A container for patterns - The foprop weave

Here we describe the foprop weave - a framework or 'container' or architecture, for patterns of activist capability in making a living economy. Zone: 3we Landscape: 2culture Family: Pattern

We see two kinds of challenges in cultivating and mobiling activist capability

- The nature of the 'stuff' that an activist may be engaging, handling and working with *in the present moment*. We address this via a framing of three **'Landscapes of/in practice'**. There is material 'stuff' (including the material of our own bodies), there is the 'cultural' understanding, communicating and mutual collaborating of humans (activists) and there is the 'aesthetic' stuff of feeling and intuiting, recognising and refusing to see, wanting something to be close and wanting something to be far away or even annihiliated.

- The scope or reach of activist practice: the way in which *ripples of consequence and outcome* spread themselves, the 'largeness' and lasting-ness and fine- or coarse-grain texture of the consequences of acting. We address this through a framing of **'Zones of proximity and reach'** (zones of reach for short; or just 'zones'). We recognise four zones: increasingly 'large' but at the same time, perhaps increasingly intractable or only indirectly available to see and touch.

We use Zones and Landscapes to construct a conceptual 'weave space', with zones as vertical divisions and landscapes as horizontal divisions. This 4x3 weave serves as a container for descriptions of various kinds of capability that need to be mobilised in the activist practice of making a living economy.

# Landscapes Within the present moment awareness of an activist (and indeed, of any person, in any kind of practice) each of the Landscapes calls for a distinct kind of attention and capability. Each is challenging and resistant, in its own way (reality is 'that which resists'!). In order to really get traction and engagement, in practice, we aim to develop capacity to live in active and sensitive relationship in all three landscapes, moment to moment, and to cultivate and mobilise resources with all three kinds of quality.

See Landscapes of practice: Material landscape - §1 Cultural landscape - §2 Aesthetic landscape - §3 > The symbol § is pronounced 'landscape'.

The landscapes are arranged in order of what (in some sense) is most-to-least obvious; and perhaps (in some sense) most-to-least tractable. Anyway, they call on different kinds of attention, capability and expectation.

# Zones For practice to be really deep and richly engaged and joined-up, actions need to be self-consciously and skilfully conducted in all four Zones, in parallel and in mutual relationship. The nature of skill, perception and capacity in each zone is distinctive, and it can be patchy. We hope to balance-up across the zones, and to join-up and mobilise different kinds of engagement and commitment, leading to a different scope and 'durèe' in consequences of actions.

See Zones of reach: Zone ¿1 - In-here (care work) Zone ¿2 - Here (subsistence work) Zone ¿3 - We (formación work) Zone ¿4 - Region (stewarding work) > The symbol ¿ is pronounced 'zone'

These are arranged in order of what seems to be smallness, immediacy, fine-ness of grain or scale, and durability of ramifications, in relation to other people, other places and other times. However, actions across all zones are called for, for traction, depth, momentum and 'joining up'.

# A weave

The three landscapes and the four zones can be taken, as weft and warp respectively, in a 'weave' of imaginative spaces that is rich enough to be a container for a pattern language of activist practice. The foprop weave - A container

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Next: Tactical selection of issues

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