6 May 2014
William Blake famously wrote:
“To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower. Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour”.
I’d like, in this post, to invite you to imagine the local Circular Economy. In a glass of stout.
For anyone who doesn’t know, stout, according to Wikipedia, is “a dark beer made using roasted malt or roasted barley, hops, water and yeast”. Next Tuesday, May 13th, is the third Totnes REconomy Local Entrepreneurs’ Forum (see poster, below right). It’s an amazing event that seeks to inspire, nurture and invite community investment in the new economy of the town.
At the first Forum, in 2012, I was part of pitching to the ‘Green Dragons Den’ the idea of a new brewery in Totnes, a social enterprise craft brewery, called New Lion Brewery. The name came from the original Lion Brewery which closed in the town in 1921 having been a major employer for many years. Another business pitching that day was Fungi Futures, whose founder Adam Sayner had already started growing oyster and other gourmet mushrooms on Totnes’ old coffee grounds.
Two years later, Fungi Futures are thriving, and winners of a Devon Environmental Business Iniative award. New Lion Brewery is now up and running, with a substantial membership, beers available in the town, and a powerful vision of what a social enterprise brewery, founded on innovation, sustainability, community and profitability could look like in practice.
Alongside our core beers, we have already begun producing short runs of bespoke cask and bottled beers which support and document the wider Transition process happening in the town. I imagine that in 10 years, an exhibition of all our beer labels and pump clips, arranged in chronological order, will powerfully tell the story of what has unfolded during that time.
Since 1929, when oysters were first added to the brewing process in New Zealand, an idea which reached these shores 9 years later, the ‘Oyster Stout’ has been part of the brewing landscape. But what about an ‘Oyster Mushroom Stout’? This brings us back to our idea of ‘the Circular Economy in a glass’. So here’s how it works.
New Lion Brewery gives its spent grains to Fungi Futures. Fungi Futures innoculate the grains with oyster mushroom spores. The resultant mushrooms are dried and then given back to the brewery. We produce a stout which is infused with oyster mushrooms, and the spent grains from that brew go to Fungi Futures, and so on. And, by the way, it is actually delicious. Really delicious.
Other local enterprises who have pitched at the Forum over the last 2 years include School Farm CSA, Babes in the Woods, and Transition Homes. In the context of the local economy, you can start to see how these things can hang together, support each other, and create something larger than the sum of its parts. The brewery can celebrate the evolution of Transition Homes through bespoke beers, School Farm could grow some ingredients we need for our more seasonal, locally-flavoured ales, and hops perhaps, and could take for their compost any grains Fungi Futures can’t handle. A tour of the brewery could be offered as part of any Babes in the Woods experience. You get the idea. What the Forum does is lcreate the opportunities for those discussions, and allow us to dream of what it would look like if this happened across the local economy.
Circular Stout will only be available at the 2014 Local Entrepreneurs’ Forum, so if you would like to attend an event that immerses you in the birthing of a new, more resilient, local economy, you can book to come here. It won’t be your only opportunity to get your hands on an innovative beer rooted in the future possibilities of Transition though. The following week (May 20th, Totnes Civic Hall), the Totnes Pound is relaunched, and for the launch event, New Lion Brewery are creating ‘The Totnes Pound’, a bottled IPA which will only be available on the night of the launch. William Blake would have been proud.
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2 May 2014
In a couple of weeks we will be inviting Transition initiatives across the UK to apply to host one of several Roadshow events we plan to run during late 2014 and early 2015. As we announced previously, there will be no 2014 Transition Network conference, at least, not in the way we’ve done them before. Instead, we’re going on the road to help Transition initiatives put on an event that’s tailored to their needs and interests. We will very shortly be inviting applications from communities who’d like to host one of these events and hope to announce all the locations by the beginning of June. In the meantime, we’re thrilled to announce that the first, the pilot for the rest, will take place on Saturday July 12th, starting at 10am and 6pm at the University of Cumbria in Lancaster. There is an optional, day of field trips, lunch on the canal, and generally chilled out fun on Sunday the 13th. 
In collaboration with Transition Lancaster, Transition Kendal, and other local initiatives, who were planning to do something very similar anyway, our first 2014 roadshow event will take place, with Transition Network’s trademark, participatory style of workshops, Open Space, great hang outs and engaging conversations. It’s guaranteed to be fantastic.
