninderry is trialling Canberra’s first commercial-scale urban indoor growing facility that deploys cutting-edge vertical-farm technology designed by ambitious Sydney urban-agtech start-up InvertiGro. Jessica Stewart, Ginninderry’s Sustainability Manager, says that the modular units are designed for the highest quality and productivity of crops, in the least amount of space by using less water and energy than any other hydroponic system.
Ginninderry’s unit grows over 200 plants every few weeks, and regularly supplies the nearby Café Stepping Stone with leafy greens, herbs, and some vegetables. And with larger systems able to yield between 180-200 metric tonnes of crops per year, vertical gardening is a gamechanger for urban agriculture.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/
Zuleka Chan, Project Officer at SEE-Change which runs Canberra’s only e-bike library.
E-bike sales have been rising steadily across the world with Deloitte predicting that 130 million electric bikes will be sold between 2020 and 203[1]. And is it any wonder? They’re easy to use – with an in-built electric motor and rechargeable battery that boosts riders up hills and long trips, environmentally friendly and Covid travel-Safe.
Canberrans have embraced the trend, due to great bike path infrastructure, and SEE-Change – Canberra’s only e-bike library – is giving people the opportunity to borrow an e-bike and try for themselves. Zuleka Chan, Project Officer at SEE-Change says that 81% of people who borrowed an e-bike from their e-bike Library went on to purchase their own. Here Zuleka give us some tips on what to look for when choosing an e-bike for you.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/
One of the biggest causes of the world’s most challenging problems is our ‘take, make, dispose’ consumption patterns that deplete our natural resources and fill our land and oceans with harmful waste. But people such as Monica Andrews and Tuli King, Ginninderry’s Community Manager, are helping to make small but meaningful changes. Armed with a host of practical skills from sewing right through to soldering, Monica and her husband John are teaching people in the community to mend, restore or transform their items so that they can continue to be used.
One of these cafes is hosted by Tuli King within the growing neighbourhood of Ginninderry, where residents bring along everything from jumpers that need darning to broken lamps in an effort to avoid these items from going back into landfill.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/
Our suburbs have not been created for wildlife to coexist. The clearing of mature trees leaves many birds and animals without a home. Conventional gardens with lawns, garden beds and European flora don’t offer much food or habitat for our native wildlife. And our beloved pets can harm or scare wildlife away.
However, according to Matthew Frawley, Ginninderry’s Landscape Manager, there is now a trend towards creating natural habitats in gardens that encourage native wildlife such as birds, bats, lizards, frogs, bees and butterflies to return to our urban environments. And it’s easier than you think.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/
According to The Australian Loneliness Report released by Relationships Australia in late 2018, one in four people experienced an episode of loneliness, while one in two people said they felt lonely for at least one day each week. And that was before the spread of COVID-19 which has left people across the world feeling more socially isolated and lonely than ever before.
That’s why feeling like you belong to a community is so vitally important. In this episode we talk to Nick Tebbey, National Executive Officer at Relationships Australia and Tulitha King, Ginninderry Community Development Manager about how we can create a sense of community, no matter where we live.
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What is Ginninderry? Find out here
https://ginninderry.com/