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.
I spent the earlier part of this week in Austria at a meeting of European Ashoka Fellows and a fascinating couple of days it proved to be. I travelled there by train, with an overnight sleeper from Paris to Munich on the way out, and a stop-over in Cologne on the way home, which was very enjoyable (albeit somewhat knackering). So, in a nutshell, Ashoka is an international organisation that promotes the idea of social entrepreneurship, finding and supporting people around the world (there are over 2000 fellows internationally, the large majority in the developing world) with ideas that lead to change which is a new idea that can be scaled up (I became a Fellow in March). The idea of the 2 days was to be an orientation for this year’s intake of Fellows.
Transition Town Tooting recently held their fantastic ‘Foodival‘ event. Rather than me write reams about it, check out the film below which offers a great record of the day.
Hot on the heels of her excellent 2009 Transition Network survey, Gill Seyfang of UEA is back, this time with a similarly excellent and comprehensive survey of Transition Norwich. You can download the pdf. of her survey here. The findings Gill notes are very interesting, such as how a third of the members have not previously been engaged in local environmental groups, and a further sixth have been motivated to return to local activism by the Transition movement. The survey finds that members are attracted by the positive, hopeful message of Transition, emphasising grassroots empowerment, local solutions and constructive action rather than protesting or campaigning. Like yesterday’s report from Transition East, the section on troubleshooting is fascinating. The most alarming part of the survey was to hear that only 17% of people involved with Transition Norwich have ever read Transition Culture. Dear oh dear, what’s a man to do….
Just realised I hadn’t blogged about this yet. It is an extraordinary story, one which we might regard as an example of best practice in terms of how Transition initiatives engage their local authorities. In effect, Transition Taunton Town got over 350 staff from the local Council to create a vision for the future of the area. You can download their plan here, but here’s how it was described over at Transition Network News.
“Something historic happened in the summer of 2009 in Taunton. A UK Local Authority decided to take a whole staff approach to their responsibility for tackling the community’s carbon footprint and dealing with the potential effects of climate change and Peak Oil.
I travelled up last Friday to Slaithwaite in Yorkshire for first Transition North conference, which was supported by the Co-operative and attended by people from the Transition and Co-operative movements across the North of England. It was a wonderful day. Dynamic, positive, creative and very well attended. Hosted at the Civic Hall in the town, it was supplied with wonderful local food, and was very well organised by the Transition Marsden and Slaithwaite group.
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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I spent the earlier part of this week in Austria at a meeting of European Ashoka Fellows and a fascinating couple of days it proved to be. I travelled there by train, with an overnight sleeper from Paris to Munich on the way out, and a stop-over in Cologne on the way home, which was very enjoyable (albeit somewhat knackering). So, in a nutshell, Ashoka is an international organisation that promotes the idea of social entrepreneurship, finding and supporting people around the world (there are over 2000 fellows internationally, the large majority in the developing world) with ideas that lead to change which is a new idea that can be scaled up (I became a Fellow in March). The idea of the 2 days was to be an orientation for this year’s intake of Fellows.
