On a tour of Frome Medical Practice
I meet a Japanese data scientist
here to learn how the NHS
can be more sustainable.
Her bilingual 20-month-old wrinkles her nose,
smiles, tells me she’s learned something too.
Just a little market town.
A swirl of social enterprisers,
community powered innovators.
Entrepreneurs, artists, teachers,
fashioning a future positive.
It’s green here. Healthy.
It questions definitions of wealthy
a flatpack democratic imaginarium.
The Times keeps saying it’s one of the best…
as long as you own a house / love coffee /
can afford organic socks / don’t need a shoe shop.
Whatever. We’ve missed 1.5 degrees.
Parts of Frome are among
the 20% most deprived in England.
This morning my daughter pointed out
the lad suspended for weed in his bag.
Just a little market town.
Today banners are bold — pink, yellow, green:
Eating is an agricultural act.
Church energy, different gods —
decapitalised, home cooked,
community fridging, social prescribing,
better biscuits.
We gather in front of a big organ
to ask each other bigger questions:
How do we adapt? Together?
What does equity mean to you?
How does the civic imagine itself?
A parish councillor says
he’s here for ideas for systemic change.
Just a little market town.
At the practice there’s a memory quilt —
cows, cats, silk mill beams.
Every town is memory.
Whose memories count?
The practice is care. And also change.
Staff grow cabbages, tomatoes, chard.
Compost turns to food.
They talk breath work, nature connection,
plastic free periods — saving a quarter million quid
re-directed to knees, hips.
Care connects, not just lip service.
91% of staff now more aware
of the need for sustainable healthcare.
Back at church we eat beans and roots
grown half a mile away.
There is energy in this food
and in the conversation chewed.
We hunker in groups.
Place climate in the middle of the table.
Look at it sideways.
Move more hedgerow than A-road.
Expand the map.
Take it into more spaces.
Again — what does equity mean to you?
Inequity is local, national, global —
threads of colony and oppression.
Tug one strand — a tapestry unweaves
and remakes itself in new colours,
new voices, new choices.
We imagine what hasn’t been imagined
by opening every door.
Just a little market town.
Nobody said this was easy.
Painting the map
one step at a time.
Sue says:
go where the energy is.
Move at the speed of trust.
By Chris Redmond, Hot Poets
If you would like to hear more about the fabulous Hot Poets, please click here. They have also been very busy producing a new nationwide climate education programme spearheaded by Michael Rosen, in collaboration with Oxford University and National Poetry Day. Hot Poets Ignite is set to inspire climate action in UK schools through poetry and spoken word, read more about the project here.
Or buy their incredible book packed with 40 brand-new commissioned poems inspire by 30+ scientists, climate experts and partners, including a foreword from Michael Rosen. It will delight, entertain and inspire wonder about the natural world. The kind of book for curious minds aged 9- 13+ (and every adult), helping people feel less scared about the world and more empowered to get involved. Take a peek or buy it here.
