There’s a lot to be said for getting on with the self-empowered practical stuff.

Sharing projects such as yours is a great inspiration for other people, eg, check out the 170 supporting letters for Pat Bowcock’s ‘Ourganics’ (permaculture smallholding) planning application in Dorset….

http://webapps.westdorset-dc.gov.uk/planningapplications/(S(okfcj045yul54p55w2lgc045))/pages/ApplicationDetails.aspx?Application=1%2fD%2f09%2f001292&Authority=West+Dorset+District+Council

Transition happens on all sorts of levels, I think. We are so utterly saturated in and besieged by consumer-culture, whether we like it or not: it prevails and for me there has had to have been an element of walking-the-walk as well as talking-the-talk in order to get away from it to an extent. Before discovering oil depletion, transition etc, I had long held a sense, a very uncomfortable gut-feeling, that there was something very fundamentally wrong with the way we go about things here, but could not get a proper focus on it.

Jim Perrin, the excellent writer on climbing, says it very well in describing the push that made him solo, propped-up by cocaine, an extreme climb in Cheddar Gorge, in fairly desperate personal circumstances: “This day there was the momentum. I was down there inside somewhere quietly weeping, and all the while there was something inexorable going on.”

I think many of us in the TM have been quietly weeping for years, but not cutting loose and doing anything about it within our personal spheres, except what can only be described as gestures. Others have done much more, but not I: until I started out on veg-growing on a serious scale this February. Disillusioned by dwindling numbers at our meetings, a theme that repeats itself throughout this thread, in the end I felt I just had to break loose and walk that walk myself.

It’s the best thing I have done in many years. If that ends up being all that the TM has given me, I shall be eternally grateful (and I doubt it will be)!

I’ve gathered edible fungi and hunted down tasty fish from local beaches for a very long time, but neither activity, delightful as they are, have involved such an emotional committment as getting a veg garden to work has. A garden-swap (I own no property), it was in a sorry state when taken on, but the potential was obvious straight away. When I started, it was around the time that Barack Obama was telling his fellow Americans “Yes We Can!”…..

Anyone wanting a look at the project – lots of photos – it starts with:

http://www.geologywales.co.uk/storms/clearance.htm

and runs on for 4-5 pages!

Cheers – John

WHY BOTHER WITH TRANSITION?
Transition is a foundation, and something for communities to build upon and strenghten over time – ya know, the idea of… ‘building local resilience from external shocks’.
In light of what I’ve learnt thus far about Peak Oil and Climate Change this seems like a bloody good idea!

EXPECTATIONS
The thing of helping others to realise why this Transition thingy is such a good idea ain’t so easy, and this can be incredibly frustrating. Each of us are hopefully finding ways of learning to deal with the rollercoaster burn-out feeling. ?

MONKEY IN LOVE WITH PIGEON
http://cuteoverload.files.wordpress.com/cni_macaque_070914_ssh-1169-_tphq.jpg

LOGO
Transition Oxford – that’s a really excellent logo!

Very good points too. I noticed a correlation between a couple of things between 2007 and 2009 and the attached sketch-graph illustrates this:

http://www.geologywales.co.uk/editorial/public_interest.jpg

Cheers – John

Thanks for this important contribution – there are things within it that I’m sure all of us recognise. Can I pick out a couple of quotes?

Quote 1:

I remember saying that I joined in this effort because I wanted to find ways of raising awareness among the wider population. Looking back, I don’t think we achieved that. My impression is that those we reached were lots of people with eyes already opened to the problem and already searching for ways of addressing it.

I’m with you on this one, and especially on the subject of oil depletion. I’m not saying that climate change is important – of course it is: however, oil depletion will hit us hard well before significant effects of climate change do: the difference is that your average “bloke in the pub” has never heard of Peak Oil. The critical question in my mind is this: what percentage of the population of a community needs to be aware of Peak Oil and willing to address it before the whole Transition thing can roll forwards effectively? 1%? 5%? 10%? 25%? Rob, do you have any specifics on this?

Our Transition Initiative is moving along, slowly but steadily, but I’m almost entirely dedicated to awareness-raising these days – I don’t think you can ever have too much of it, so long as you don’t keep repeating it just to the same bunch of well-meaning people. I want to take it as far as I can in the local community.

Other quote:

I think some of the language of Transition Towns might have been a bit off-putting/exclusive to those not already engaged – i.e. ‘Hearts and Minds’ and ‘unleashing’ and ‘open space’ – I don’t disagree these things may be necessary but i think the terminology is too exclusive to mean anything to the ‘average person’….also to make it more fun and less ‘worthy’

As my fellow SG members know, I also completely agree with this, and you can also add Permaculture to the list! The problem is not the practises or principles themselves – how can anybody watch “A Farm for the Future” and not be won over to Permaculture on the spot? – but a lack of understanding of other (dare I say more mainstream?) mindsets. Coming at Transition from the mindset that most of us have (i.e. we think critically about our relationship with the planet and have done for years) makes such terms easy to get comfy with. Bombarding your average consumerist with a barrage of new terms simply turns them off – unless the terms refer to things that they can consume of course, and even then, that is accomplished by high advertising budgets. People typically only buy new stuff if it is cleverly marketed to them.

Two new terms ought to suffice for the Business As Usual, mainstream mindset: Peak Oil and Transition. The former is enough to come to terms with for us, having already embraced the idea of Transition: to anybody blissfully unaware of it, it is a nightmare beyond imagination. The Transition model can be sold to them, including all the methodologies involved, but for heavens’ sake, let us try and explain it in terms of reference that are recognisable to all, rather than ones that make us feel nice and warm inside!

It’s not that “A Farm For The Future” cannot fail to win anyone over to Permaculture: the job instead is to get someone to watch it in the first place, instead of “Big Brother” or whatever…. the analogy with what we are trying to do is glaring!

Cheers – John

I know what you mean about feeling one has landed accidentally amongst a group of “experts”. I think there must be many of us intelligent enough that we could have gone onto University, etc, and just generally felt we were “trained” more into debate/things of a more “academic” nature – but, for one reason or another, we didnt get that chance. We then stand there – fully intelligent enough to understand perfectly what those who come over as more “expert” are saying – but without the “academic training” to feel we can “hold our own” in that respect.

However – having said that – the analogy comes to mind here of that Christian concept of “the body of Christ”. I am not a Christian personally – but that phrase sums up what any group is about – some people are best suited to be the “head”, others are best suited to be the “heart”, others to be the “hands” and so on – ie we all of us have our different parts to play and have a contribution to make that we personally can do better than many others could (because they are a different part of this “body” to ourselves). So – I cant personally be a “head” person or a “heart” person – but I CAN be “hands” or “feet” for instance.

Hope your group comes together Oxford.