At this year’s Blue Earth Summit, one talk stood out amongst the sessions on net-zero targets and carbon offsetting.
When Sir Tim Smit took the stage, the co-founder of the Eden Project and the mind behind the restoration of the Lost Gardens of Heligan shared some radical thoughts on the value of dreaming.
Tools for Dreaming
Tim has a library of 2,000 books. His ritual goes like this. Close your eyes. Run your finger along the spines. Stop randomly. Open the book wherever your finger lands. Read.
“It keeps your books awake. They never know when they’re going to be called upon to give up their treasures.”
Why does this matter? Because if you want to dream, you need to give yourself the tools to dream.
At 37, Tim changed the rules of his life. He made himself accept every third social invitation he received. A dog show in Helston. Ballroom dancing championships in Ilfracombe (he knows nothing about ballroom dancing).
Every time he went somewhere he hadn’t planned to go, he met someone he hadn’t planned to meet. Someone who would matter.
Most of the great inventions and cultural developments have come not from meeting the people you needed to meet. They come from meeting the people you didn’t know you needed to meet.
…
The Most Exciting Time to Be Alive
Tim then made a statement that caught us off guard.
I believe there has never been a time more exciting to be alive than right now.
Bold, considering the room was full of people working on climate challenges who spend their days reading about ecosystem collapse.
But Tim backs it up. Within 15-20 years, he thinks the world will be transformed. Not through magic. Through technology that already exists.
For example, he already owns a 3D printing arm from a company called Wasp in Bologna, that can lay down house foundations in an afternoon. Is this done with some fancy new composite? No, it uses clay. The same material humans have been building with for thousands of years.
We lost the understanding of the sciences that made us who we are today.
Sometimes the best solutions come from understanding fundamentals properly and applying them in a new way, rather than chasing the newest materials.
The Flax Discovery
Talking of creating chaotic connections, three years ago at Blue Earth, Tim met someone who knew someone in Northern Ireland growing flax. And Tim decided to follow his curiosity.
He discovered that the problem with flax is the processing cost. Removing rotting plant material from the fibres is expensive.
Then a researcher from Queen’s University Belfast had an idea. Place super-woofer bass speakers on a container of soaking flax. The vibrations shake off the dirt. Clean fibres in 25 minutes. 60% of the labour cost is removed.
Traditional local building material. Strong. No complex global supply chains needed. Made commercially viable by thinking differently.
Muscular Localism
Tim introduced a phrase that he wants you to steal.
“Muscular Localism.”
This is apparently not the politically charged term for creating an impression of localism whilst centralising control. What Tim Smit seems to mean by ‘Muscular Localism’ is that everything we need to build a better world exists locally.
We need to proactively reclaim the knowledge that has been stolen away from us. Because Global supply chains are fragile. When you design with local materials, local manufacturing capabilities, and local knowledge in mind, you build resilience.
For example, big agriculture has for decades hijacked words like “heritage” and “heirloom”, to make industrially produced fruit appear like something your Gran would grow.
But since 1991, Tim’s team at Heligan has been gathering real heritage fruit varieties. And proving these varieties adapt to poor soils and changing conditions in ways modern monocultures can’t match.
That’s not nostalgia. That’s resilience.
The Soil Question
The technology NASA uses to look at distant planets and determine if life could exist there will soon be available as an app. Take it to the supermarket. Point it at vegetables. It tells you which ones are packed with nutrients.
The revelation isn’t about organic certification. What matters is the soil quality they were grown in. Vegetables from rich, well-treated soil are packed with nutrients. Vegetables from poor soil aren’t. The packaging won’t tell you. The app will.
Local materials. Traditional knowledge. Technology that already exists. These aren’t separate ideas. They’re all pointing at the same thing.
What This Means for Making Things
Good design changes how systems work.
That 3D printing arm makes local building economically viable.
The flax processing technique removes the cost barrier that kept a strong, sustainable material from widespread use.
Those heritage fruit varieties offer local resilience that global monoculture can’t match.
This is what we’re working towards with Positive Products. Design that considers people, planet, and profit together. Built into how we work from the start.
Some of the best projects we’ve worked on started with unexpected conversations. People outside our usual circles who saw problems from completely different angles.
Take EarSwitch. A GP specialising in neurological conditions wanted to help people with severe paralysis communicate. The solution uses a tiny muscle in your ear that most people don’t know they can control. We helped develop the sensor technology that turns ear-drum movement into a mouse click. Now people who’ve lost the ability to speak can communicate again.
This thinking runs through our client work. Pollution masks that protect runners. Vessel monitoring systems that combat illegal fishing. Navigation equipment built to last decades in harsh marine conditions. Our clients aren’t waiting for perfect conditions. They’re building the solutions they want to see in future, from the things around them now.
Concluding with a Golden Bean
Tim finished with a delightful thought. He loves imagining everyone has a “little golden bean” inside them that can make new things possible.
We must nurture that golden bean, allow it space to fill your mind with dreams of a better world. A world with ample energy. Where we can build locally and grow locally, living profitably in harmony with a healthy environment.
We’ll only achieve this kind of progress the way we always have – by dreaming it into being. And to do that, we have to remain open and positive. So Tim left us with three commands:
…Be more random.
…Be hopeful.
…Be a citizen.
That might be exactly where your next breakthrough is waiting.
Want to see how we approach design that makes real change? Have a look at our work.
