My name is Matt Golding – and I’m a filmmaker and more recently a podcaster.
In my latest project, “Screw This, Let’s try something else”, I and friend / fellow storyteller Maryam Pasha tour the UK visiting just some of the hundreds of ordinary communities that are doing something extraordinary – and demonstrating that new, more affordable, equitable and sustainable ways to live well are possible.
This is part of a wider project I’m running called ANTIDOTE, which is based on the idea that the stories we need right now are not deeper explorations of the many problems we face, but examples of people like us, getting together and showing what we can do about them.
The kind of stories we tell include:
- 1: Ambition Lawrence Weston:
- A community in Bristol who became so fed up of being left behind by government they decided to do something about it – knocked on 3,500 doors and asked 3 simple questions:
- What’s good about living in Lawrence Weston?
- What’s not so good?
- What would you like to change?
- A community in Bristol who became so fed up of being left behind by government they decided to do something about it – knocked on 3,500 doors and asked 3 simple questions:
– They discovered the major frustration was that they were living in a food desert – so they did something ingenious (listen to the podcast for more) and managed to get a supermarket to move to the area, bringing food prices down and proving they could turn ideas into reality.
They then went on to re-write their local housing policy, making it illegal to build homes with gas boilers, without electric car charging points, and without top notch insulation.
As if this wasn’t enough, they subsequently built the biggest wind turbine in England, which is 100% community owned and nets them £100k a year to keep change going in their community.
- 2: CIVIC SQUARE:
- A group in the urban heart of Birmingham, one of the most diverse neighbourhoods in the UK, have come together to design a neighbourhood fit for the actual future we face – tackling retrofit, food growing, energy production and community organising in incredibly smart and wise ways.
Having hit hurdles along the way (listen to episode 4 of our podcast) they finally realised the value of land ownership in the power of their plans and after much perseverance took ownership of the freehold of an old industrial site in 2025, which will now be developed into a new neighbourhood hub – tackling many of the issues neighborhoods in the UK face and offering a blueprint for others.
- Carrick Fergus in Northern Ireland, like most of the places in our series, was fed up with being neglected. A small team asked their fellow residents what they wanted to change, and in this case supermarkets were the problem (having decimated the high street and left people resentful of paying for what they saw as overpriced, bland and plastic wrapped food).
They crowd funded a greengrocer which stocks local regeneratively grown food from a market garden 10 minutes from the shop, and they’re now advising on Northern Irish food policy to see how this type of model could expand to increase food resilience and reconnect people to local food and farming.
All of these examples prove what’s possible when we reimagine the key things we all depend on, together.
In episode 6, the final part of this first series, we’re joined by friend (and author of the book Citizens) Jon Alexander to draw out the key learnings of communities across the country – to help more of us join in. These include:
- 1: Find the others: Start small – most community projects that achieve big change only start with 8 – 12 core people. Initially just start with 1 or 2 others who share your passion!
- 2: ..but ask everyone: …and then they ask the whole community what they want (and the pattern here is strong – the more who’re asked, the easier it is to find what it is the community really wants, and therefore will support)
- 3: Agree a vision and values: It’s easier to work together if you’ve all agreed clearly what you’re working towards, and how you are doing it
- 4: And trust yourself: …trust your collective instincts. Our systems are so broken, there is no book that will tell you the way forward for where you are. But how change needs to work in your local area is probably something you can work out best together.
Take a listen – and I hope it inspires you.
If so – we’ve created a postcode search tool to help you find 5 examples of collective action within 5 miles of your house. Check it out here: https://www.antidotelive.studio/near-you
Together we can create big meaningful change on the things we all need – food, energy, housing, democracy that actually works. These stories prove this isn’t only possible, it’s already happening all around us.
To find out more visit us here:
Podcast: SCREW THIS, LET’S TRY SOMETHING ELSE:
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/screw-this-lets-try-something-else/id1863391095
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Bornsbddwi4xZYQLoAm6b?si=d500b7fbf3924eb6
ANTIDOTE project website: https://www.antidotelive.studio/
ANTIDOTE Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antidotelive/
ANTIDOTE TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@antidote_live
ANTIDOTE Substack: https://mattgolding.substack.com/
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