Transition Culture

7 Jan 2008

An Advanced Taste of the Transition Handbook.

Happy New Year folks and welcome back to Transition Culture. The final touches are being put to what is now definitely called **The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience**, and I can now give you an advance taste of the wonder that it will be. On the right you can see the cover, and by clicking here you can download what’s called the blad. A blad (blad stands for Book Layout and Design) is a sample of the book that is produced for distributors, bookshops and salespeople to give them a flavour of it. Until the full book emerges late February, this’ll give you a sense of what’s coming…

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19 Dec 2007

Can Poetry Save the Planet?

I wouldn’t know the answer to that question, but I certainly feel more open to the possibility following an event organised recently by the Transition Town Totnes Heart and Soul group called **Poetry in Motion** (“an evening of words to move, inspire and uplift”) which featured Drew Dellinger, one of the most respected and admired performers in the field of deep ecology / awakening / planetary work, and local Totnes poet Matt Harvey, who recently also performed at the TTT first birthday party. The event was a huge success, and I had the huge frustration of already being committed to teaching my evening class in the room next door, and being able to hear the laughter and applause through the wall but needing to focus instead on teaching about varieties of walnut and forest garden design. I thought I would never be able to hear the event.. but it turns out I can….

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18 Dec 2007

New 2008 Transition Town Totnes Programme Launched.

It’s here, after many late nights editing, and a raft of last minute changes… It once again gives me great pleasure to unveil the new Transition Town Totnes programme, for January to March 2008. It represents our intention to begin to move the project away from high profile speakers and towards events which are more practical and focused and engage people in doing things. We think it is our strongest programme yet. It also contains a number of events intended to seed some new directions and ventures for TTT in the programme after this one. You can see the pdf. copies of the programme here (inner) and here (outer).

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14 Dec 2007

Ted Trainer’s Q&A Part Three.

**5. How conscious are people that what they are doing is extremely subversive…that to make a town sustainable and just is to more or less eliminate the normal economy, by taking control of their fate and preventing market forces and the corporations from determining it for you. Is there a sense that what they are about is taking collective control of their town?**

It is my sense that the “extremely subversive” nature of the Transition approach is implicit rather than explicit. Permaculture teacher Mike Feingold once described permaculture as “a revolution disguised as organic gardening”, and the Transition model is designed similarly to come in under the radar.

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12 Dec 2007

Ted Trainer’s Transition Q&A Part Two.

**3. Are people in Transition Initiatives forming “public” institutions like town banks, business incubators, workshops, working bees, getting-rid-of-homelessness etc committees?**

In Transition Town Totnes at the moment, some of these are being addressed. Forming new banks is very very difficult in the UK given the regulations, but the town already has a Credit Union, and we are looking into the creation of new investment models that can allow people to invest their money in such a way as to support the relocalisation process. The Totnes Pound is, I suppose, a kind of ‘public institution’, and is currently setting up as a Community Interest Company (CIC). One of the most exciting developments is that TTT,

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