Are you already involved in Transition in the North West or would you like to be? Have you ever wondered if starting a Transition enterprise is for you? Or how to avoid burn out? Do you want to make connections and share ideas? This day is made for you. You will be able to choose from a dizzying variety of workshops and sessions, presentations and talks. There will be space to discuss a pressing local issue and the degree to which Transition can offer a response. Rob will be speaking. You’ll be able to hear about all the great Transition work underway in the area. It will be buzzy, fun and connecting. Plus, of course, some relaxed time in the evening to chat over a coffee or something stronger, with music and other entertainment.
You can book tickets here. For more information click here. Come along.
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2 May 2014
Transition is a wonderful melange of conversations, projects, interactions, inspirations, hard work, failures, successes and entirely unexpected events which we are altogether unsure what to make of! Transition initiatives themselves are as unique as the people who make them up. Initially termed ‘Transition Towns’, they have twisted and squirmed out from under that label like squealing children from under a favourite uncle, becoming Transition Islands, Sustainable Villages, Cities in Transition and all the rest.
To use Rob’s favourite quote from Moominland:
“It was a funny little path, winding here and there, dashing off in different directions, and sometimes even tying a knot in itself from sheer joy. (You don’t get tired of a path like that, and I’m not sure that it doesn’t get you home quicker in the end).”
Yes, Transition: fun, exciting, inspirational, powerful, even maybe uncharacterisable!
But, remember, it is just one thing, this Transition.
Blergh.
Deadening isn’t it, this counting?
What does it even mean anyway: “one thing”? Surely Transition is a mess of thousands of different people, communities, activities, passions..? At best it’s one category. And who wants to be categorised?
And what’s a category anyway?
There is always a difference between any one thing and any other, so to say that there are two of something (let alone two hundred) is always an imperfect statement, in the same way that an analogy between two things is always imperfect. Analogies may highlight important similarities between two things, but they gloss over important differences too, which is why they can be dangerously misleading when applied too widely. Numbers too are imperfect analogies for reality, and are dangerous in just the same way.
George Monbiot wrote an excellent piece last month on the very real dangers of quantifying nature by in which he pointed out that pricing is only one of the ways in which numbering can be problematic. “For every tree we cut down, we’ll plant two new ones!” Which sounds great until you realise that in reality one tree is not the same as one tree (perhaps one is a thousand year old cornerstone of its local ecosystem, and the other is a sapling planted where it will never thrive).
Numbers separate us from that which is described, sucking it out of all context or relationship. As Charles Eisenstein put it, “I don’t think the cruelty of today’s world could exist without the distancing effects of language and measure. Few people can bring themselves to harm a baby, but, distanced by the statistics and data of national policy-making, our leaders do just that, on a mass scale, with hardly a thought.”
But for all this, there is undoubtedly something tempting about growing numbers, whether we are numbering event attendees, Twitter followers, or pounds sterling. In a world where it is so hard to know whether we are doing the right thing, making a difference, making a positive difference, it is so tempting to have a concrete number to grow. A way to keep score! Finally!!
And of course many funders tend to encourage it. They want to see the impact their £s are having, and they want it quantified. There’s no money in poetry.
But then, as Robert Graves reminded us, there’s no poetry in money either. For the sake of the soul of transition, let us be wary of converting quality into quantity. Let us welcome unique people, not uniform numbers, into our embrace:
51 people attended.
Fifty people were there to listen to Bill McKibben.
Fifty people were there, and Jane from the bakery on Rose Street arrived late.
Well, there was Jane, from the bakery on Rose Street, Josh, of course, me and my family, Roger, Jamal, Biggles and Margaret, Jenny and the twins…
Which of these more accurately reflects the reality of the event? And which audiences are more likely to be given which report?
Of course we are all excited when two hundred people come along to help with a Transition project when we were only expecting thirty (but maybe we’re more excited that Pritesh and Sarah came, of all people!). And of course we want to tell people about this, in a brief and comprehensible way. I’m only highlighting that numbers can be pernicious, and we should be a little wary of their habit of seductively coming to dominate everything that we do. While numbers may be the easiest way of explaining our impact, and even the expected way, they may not always be the best.
Numbers are only an abbreviation of what we’re up to. The reality of Transition lies in the inspiration of stories, in losing track of time while tending a garden, in passions that might never add up to anything much, in countless cups of tea, in unmeasurable love – in all those things that the cold abstraction of numbers will never touch.
I have long found it fascinating that there are cultures do not have words for numbers other than “one”, “two” and “many”. I fondly imagine that if Transition had its own language it might add one more: “one”, “two”, “many” and “enough”. The dominant culture has enough numbers. But perhaps we can help it remember another way to count?
Shaun Chamberlin is author of The Transition Timeline and blogs at DarkOptimism.org
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