How can we go about “future-proofing Sidmouth“? If we define this as making Sidmouth more resilient to the stresses and strains we will be facing, then yes, perhaps we can!

And this is where Sidmouth Solarpunk might come in – with its strapline of ‘realistic optimism’.

The notion of Sidmouth already being ‘solarpunk’ is in fact a pretty realistic notion – with the Sidmouth being Solarpunk page pointing out that “the underlying beliefs of Solarpunk are very much ‘mend and make-do’.. and look after your environment and your neighbours both young and old.”

Firstly, when it comes to adaptation and the mix of high and low-tech, we already have the technology we need: “We already have so many of the foundational technological building blocks of the clean energy transition at hand: renewables, energy efficiency, energy storage, and pathways to electrifying a vast array of energy end uses. Combined, these technologies have the capacity to get us an overwhelming amount of the way there.”

For example, in our corner of the world, clean technology in the South West is “embracing a circular economy by turning old EV batteries into a domestic source of critical minerals”. And over the coming year, this and other blogs will be looking at how the technology of NOW can help us cope with the future here in the South West. This we can call “hopeful solutionism“.

The other aspect of solarpunk which is relevant to us here in Sidmouth is that it’s about looking after our environment, both natural and human – and there is so much potential.

Solarpunk is about technology ‘blending with the environment’, whether it’s putting into practice more sustainable architecture and design and linking architecture and well-being, or thinking about ‘pocket’ and ‘tiny’ forests in our midst

And on the community level, we can be doing it locally with community larders and with e-waste, or using apps to save food waste and giving time at Christmas.

All of these things are either happening or are possible here in Sidmouth.

It’s about imagination and creativity – and about the determination to use what we’ve got. And in Sidmouth we’ve got plenty of both, exemplified by such already well-established institutions such as the Sidmouth School of Art [“intriguing, fun and curious”] and the Sidmouth Repair Café, trying to move us on from the ‘throwaway’ culture into treasuring what we already have.

Finally, to quote from the Solarpunk: Notes toward a manifesto:

“Solarpunk is about finding ways to make life more wonderful for us right now, and more importantly for the generations that follow us – i.e., extending human life at the species level, rather than individually. Our future must involve repurposing and creating new things from what we already have (instead of 20th century “destroy it all and build something completely different” modernism). Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.”

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