Listen up! Audiobook is Living!
Almost 8 years ago, when I was given the incredible privilege and responsibility to lead the Green Institute, I spent months asking people all around the Greens party and movement what they thought the Institute needed to do.
One answer that came through loud and clear was that it had been too long since we’d had deep conversations about our politics, about what we’re trying to achieve and how. So, starting with webinars and a conference, articulating an ecological political theory and challenging others to articulate theirs became a key theme of our work.
The release last August of my book, Living Democracy: an ecological manifesto for the end of the world as we know it, took this discussion far deeper and wider. It’s been amazing to travel around the country, holding events with Greens members and branches and MPs, as well as community groups and folks in the social movements our party is intertwined with, discussing and debating the ideas in the book.
At so many of these events, people have asked me if I had plans to record it as an audiobook, since the time-poor lives capitalism forces us into makes reading time hard to find. I kept saying yes, I had plans, but please have patience.
With thanks to the wonderful Craig Greening, who recorded and produced it with me at ANU School of Music, and to my bandmates in FourPlay String Quartet who were happy for me to use some of our music, the audiobook of Living Democracy is now live, just in time for the summer holidays.
As you’ll see, we’ve made it available for free streaming on Soundcloud, but it’s also going out through all the various audiobook sites, including Audible, Spotify, Apple Music and many more, if it’s easier for you to stream there. It’s not quite live on all of them yet, but should be any day now.
I hope that making the book available to listen to as well as read brings it to a whole lot of new people, ready to discuss and debate and deliberate around these ideas. As I emphasise in the book, these are in no way meant to be ideas set in stone, but to prompt discussion and thought so our politics gets more effective. If you have a response, we’d be happy to consider adding it to the Green Agenda forum on Living Democracy.
So, please listen, pass it around, and let’s keep this crucial conversation going!
Happy listening,
Tim
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Margaret Jaggard-Hawkins says
Hi Tim, thank you for your inspirational book which I have read twice. I also attended a ‘Power and Change’ workshop in Melbourne. As a new greens member, I am looking for a way to contribute ideas about how our society needs to change to overcome the overwhelming power of the super rich in our democracy. I would be really interested in joining in if the Green Institute could set up some sort of forum for enabling debate on the really important issues of climate change and social justice that affect us all. Thank you for all your efforts in trying to make the world a better place!
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