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.
Usually when I go to events I tend to be the ‘resilience guy’, or one of a handful of people who work with and think about resilience who tend to gather at the back of other events and bemoan the fact that no-one has talked about resilience yet. So I was fascinated when I saw that the British Red Cross was hosting a one-day conference on resilience, the first that I’ve been aware of. They had stated that the objectives of the day were to:
share and generate learning on how resilience building works in practice in various settings and from a variety of perspectives – in other words, what works well and why?
understand how humanitarian agencies can effectively contribute to building resilience within communities.
About 200 people attended, including researchers and policy-makers, community activists, people involved in refugee services,emergency/humanitarian response,health and social care and age-related resilience. It was a fascinating day, and one that I’d like to share five of my lightbulb moments from the day.
I am just back from 3 days in Germany, and great fun it was too. I spoke on Wednesday evening in Bonn at an event organised by Bonn im Wandel (Bonn in Transition) at the University there, and on Thursday evening I was the guest of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin. I am currently teaching myself to make short films, and here is my first (I’m doing a proper course in 2 weeks). Nothing fancy but hopefully it captures some of the spirit of both events.
Some additional information on what’s going on in the film might be useful…
Welcome back to Transition Culture for 2013. It is a year fraught with dangers yet also rich with possibilities. I hope that Transition Network, and this blog, and all the other resources out there for people wanting to embrace these possibilities will continue to support and inspire you through 2013. Let’s kick this year off with a talk I gave last October at Communicate 2012: Breaking Boundaries, hosted by the Bristol Natural History Consortium. I was asked to speak about what was my vision for 10 years in the future. May 2013 bring more, and firmer, steps towards its realisation:
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.
The theme of Saturday, my last day at Degrowth2012 (although it is continuing tomorrow also) was ‘democracy’. I arrived late for the opening session, due to having been woken several times in the night by a very persistent mosquito, and after I had lovingly posted my write-up of yesterday, for you dear reader, I was running a little bit late. So I missed Marco Deriu, and arrived half way through the talk by Salvor Nordal, Chair of the Iceland Constitutional Council and the University of Iceland. She had been speaking about how the financial crash of 4 years ago in Iceland has led to a very creative process of reimagining democracy in Iceland.
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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