Pop Up Foundation (The Foundation) is an ecological enterprise which addresses the central challenge of our time: decoupling human progress from resource use and environmental decline. To do this, The Foundation brings sustainable living to people in a fast, accessible form, focused on results. Adopting a ‘flat-pack’ methodology, it encourages everyone to participate in the changes and create and
share our solutions. In this way, all these small changes can connect, consolidate and have a bigger compound effect. This is how the Foundation uses its local perspective to address the global ecological challenge – how to live our lives sustainably. We see this challenge as an educational issue, and act to respond through schools, communities and businesses worldwide, evolving through social, economic and technological networks. Our focus is on thinking and action upon the connection between idea and action, place and time through which we can then consider the sustainable use of key themes of water, waste, energy, food, growing, transport, soil, buildings, communications, leading to enhanced health and wellbeing. The emergent ideas and actions serve to demonstrate how there are a plethora of different ways that people can change their lives to the mutual benefit of people, communities and the planet. Through these focal points, the Foundation provides a basic design upon which experimentation and innovation are encouraged. Ongoing findings are shared through our website and social gatherings. We recognise that shared learning, designing, creating, developing and reaping of outcomes enthrals, interests and energises people. This creates a powerful momentum for change, owned by everyone, grown by everyone. The challenge that we all face as we move towards a sustainable society is to develop structures and systems suited to the local environmental needs and enculture these solutions into our families and communities. To facilitate this The Foundation gathers ongoing learning and know-how and uses it to create meaningful metrics that report, measure and celebrate progress and identify areas of need. These recording, measuring and story-sharing systems are designed to be relevant to the specific needs and resources of each participant group: funders, schools, communities, businesses and individuals of every kind. This research and development approach ensures that the model maintains a robust methodology which can inform and advance human activity anywhere in the world at a time of global ecological challenge. It is a simple yet powerful, constantly evolving instrument for people to move towards more sustainable lifestyles. As the many and varied Pop Up Foundation solutions develop, patterns of activity emerge. These patterns form the basic developmental material that serves as the template upon which we develop and grow our sustainable communities. The pragmatism and effectiveness of the Pop-Up approach means that children, families and communities learn, take action, share knowledge and make rapid, measurable progress, whatever their initial circumstances. To date, we have projects around the world, in widely differing settings and climates. This diversity guides our understanding of varied habitats and regions. Our projects pops up in unexpected places and are always practical and solution-driven. They demonstrate that many of the challenges we face are inter-connected and can be optimised for efficacy, spread and speed of growth. Using methods, tools and equipment that are cheap and accessible for all, whilst being suitable for small-scale application yet available across entire systems, we can move decisively.
