The Media Campaign

The Campaign: After designing hundreds of environmental campaigns and 9 years of searching for viable pathways to a sustainable future, Louis Fox (co-founder of Free Range Studios), found permaculture. He saw it as a systems-level solution that could be embodied through individual action and has since dedicated his primary focus to studying and promoting what he calls “the most holistic, practical and sane school of thought” he’s ever come across. In 2006 he founded the Sustainable [R]evolution Campaign with his wife, anthropologist and writer Juliana Birnbaum Fox, who brought her international research experience to the task of investigating the culture of permaculture worldwide.

The Book: Research began that year on the book tentatively titled Sustainable [R]evolution: permaculture in practice around the world to be published in Fall 2010 by Chelsea Green. Since then they have researched, photographed and written about a wide range of locations worldwide that are implementing permaculture principles and demonstrating a more sustainable future, from indigenous communities to ecovillages to urban food forests. They have also formed a coalition of some of the top movers and shakers in the movement to contribute to the project. Activist and author Paul Hawken, whose work will be included, calls the movement for environmental and social change the largest in the world and has brought together an enormous database of global projects on the popular website www.wiserearth.org . Recently, permaculture has risen to become one of its top search terms.
“From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up, in every city, town, and culture. and is emerging to be an extraordinary and creative expression of people’s needs worldwide.”
The book is being photographed by Louis Fox and written/edited by Juliana Birnbaum Fox, with contributions from permaculturists, activists, indigenous leaders and some of the visionary minds of this movement including Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jerry Mander, Vandana Shiva, David Korten, Starhawk, Paul Hawken, Brock Dolman, Craig Mackintosh, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Howard Zinn, and Geoff Lawton. It will be in a tabletop style, highly visual format, featuring high-quality photojournalism that focuses on documenting the beauty and innovation of this movement on a global scale. Created expressly to reach people both in and outside “green” circles, the clean, elegant presentation showcases permaculture sites in a uniquely accessible format. As a coffee table book, it aims to “arm the choir” of sustainable living enthusiasts with a beautifully-crafted media piece to share with others, start conversations, and expand the reach of this philosophy.

The Movie: In 2007, Louis produced Free Range’s most recent viral film hit, The Story of Stuff, in collaboration with Ann Leonard and the Tides Foundation. As a 20-minute educational piece about the materials economy and culture of consumption , it outlined the reasons that the current global system is unsustainable. Despite its complex and challenging message, the film achieved overwhelming success. Since that time, Free Range has been gearing up to make a follow-up film that could pick up where The Story of Stuff left off, offering real solutions to the issues it highlighted. The Story of Permaculture would introduce viewers to its system and philosophy and turn them on to the world-changing potential applications of this revolutionary design science. Ideally, the book and movie together would inspire millions to become educated about permaculture design and put it into practice.