Transition Culture

I’ve written about the Lewes Pound here before, but here is a piece by Adrienne Campbell about the recent launch of the new notes, which are absolutely gorgeous.  It is fascinating to see how this initiative continues to develop and to innovate.  Congratulations all.

“The Lewes Pound was relaunched by Transition Town Lewes at a celebration on Friday 3 July. The new notes, designed by people from the Lewes community, include higher denominations of Five, Ten and a Twenty One Lewes Pound note.

The launch Do was a magnificent event, held at an empty building and yard, Harvey’s Brewery Depot. The currency group set out to be very inclusive at this event, since previous launches tended to be rather cerebral. Teenagers, who helped design the 1LP note, were much in evidence, supporting some local teenage bands. Furniture Now, a charity training people to fix donated furniture and sell it affordably, brought a lorry full of sofas, tables and chairs – and the sofas were used to watch Wimbledon and a range of relevant films. The local butcher carried out a hog roast, and the local brewery Harveys, donated beer. A poet waxed lyrical about alternative realities and children were kept busy with circus skills. Several stalls there were selling second hand and recycled fashion and local groups with similar aims, as well as other Transition Town Lewes groups, were invited to have stalls. All this created a buzzy party atmosphere that will long be remembered.

So far the single Lewes Pounds have been a great success, more than meeting our initial aims, which were to build confidence in it as a viable local currency and to raise awareness about the nature of money and the need to spend it locally. As well as that, we’ve had a huge amount of international media coverage. And several communities around Britain – including Brixton – are creating their own local currencies, which continue to be discussed as one of the solutions to the problems of globalisation. It’s not clear yet whether the larger denominations are going to be accepted as widely as the one pounds – but we’re doing our best to engage the traders and encourage its use – still with us all being volunteers. The larger denomination will be a reality check; but if they don’t circulate, that’s just a fact, not a failure. We see this as a collective experiment.

Initially the group decided that any trader wishing to turn Lewes Pounds back to sterling would pay a levy of 5% which would go to a community fund, Live Lewes, for micro-grants to help people become more resilient. It was also intended to encourage traders to keep Lewes Pounds circulating, as change, or to discover new links to local suppliers. However a number of traders felt that while the aims of the 5% donation were very honourable, its practical application meant that traders would be struggling to pay this contribution, especially in the current financial situation and so it remains exchangable for one pound sterling.

Lewes Pound Group, plus Hannah and Josh from the Brixton Pound and Sharon from Calgary Dollars (middle front)

We’re finding here in Lewes that we’ve engaged about 5% of the population in accepting the reasons behind the need to transition, and looking at their own energy descent. As the western world is still trying to keep the oil party going, that’s probably quite a good percentage. But we can engage loads more people in the transition without them necessaily buying in to the reasons, or even knowing that they are in transition. The Lewes Pound has been successful in getting a conversation going across all social and age groups here in town. It’s accepted at the small shops on the estates, as well as the organic shops. It’s still small fry compared to Tesco, who takes two thirds of all retail spend – 33 million pa. But it’s a tool that’s now embedded in our culture, ready to scale up, along with other transition ideas, when the world wakes up.