Becoming a Stag Beetle! Living the Interspecies Treaty of Finsbury Park with Ruth Catlow

In this week's episode, we have a return guest to the podcast. Ruth Catlow has taken the amazing work she did in lockdown and held live festivals in the park where people get to become one of the seven core species: a dog, a Canada goose (just visiting!) a tree, grass… and, yes, a stag beetle. What they're not being, are people. So they're looking at the world through new eyes, hearing it with new ears, smelling, tasting, sensing in all ways - and the whole experience of what it is to live in this place as home, instead of just dropping in…becomes deeper, and more complex and more alive. And then each of the species can put forward ideas for the Interspecies Treaty of Finsbury Park which will make it a much better place for everyone - including the people.

And then - because Ruth's enthusiasm and expertise range widely over the ways things can be made more fair and equitable, as well as work better, she's designed the app that allows a much fairer voting system, so the people-become-MoreThanHumans can vote on the seven ideas put forward for the Treaty in ways that allows more nuance than simply ranking them.

This last became a whole other hour of conversation on voting systems and how we can create a decent democracy - so that's the bonus... well worth a listen!

The Treaty of Finsbury Park https://treaty.finsburypark.live/
CultureStake App https://culturestake.org/
Episode #163 https://accidentalgods.life/cultures-of-commoning/
Experiences of the Interspecies Festival https://www.islingtontribune.co.uk/article/now-we-know-how-trees-in-the-park-feel
Nordic LARP https://nordiclarp.org/
Quadratic Voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_voting