Transition Culture

29 Oct 2010

‘Ingredients of Transition’: Emotional Support/Avoiding Burnout

Laughter at the 2009 Transition Network Cities Conference in Nottingham.

Here is a good ‘Ingredient’ for a Friday afternoon… this one addressing ways of avoiding burnout…

Context:

Burnout is a constant lurking danger for those who dedicate a lot of their time to something that can be as all-consuming at Transition. From first experiencing POST PETROLEUM STRESS DISORDER to maintaining a work/life balance, finding effective strategies for minimising the risk of burnout is vital to maintaining your own PERSONAL RESILIENCE and to maintain both your personal, and your initiative’s, MOMENTUM.

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29 Oct 2010

The China Syndrome Part Two: Naresh Giangrande visits Taiwan

Naresh signing autographs in Taiwan (just kidding... this is from the workshop in Kaoshiang)...

Typhoon Megi spilled 1000mm of water in 48 hours (about twice the yearly UK average) on the Philippines and headed our way on Thursday. It brushed the eastern side of the Taiwan, caused major flooding, picked up wind speed in the South China Sea as it headed for landfall just north of Hong Kong. Megi was the second mega storm to hit Taiwan this year. It is clear that with warming seas the trend of bigger and more powerful typhoons is increasing. The last Typhoon about a month ago hit Kaohsiung in Southern Taiwan causing lots of damage.  However many felt that if it had hit Taipei it would have been a disaster because of the many low lying districts and greater population. After all, with a property development model that is only interested in building and selling on as fast as possible flood plain land is cheap land.

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28 Oct 2010

NESTA and Big Lottery launch ‘The Neighbourhood Challenge’

Here is a new funding possibility that might be of interest to Transition initiatives in England.   ‘The Neighbourhood Challenge’ is a new programme from NESTA, working with the Big Lottery Fund, intended to support community-led innovation.  According to yesterday’s press release, “it aims to show how community organisations – when equipped with the right skills, practical tools and small, catalytic amounts of money – can galvanise people to work together to create innovative responses to local priorities, particularly in neighbourhoods with low levels of social capital”.  Sounds like Transition to me.  Take a look at the website, and if it looks like something worth going for, you can apply here.  

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28 Oct 2010

The China Syndrome Part One: Naresh Giangrande visits Taiwan

Here is a guest post from Naresh Giangrande about his recent short visit to Taiwan.

The question I couldn’t quite hear finally screamed out on the journey back to the rail station in Kaohsiung. Travelling to the station through a throbbing vibrant brash Asian city after an amazing fish dinner hosted by Mr Tsai, a local property developer and supporter of the nascent Transition Initiative in Kaohsiung, it reverberated in me. Would what I had to say be heard?  I was coming from the UK, a country played out, at the end of the road to Taiwan, one of the Asian tigers. What could I possibly say that might catch the attention and help create Transition Initiatives in this brashest and busiest and most successful of Asian counties?

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28 Oct 2010

Ingredients of Transition: Becoming the Media

Emms Goude, producer of the film 'In Transition 1.0', filming at the 2008 Transition Cities conference, Nottingham.

Context:

Sustaining the MOMENTUM of your Transition initiative will be well served by using as effectively as possible the wide range of media currently available for communicating your work. These media can be used for CELEBRATING your initiative’s successes and failures, and the PROJECT SUPPORT CONCEPT is well-served by enabling each aspect of your initiative to tell the other parts what it is doing.

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