130. One of the Major Transformations of Our Time
Dr Valerie Brown on the collective mind
Dr Valerie Brown is a Visiting Professor at the renowned Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University, and an international figure in the field of collective thinking, with a list of awards and accolades as long as your leg. But what brought me to her door was hearing doyen of regenerative agriculture, Charlie Massy, defer to her over the years. Charles was among her first students in the pioneering Human Ecology course in 1974 (a course the university establishment tried to have shut down). And when he returned to do the PhD that became the best-selling book Call of the Reed Warbler, Valerie was his supervisor. She’s “one of Australia’s greats”, he says. So after visiting the Massy farm earlier this year, Valerie was kind enough to welcome me to her place, up in the road in Canberra, for this conversation.
Valerie Brown at home in Canberra during this conversation (pic: Anthony James).
“When it’s there and it’s done, people get it. Like Charlie [Massy]’s best-seller and like Kerry [Arabena]’s prizes. Once it was there, there was no problem at all, everyone simply raved. But when it wasn’t there, people couldn’t even imagine what they were going to do.”
Incidentally, my guest from episode 85, Cathy McGowan, was also a student of Val’s – and features here in a great story. But there was another milestone on my way to Val’s place too, that also goes back to the 70s. My old mate and mentor Professor Frank Fisher used to talk of the Fenner crew, and gifted me one of the many trailblazing books Val co-wrote, called Tackling Wicked Problems, published back in 2010. Though here, Valerie talks of how her work has progressed far beyond that, drawing on her considerable impact globally, including hundreds of workshops on collective learning as a tool for transformational change.
This conversation was recorded in Canberra, 5 April 2022 (a month and a bit before the transformative federal election that resulted in so many more female independent MPs).
Find more:
The ABC Australian Story episode on Charles Massy features Valerie.
Valerie’s extended bio, on her Collective Thinking website.
And at the Fenner School.
Music:
Regeneration, composed by Amelia Barden, from the soundtrack of the new film Regenerating Australia, available for community screenings now.