Catrina Pickering, Transition Network’s Diversity Co-ordinator, has just published the first Diversity Newsletter, which will become a regular feature. Future newsletters will be posted on the Transition Network site, where you can also subscribe to it.
Transition Network Diversity News: September 2010
Inclusion in Transition
What can we do to become more inclusive? This is a question that we at the Transition Network are starting to grapple with and if we’re going to grapple with it well, we’ll need your help, input and ideas too. What kind of inner change might need to undertake in order to become a more inclusive movement? Your thoughts on this – from the mundane to the sublime to the completely off the wall – are very welcome. Are we absolutely insisting on inclusion and holding it at the core of everything we do is it more of a “well, that would be nice but let’s wait until after the Transition”? To find out more and post your thoughts on this discussion, read the blog post on inclusion in Transition here.
I have referred to Stroudco here before, the innovative ‘food hub’ project in Stroud which aims to “provide local people with a new way of linking with local producers to buy good food and drink at fair prices for consumers and producers”, to “make a real connection between consumers and farms and other local places producing food and drink” and to provide everyone involved with “control, understanding, awareness, education, social links, nourishment and fun”. It has been running for a few months now, so how’s it going? Here’s a short film that provides a fascinating update on Stroudco….
It is time to announce the results of the fiendishly puzzling ‘Local Sustainable Homes’ competition. Oh dear people, it turned out to be the competition which generated the lowest correct answers to number of entries ratio of any competition I have ever run. The correct answers, the two local building materials/techniques which I had made up, were ‘rumpletumping’ (which is not a term from the Midlands used to describe picking through building stones), and ‘grot-stock’ (which is not the application of bovine snot to wallpaper application, described by entrant Andy Brewin as “a truly horrid thought”). A few astute readers questioned exactly how one would actually harvest cows’ snot, a fair question probably best not dwelt on for too long. Rex Brangwyn accused me of running a trick competition, in which all the responses were actually real, and Angie Corbet wrote ” ‘rumpletumping’ sounds just a bit too much like what small boys get up to just before bedtime, and my mother, a Kentish Maid born & bred many years ago, has never heard of “Grot-stock” so I’ll hazard a guess at those two!” Unfortunately however, such elegant prose failed to mean she ended up among the winners…those 5 noble souls were: Marcus Perrin, Michelle Bastain, Rachel Roddam, Amanda and Charlie Stephenson. Well done all. The other 8 terms are all real. Isn’t English a beautiful language? It is positively frightening just how much you can learn here at Transition Culture.
This Friday night in Totnes (7pm in the Civic Hall), a historic event occurs, the launching of the Totnes Renewable Energy Society (TRESOC). TRESOC describes itself as “an Industrial and Provident Society established to enable the community of Totnes and surrounding parishes to take charge of the development of our renewable energy resources and provide maximum benefit to the local economy”. It originally emerged from an Open Space Day on energy held by Transition Town Totnes, and although it is not a TTT project, it is clearly a key part of the infrastructure of relocalisation as set out in the Totnes & District EDAP. Anyone in Totnes or the surrounding parishes will be able to buy between £20 and £20,000 of shares, which will entitle them to one vote. The model means that the company will be democratically owned, and provides a safeguard from takeover by large commercial interests. TRESOC will be announcing, on the night, news of its first major renewable energy projects which have, until now, been kept tightly under wraps. The share option pack will also be available on TRESOC’s website from just after the launch. I will be posting a report about the launch, and will be taking my cheque book in order to be among the first to invest in the renewable energy future of my community!
Last weekend I was at Embercombe, about 20 minutes drive from Totnes, for the West Country Storytelling Festival. Embercombe is a fascinating evolving project, describing itself as “a charity and social enterprise established to champion a way of living that celebrates the opportunities inherent in this challenging time and that inspires people to energetically contribute towards the emergence of a socially just, environmentally sustainable and spiritually fulfilling human presence on earth”. It is also a stunning place, a mix of woodlands and fields. Food production is becoming a key part of its work, and it now has a wonderful vegetable garden, orchards, field scale veg and, of particular interest to me, some small scale cereals production. The day I was there, they were threshing (or attempting to thresh) some of what they had grown, and I thought I would share some of the conversations that took place by the threshing machine.
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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