As regular readers may know, I am somewhat of a book-collector, and the amount of books in my house threatens the whole place with subsidence. I am particularly infatuated with a series of books that Batsford produced in the 1930s and 40s which captured various aspects of life in the UK at the time, many of which are now lost, the ‘Country Life’ series. I have a few of them, and they are an amazing combination of text, beautiful black and white plate photographs and exquisite line drawings, mostly of old buildings.
The question of what a top-down response to peak oil, climate change and economic contraction, and the regional rolling out of resilience, might look like, has been often discussed since the early days of the Transition movement. There was the short-lived Somerset experiment, there’s been interesting work in Stroud, Bristol, Nottingham and various other places, but nothing yet that is especially coherent and integrated. So it was with that in mind that I was really fascinated to be asked to go to Lille to speak at a one-day conference called ‘Assises de la Transformation Ecologique et Sociale’ organised by the Conseil Regional Nord –Pas de Calais, the regional authority for the Nord- Pas de Calais region.
As mentioned previously, during the 2012 Transition Network conference I spoke at the TEDx Madrid event by Skype, being joined at the end by Juan del Rio. The film of that has now been posted online, and so here it is.
Let’s start this month’s round up in Australia. Transition Sydney also recently held an event about social enterprise and reviving local economies through resilience-building, entitled the ‘Living Economies Forum’, with a great range of speakers. Here is the poster. One of them was Michael Shuman, and here is his excellent talk, called “Building Resilient Local Economies through Local Investment”:
I am indebted, I think, to Massimiliano Rupalti, aka. Rupo, who I met on my recent trip to Italy, who just sent me his grandmother’s recipe for making snail soup. Following my recent post about The Four Slugs of the Apocalypse, it offers a useful way to turn a problem into a solution. I am assured that this is quite delicious, although personally the final line of the recipe, “keep cooking for at least an hour or till the sauce becomes dense”, makes me feel somewhat queasy. If you try it, do let us know how it was. Thanks Rupo.
Snails soup ‘alla urbaniese’ (grandma’s recipe)
Once gathered the snails (only big ones) we need to leave them in a closed basket for at least 10 days and not more than 15 days.
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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As regular readers may know, I am somewhat of a book-collector, and the amount of books in my house threatens the whole place with subsidence. I am particularly infatuated with a series of books that Batsford produced in the 1930s and 40s which captured various aspects of life in the UK at the time, many of which are now lost, the ‘Country Life’ series. I have a few of them, and they are an amazing combination of text, beautiful black and white plate photographs and exquisite line drawings, mostly of old buildings. 
Let’s start this month’s round up in Australia. Transition Sydney also recently held an event about social enterprise and reviving local economies through resilience-building, entitled the 
