Wes Jackson of The Land Institute. © Douglas Gayeton & Laura Howard-Gayeton

The Lexicon of Sustainability is a project that almost wriggles with excitement. It’s taking all those very important and even edgy things that we should care about and makes them so delicious that you want to eat them all. Which ironically, for the most part, you can!

Regenerative agriculture, foraging, local food systems, community supported agriculture, the soil food web, and many more really important ideas and movements are presented in such a way that you can’t help caring about. We need more of this sort of approach.

© Douglas Gayeton & Laura Howard-Gayeton

Penny Livingston. © Douglas Gayeton & Laura Howard-Gayeton

Featuring fabulous folks like:

• Joel Salatin of PolyFace Farm
• Will Allen of Growing Power
• Alice Waters of Chez Panisse
• Dr Elaine Ingham of The Soil Food Web
• Penny Livingston of The Regenerative Design Institute
• Fallen Fruit (famous feral fruit map makers)
• Wes Jackson of The Land Institute

And many many more. It’s so heartening to see more artists taking on the important role of re-interpreting this stuff.

Part of the project is a series of vignettes, the first of which is foraging:

http://vimeo.com/23810871

What I like best about this project, apart from the sheer lushness of the images and how they both draw you in and also imply the complexity of the subject, is the subject material this project takes on.

Some of the excellent knowledge tackled by this project could be considered a bit dry, until you realize how awesome the implications of that subject are (The soil food web springs to mind here. Great, important info, but commonly very densely presented and not considered very accessible to some people).

Soil Food Web world-leader Dr Elaine Ingham. © Douglas Gayeton & Laura Howard-Gayeton

Growing Power. © Douglas Gayeton & Laura Howard-Gayeton

© Douglas Gayeton & Laura Howard-Gayeton

Some of the other subjects, while not considered dry, are still things that are tricky to explain to some. Joel Salatin and the universe of knowledge and techniques embodied at Polyface Farm, for example. Or home-made methane production. Or, indeed, permaculture. Great, wide-ranging material, with vast implications…

The great thing about this project is that, a bit like The Greenhorns, it joyfully presents and upholds these ideas and people as the fascinating, trail-blazing and ongoing organisms they are.

And as someone familiar with some of the personalities presented, it’s really exciting to see people i care greatly about presented in this way. People whose work i think is so very important, being portrayed in such a gorgeous and accessible format.

And you can follow the vignettes as they’re released on the vimeo channel here.

Related posts:

• Joel Salatin and The Greenhorns in Gerringong
• Review: Soil Food Web Workshop
• Why Pasture Cropping is such a big deal