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 Saturday was the final day of the River Cottage/British Gas Energyshare vote, an innovative approach to raising awareness for, and supporting, community renewables. When voting closed, at 5pm, the winners were, in the large category, Hexham River Hydro, in the medium category, the Portobello and Leith community wind energy project, and in the small category, the North Devon Hospice and the Shrewsbury Hydro. Three of the four are Transition initiatives. There were also Transition groups who didn’t win, and also quite a few who didn’t make it through to the final vote (the many fantastic projects in the vote gave a sense of the huge hunger out there for community renewables). I talked to each of the 3 Transition winners, Portobello (here‘s a piece from their local paper), Shrewsbury and Tynedale about the Energyshare process, how they rustled up enough votes, how the last hours before the vote closed were spent, and how being winners makes a difference to their project. This short podcast captures their stories:
And here is the moment where Portobello and Hexham found out they had won:
Earlier this week I was in Norwich for the third birthday anniversary celebrations of Transition Norwich’s Unleashing. I had been meant to speak at that event, but had been unable to attend because I was ill, so it was great to get there finally and to be able to take part in their celebrations. Here’s a reminder of what that event was like:
This three-years-on celebration featured a new film about Transition Norwich (which I’ll post here when it is online), a talk by me followed by questions and answers, and then lots of chatting, eating cake, drinking tea and signing copies of The Transition Companion (unfortunately the batteries ran out in my recorder, so I have no audio of the actual event itself). At the end of my talk I dedicated it to Richard Douthwaite, who had passed away the previous day. Transition Norwich are doing some amazing things, and in order to capture some of the voices of some of those who have been involved and the story of Transition Norwich thus far, I interviewed 6 members (thanks Tierney for the loan of the batteries!) and on the train home created the following short podcast capturing where they have come from, where they are now, and where they think they are going.
My thanks to everyone there for their amazing hospitality. Here are a few photos from the visit….
Last week I did a course with the Media Trust on how to make podcasts (highly recommended). So, here, with some fanfare, is the first ‘Transition podcast’, I hope you like it. If so, do embed it in other places. It means I spent the time I would spend writing editing pieces of audio. Let me know what you think. So, the podcast is about a fascinating morning I spent visiting the sailing ship Tres Hombres which visited Brixham earlier this week. It explores the potential of sail-powered shipping as the price of oil rises and the economy tightens. It’s an exciting story.
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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Last Saturday was the final day of the River Cottage/British Gas Energyshare vote, an innovative approach to raising awareness for, and supporting, community renewables. When voting closed, at 5pm, the winners were, in the large category, Hexham River Hydro, in the medium category, the Portobello and Leith community wind energy project, and in the small category, the North Devon Hospice and the Shrewsbury Hydro. Three of the four are Transition initiatives. There were also Transition groups who didn’t win, and also quite a few who didn’t make it through to the final vote (the many fantastic projects in the vote gave a sense of the huge hunger out there for community renewables). I talked to each of the 3 Transition winners, Portobello (here‘s a piece from their local paper), Shrewsbury and Tynedale about the Energyshare process, how they rustled up enough votes, how the last hours before the vote closed were spent, and how being winners makes a difference to their project. This short podcast captures their stories:
