Monthly archive for July 2011
Showing results 16 - 20 of 22 for the month of July, 2011.
10 Jul 2011
There’s loads of great material being generated over at the Transition Conference blog, but I thought I would put the audio file of my workshop up here for your listening pleasure. The subject of the workshop was the ‘Ingredients of Transition’ which form the bulk of the forthcoming Transition Companion. You can hear the full audio of the talk here. Thanks to Chris for recording it. I didn’t talk for that long though, the bulk of the workshop consisted of two exercises which I’ll write about in more detail in another post. Both gave me some very useful insights into a possible new tool which Transition initiatives could find really useful. More later. It’s been a fantastic event so far….
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8 Jul 2011
The 'Mapping the Future' event at last year's conference.
It’s that time again. I’m packing my bag and getting ready to head off the Liverpool for the Transition Network conference. It’s going to be fantastic. If you are unable to make it, keep an eye on the Transition Network blog stream for the torrent of blogs and audio files that our social reporting team will be co-ordinating, and there may be a few things on here as well (although for me it tends to be so hectic I rarely get the chance to sit and blog during the actual event). The hashtag for those of you that follow stuff on Twitter is #ttcon2011. If you haven’t been to a Transition conference yet, or you can’t remember last year’s (very unlikely!), have a read of the 2010 conference blog which covered much of the action, watch some of the videos, or look at the photos, visioning exercise artworks, open space sessions and more on our conference archive site. See you next week!
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7 Jul 2011
I was reading through the Executive Summary of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2011 this afternoon (as you do) and the chart on page 3 (see above) caught my eye (click on it to enlarge it). In it, the authors set out all the risks they see in the world on a matrix which positions the various risks by their perceived impact on the global economy and by the perceived likelihood of their happening. What you might expect to be at the top, given recent media reports, would be the threat of terrorism or perhaps some hideous computer virus that knocks out nuclear power station. But no. There at the top, leading the pack, are climate change, ‘extreme energy price volatility’ and fiscal crises.
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6 Jul 2011
Naresh Giangrande reports from the EGM of the Totnes Renewable Energy Society.
Nothing sets me off more than people who portray Transition town folk as a bunch of happy clappy, ‘we just vision it and it will happen’ eco activists. Last night’s EGM of TRESOC was a delightful, difficult, heart warming, and frustrating exploration of unknown territory; raw Transition in Action. It was a good example of what happens when a project moves from the great idea phase into real decision involving, in this case, significant sums of money, within a community. Suddenly emotions run high, and fragile relationships can become frayed. Although last night I think we emerged intact, more or less. It is what happens when a community expresses it’s will grounded in a positive vision- amazing things can happen.
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5 Jul 2011
I have, on occasion, reflected here at Transition Culture about how the natural building movement, with its leaning towards natural building materials such as straw, clay, hemp and so on, has yet to really explore how those materials might be used to retrofit existing homes. Virtually all of the work done around those materials focuses on new build, but finally, it seems some work is happening on retrofits. An MPhil dissertation done at University of Cambridge by Keven Le Doujet entitled “Opportunities for the large scale implementation of straw based external insulation as a retrofit solution of existing UK buildings: how much of a good idea is it to externally insulate existing UK buildings with straw bales?” explores this very question. It is a fantastic and comprehensive piece of work which is a pleasure to read.
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