Local Futures' second episode of Voices from the Field features Chris Wood, of Vermont-based Building A Local Economy (BALE), in conversation with Steve Gorelick, Local Futures' managing director.

Join this online session to learn how Chris and his team created The Commons @ BALE, a thriving community space open to all and used most evenings of the year, and how you could create a similar space in your community. BALE has also created a community solar initiative, a local investment club, a documentary film series, a guide to local businesses, and more, which Chris is happy to discuss based on audience interest. Bring your questions!

Thursday, January 13, 2021. 7pm London | 2pm New York

This 1-hour session (which may extend to 90 minutes) takes place in Zoom, and will also be live streamed to Facebook. Make sure to join in Zoom if you want to ask questions.

Chris Wood helped start and is a lead organizer with BALE (Building A Local Economy), based in South Royalton, Vermont, in the US. In addition to serving on numerous community boards and organizations, Chris has founded or co-founded many nonprofit Vermont organizations over the last several decades. His strength is networking, collaboration, and working with diverse groups/participants to strengthen community goals. His only recognizable relaxation is hiking, following his wife Sylvie on skis, and happily taking control in the kitchen (he also co-founded the quirky and beloved Horn of the Moon Café in Montpelier, Vermont over 40 years ago).

BALE (Building A Local Economy) is a 10-year-old community resource center for local economy initiatives in the White River Valley of Vermont that is intentionally multi-issue in focus and cross-disciplinary in their programmatic work. Their vision is to build a sustainable culture that can foster the economic and ecological capacity in our communities to thrive, even as the external forces of climate disruption – driven by an economy and culture of dominance and systemic scarcity – threatens our very existence as a species. Work is focused on appropriate scale, valuing the commons, and creating community-driven assets. BALE sees its work, along with many other inspiring collaborators, as building new resilient models grounded in a new story of how we live on the Earth.

VOICES FROM THE FIELD is a series of conversations hosted in connection with the Localization Action Guide, featuring people that have hands-on experience with actions that can help build healthy communities, direct democracy and human-scale ecological economies.