ACTionism?

You might be wondering why we’re using another ism. 

The word ACTionism makes some people uncomfortable. Isms have a habit of becoming the thing they set out to replace. They start as a response to something real, and end as a defence of themselves. That’s not what we’re doing here.

Where the word came from

ACTionism wasn't designed. The very opposite is true; it just emerged from a rupture, a film, and a community that formed around both. We didn’t sit in a room and decide this was the right name. It arrived the way most things in this story arrive: before it was ready, without a plan, out of necessity. It came as language that followed action.

Which means it has the same quality as the things it describes. It started before anyone fully understood what it was. That's kind of the point of all we’re doing. We can’t know what to do, we can only try things and respond.

What the word is doing

Look at it again. The ACT is capitalised and that is deliberate.

It's pointing to the verb, not the ideology. It's saying do the thing, not believe the thing. That's a meaningful distinction, maybe the most important one.

Most isms describe what you are. ACTionism describes what you do. Or more honestly, what you keep trying to do, imperfectly, in the conditions you actually find yourself in.

What it isn't

ACTionism isn't a movement, an organisation, or a methodology. That's written into the letter on the homepage, and it bears repeating here.

There is no doctrine; you won’t find a text that defines what counts. There’s no hierarchy deciding who's in or out, or a purity test. A repair cafe counts, a film screening counts, a walking meetup counts, a conversation with a neighbour counts, as does listening to the place around us.

ACTionism explicitly includes failure. If something doesn't feel right, that's not a failure, this is where we learn. We try again, dogmas don't build in their own failure. They explain it away or expel the people who caused it. ACTionism does neither.

And it starts with feeling, not belief. You don't have to agree with anything to belong. You just have to have felt something, the gap, the weight, the thing you can't quite name, and be willing to show up.

The Thistle

In the Peak District, thistles grow where land has been grazed to within an inch of its life. They are pioneer species, their dense taproots penetrate even the most compacted soil. When they die, their roots decompose and breathe life back into the ground. And when the farmer sprays them, the disturbance promotes more thistles.

The thistle doesn't follow a doctrine. It responds to conditions, and thistles grow differently in different soils, different climates, different levels of disturbance. A thistle in the Peak District is not the same as a thistle in the Tarentaise, even though they're the same species. The place shapes the expression.

This means you can't do ACTionism wrong. There is no single correct version, there is only what the place needs and what the conditions allow.

Why we still need a word

We don't have the words yet for what we need. The old stories don't fit, and the new ones haven't formed.

In that gap, people need something to find each other by. A way of saying: I feel this too, and I'm trying to do something about it, come and find me.

That's what ACTionism is, a pointing word. It points at something it didn't make and can't control; the tending, the gathering, the knowing of names, the repairing, the showing up, the listening. The thing that people are doing quietly everywhere, without a name for it, often without knowing others are doing the same.

The ism is just a way of saying: this deserves a name. Not so it can become an ideology, so people can find each other doing it.

Why action?

Because we have to act to relearn what we've lost.

How to be in community, how to really listen, how to tend to a place, how to talk to a stranger, and how to show up for something that isn't your immediate self-interest. These things don't reappear out of thin air. They are recovered through practice, through trying and through doing them badly at first, and then less badly, and then occasionally well.

The action doesn't have to be heroic, or grand, it's the small, repeated, relational act of turning up. Of repairing something instead of replacing it. Of learning a neighbour's name. Of sitting with people and place, around something that matters and staying long enough for something to happen.

You can't think your way to community. WE can only practice and respond to our attempts.

The last ism

Maybe ACTionism is the last ism. The one that points toward a world where we don't need them anymore. Where the doing speaks for itself.

There's something paradoxical about it. Do we need a word to say we don't need words, a frame to say we don't need frames. One last ism to get us out of the habit of isms.

The moment ACTionism becomes comfortable, settled, defined, defended, is the moment to worry. The discomfort is a feature, it means what we’re doing here is still alive, still resisting closure, still pointing away from itself toward the thing it's trying to describe.

If you've read this far and you're still not quite sure what to make of it, that's exactly where we are, and that feels about right.