Colorful illustration of a vegetable garden with the text 'The Island Almanac' surrounded by a sun, tomato, carrot, lettuce, flower, and a small solar panel.


“We weave ideas, scribe forward, align with life and create connection.”
— Dr Demeter | Emily Samuels-Ballantyne

Covering topics on Foundational Economics, Convivial Governance, Anthroposophic Philosophy & Everyday Regeneration in Tasmania

Overview
The Island Almanac is a living compendium of stories, tools and place-based examples that weave together foundational economics, anthroposophic wisdom and the rhythms of everyday life. Rooted in the soils of Tasmania and flowering from Magical Farm Tasmania. Across its pages you’ll find:

  • Practical essays on redirecting public and private wealth into community resilience

  • Anthroposophical reflections on seasonal rhythms, ritual and soul-led innovation

  • Tasmanian case studies from coastal hamlets to mountain valleys

  • Project spotlights on island-wide initiatives, from seed libraries to solar co-ops.

    Living Architecture: A dynamic framework of interconnected practices, food, housing, energy, governance, culture, activism and economics that grows, adapts and breathes like an ecosystem, rather than standing as static policy or infrastructure. These seven pillars form the Living Architecture of Regen Era Design Studio & The Island Almanac: integrating heart, head & hands to power a truly regenerative future.

    1. Food, Plants and Planets

    2. Housing and Natural Building

    3. Energy

    4. Community Life, Learning & Culture

    5. Sacred Activism

    6. Convivial Governance

    7. Regenerative Economic Design.

Wildflowers growing in a field with a backdrop of trees and a partly cloudy sky.
Emily Samuels-Ballantyne Emily Samuels-Ballantyne

Open and Woven: Reweaving Local Life for a Living Future

Synopsis: Open and Woven: Reweaving Local Life for a Living Future
Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne / Dr Demeter | Regen Era Design Studio

This article traces how SLOC: Small, Local, Open and Connected design scenario by Ezio Manzini names a long-standing pattern of resilience found in healthy villages and neighbourhoods, and why it remains vital for Tasmania, Australia, and the communities Emily now re-enters in Europe. Drawing on Creative Communities research, Illich’s conviviality, and social permaculture, she argues that everyday life is a design field where soil, society, and spirit meet.

“Small” becomes intimacy and accountability, “local” a lived belonging, “open” the capacity to learn without losing boundaries, and “connected” (or woven) the mycelial intelligence that allows communities to exchange strength without being swallowed by larger systems. Emily diagnoses the cultural thinness produced by centralised food systems and shows how local growers, village rhythms, and seasonal literacy are eroded when food is abstracted from land and relationship.

From this lineage she introduces Con Viv, her living-systems design approach, and the Grow Small Feed All campaign, which aims to support micro farms and neighbourhood food networks through policy, micro-finance, and civic imagination. She emphasises that openness must be paired with equity to avoid gentrification and displacement, and that convivial systems strengthen dignity rather than extract value.

Holding an anthroposophic sense of society as a living organism, she invites designers, policymakers, activists, growers, and neighbours to treat daily life as a legitimate site of design, and to cultivate a woven future, grounded, porous, equitable: where community life becomes strong enough to hold us all.

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