An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Last Thursday in Bristol saw the formal launch of The Transition Handbook, at an event that was also Green Books‘ 21st birthday party. Before I spoke, a DVD was shown of a presentation that Caroline Lucas MEP had sent as she was unable to make it in person. In it she describes the Transition movement as “the most exciting, most hopeful, most inspirational movement happening in Britain today”.
The Transition Handbook is available to order here.
This is a visioning exercise, one I use most often on permaculture courses when teaching about urban permaculture, usually about two-thirds of the way through the course. The scenario is that it is 2030, and that the town/city/village you are in successfully made the Transition to a lower energy, more localised model. As such, it is now an exemplar for the rest of the world similarly engaged in this process. People come from far and wide to draw inspiration from what has been achieved. Their job is to act as tour guides.
The Board Game is a great tool for the identification and design of a project’s many stages, developed by John Croft of the Gaia Foundation of Western Australia. It also creates a checklist to which one can return as the project progresses, to get a sense of how it is progressing. At an early stage in the Transition Initiative, the initial group of people who are passionate about the process comes together.
Last week saw the first unveiling of The Transition Handbook, at the Civic Hall in Totnes. Around 150 people came along to the Celebration, and were greeted on arrival by music from local band the Jawa Trio, who played both at the beginning and at the end of the evening. Most of the Transition Town Totnes groups were there, with tables and displays highlighting the work they have been doing over the last 18 months. The evening began with John Elford of Green Books calling the Handbook “the most important book we have yet published”, and telling the story of how they ended up being the book’s publishers.
The Transition HandbookFrom oil dependency to local resilience.
Reviewed by Graham Strouts of Zone5.org
“The concept of energy descent, and of the Transition approach, is a simple one: that the future with less oil could be preferable to the present, but only if sufficient creativity and imagination are applied early enough in the design of this transition.” -Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook
The publication of the much anticipated Transition Handbook marks the latest landmark in what has become the fastest growing environmental movement since CND in the 1960s: the phenomenon that is sweeping the UK, the Transition Towns movement.
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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