Some places stay with you. The Isle of Wight is one of them.
The Isle of Wight has always drawn people in and kept them coming back. We know its homes intimately, the ones where the light falls just right, where there’s space enough to gather, and where leaving feels harder than it should. These are not homes you stumble across. They are homes worth seeking out.
Some places stay with you. The Isle of Wight is one of them.
“She thinks of nothing but the Isle of Wight, and she calls it the Island, as if there were no other island in the world.”
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park
In 2019 the Isle of Wight became one of only seven UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in the UK and, in 2023, a Biosphere committee was formed to help organisations and individuals increase their “biosphere thinking”.
The aspect that I find particularly interesting about the Island being a Biosphere Reserve is the importance of not just the natural environment, but more specifically how the people on the island interact sympathetically with nature.
It’s not difficult to choose a beautiful environment to move to and live in, but what proves to be more tricky, especially in this technologically advanced era, is choosing to live harmoniously within that beautiful environment.
Man and The Biosphere Programme (MAB) is an intergovernmental scientific programme which aims to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments. Being surrounded by sea, I view the island as the perfect location for a Circular Economy. I’m interested in the idea of what is already on the island, staying on the island, making a circular journey around the land without the need for transportation over the water.