Important source for Gardenworld - The Arts and Crafts Movement.
#4051
Note the lines in Burns poem from 1785
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
has broken natures social union
An justified that ill opinion
I have proposed Gardenworld as an alternative]t to conventional despair and conventional hope. It’s in the realm of seeking major cultural and economic, psychological and spiritual, and above all an aesthetic approach. People need a visualizeable goal if they are to be engaged in working and creating something new and plausible in our terrible context. So much future talk is abstract and attempts at reframing previous abstractions/
One such image is that created by what was called in the 18 hundreds The Arts and Crafts Movement, It has surprised me how little the movement and its ideals - simpler. and more aesthetic homes and gardens. Suggestive is this entry from Wikipedia
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles[1] and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America.[2]
Initiated in reaction against the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts and the conditions in which they were produced,[3] the movement flourished in Europe and North America between about 1880 and 1920. It is the root of the Modern Style, the British expression of what later came to be called the Art Nouveau movement, which it strongly influenced.[4] In Japan, it emerged in the 1920s as the Mingei movement. It stood for traditional craftsmanship and often used medieval, romantic, or folk styles of decoration. It advocated economic and social reform and was anti-industrial in its orientation.[3][5] It had a strong influence on the arts in Europe until it was displaced by Modernism in the 1930s,[1] and its influence continued among craft makers, designers, and town planners long afterwards.[6]
The term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887,[7] although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least 20 years. It was inspired by the ideas of historian Thomas Carlyle, art critic John Ruskin, and designer William Morris.[8] In Scotland, it is associated with key figures such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh.[9] Viollet le Duc's books on nature and Gothique art also play an essential part in the esthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Movements, such as Gothic, which we have l ignored, have deep roots in trying to reintegrate living by humans with nature, living by every species taken as a whole. Another movement, even stronger in nature human integration, is art nouveau. I had the opportunity to rent a Maybeck house while a grad student in Berkeley.
See the series of books by Ricard Sennet, starting with Craftsman. From Wikipedia, The Craftsman is a book by Richard Sennett about craftmanship and its importance to people and communities.
Sennett argues that the spirit of craftmanship involves the "desire to do a job well for its own sake". For Sennett, people motivated purely by material rewards or competition do not tend to produce as good work as those motivated by a sense of craftmanship. The author also argues that being able to participate in craftmanship - as opposed to mere labour, or even to cerebral activity - is good for people's well being. He tracks the waxing and waning of the craftmanship ethos across history. In the conclusion, Sennett states that the book was written to counter the dim view of manual work arising from the influential Hannah Arendt.
A contemporary approach - think aesthetics and simple
These can be small community projects using scrap and abandoned materials and help build community morale.