16 Feb 2012
Please support Transition Network’s entry in the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge
Transition Network has taken on the highly prestigious Buckminster Fuller Challenge and has been shortlisted to be in the running for $100,000 to enable it to broaden and deepen its work, and we’d really appreciate it if you were able to support our application by joining BFI’s online community and submitting supportive comments on our page, or you could leave them here and we’ll forward them on. We’d also be really grateful if you could let other people know about this request through any other networks you might have. It shouldn’t take people a minute and it could make all the difference. Thanks. Here’s some more information about the Challenge:
Transition Network is proud to announce that we have taken on the Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Our entry will be published in Idea Index 1.0 on Tuesday, February 14, 2012. Named “Socially-Responsible Design’s Highest Award” by Metropolis Magazine, the Challenge is an annual international prize program that awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.
We are thrilled to be a part of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge review process, which brings together influential design science leaders such as Josè Zaglul, Vandana Shiva, Danny Hillis, William McDonough, John Thackara, Hunter Lovins, Kenny Ausubal and Nina Simon.
Transition Network felt that it’s work, about supporting, training, networking and inspiring communities in making their local economies more resilient, entrepreneurial and local, fitted perfectly with Buckminster Fuller’s famous statement that “you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete”.
Transition initiatives in 34 countries around the world are putting this into practice, creating new economic models, new food businesses, community energy companies, local currencies and much more. It is an exploration of what ‘engaged optimism’ looks like in practice, and has been widely recognized in a series of awards. You can find out more at www.transitionnetwork.org. Transition Network is shortly to release a new film, ‘In Transition 2.0’ which captures many of these stories from around the world.
We expect to be a serious contender for the award, and winning the Challenge would be a tremendous honour, but we are also very excited about the opportunity to become part of a network that is advancing and accelerating the practice of comprehensive, whole systems thinking and design to develop the kind of high impact global solutions we so desperately need. We look forward to an engaging review process, and should our project win, we plan to leverage the $100k to deepen our work in a variety of different ways. Transition Network is proud to be affiliated with this important Challenge. Stay tuned, and thanks for your support!
Fausto Llopis
16 Feb 11:00am
We can´t keep complaining about things that are happening these days around the world while we watch TV. We need to embrace a “do it yourself culture” that put us in prime possition to be the drivers of our own destiny.
To do so, Transition Movement is an inspirational and motivational force that helps making a difference. It helps me knowing my neighbours, sharing a laugh with them and loving them.
Brings the human spirit up and make it soft, cause we are a social animal, that have feelings.
We need to share the values of multiculturality, inclusive education, human rights, and appropiate health, if we aim to live in this planet. There´s no doubt “Transition” is a magnificent tool to achive that.
Stephanie Jurs
16 Feb 1:01pm
There is no doubt in my mind that the Transition Network is the vehicle that will allow us to create the future we want, not the one that the current system has in store for us. I love the fact that it is joyful and optomistic, inclusive, non-political, and focussed on action not talk. The huge variety of ideas coming out of a thousand different initiatives is inspiring and encouraging—–the Transition movement helps an individual understand that yes, I can make a difference, right here, right now, where I live. The emphasis on community building and enjoying the process is key. It’s not what, it’s how. I am thrilled to be part of the growing enthusiasm that characterizes Transition.
John Robottom
16 Feb 4:51pm
Transition Network inspires communities to create better, more sustainable, communities resilience to current and future economic, energy and environmental challenges. I am proud to support their participation in the Challenge.
Tony Buck
16 Feb 8:54pm
I’m a very practical person, and before discovering the principals outlined by Transition, no environmental or social movement really asked anything of me but money. I am very grateful for this initiative to inspire me to use my skills and join with others to solve our societal problems locally and not wait for the status quo to make their change.
Joanna Brown
16 Feb 11:48pm
As far as I’m aware, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge short-list has *not* yet been announced. Can you clarify?
The website says that it will be released in March:
http://challenge.bfi.org/2012_Review_Process
The ideas index is a list of all the projects that have entered that are happy to be displayed.
Lyn ne
17 Feb 1:15am
The transition community provides great ideas for locally based economies. It demonstrates more creative ways to live and shows us how to implement them ourselves.
Elena
17 Feb 9:27pm
Over the last four years I’ve travelled a path from ignorance about every aspect of our food system (despite caring passionately about the fates of farmland wildlife species and seeing them declining year on year) to knowledge and action. The Community Supported Agriculture scheme I’ve helped to set up is now entering its second year of growing food without pesticides or artificial fertilisers. All of this is because Transition came to my city. This stuff works.
David Lyons
17 Feb 11:17pm
The message and methodology that has come from the transition network has inspired me and others in my village to form a group to promote local resilience, awareness of the causes and effects of resource shortages/climate change and importantly, that tackling these issues can be fun. Nothing else has ever motivated me in this way.
By connecting and supporting transition initiatives, albeit on a shoe string budget, the network has had a massive impact far beyond what could be expected of such a small and poorly funded organisation. This has been because the message has been simple, honest and accessible to all. It has not been about money, but about communication and social interaction and this has struck a chord with so many people.
Given more funding, the insight and commitment within the board of the transition network could mobilise mass engagement in community resilience projects and stimulate a significant increase in awareness and engagement in the political process.
This could be the catalyst for the ‘great turning’.
David Lyons
Margaret Weiner
18 Feb 7:05pm
I support Transition Network for the BF Challenge 2012. The Transition model empowers creating more resilient and sustainable communities, joins people in working together to face the challenges of transitioning away from fossil-fuel dependence, adapt to climate changes, and establish locally healthy economies. All that’s been done already is impressive and inspiring–and it’s just the beginning of what can be done.
Chris Honey
18 Feb 7:15pm
Transition Culture Network – no other initiative enables us to cope with an uncertain future.
I Blackburn
19 Feb 6:32pm
Transition Network is a great way of empowering the individual to help the whole community a great idea.
Rob Hopkins
20 Feb 1:33am
Thanks everyone for all your wonderful comments, both here and over at the Challenge website. We are most deeply grateful.
Rob
Wayne Jenkins
20 Feb 8:15am
In the midst of deepening despair we all need direction and light. TransitionNet.org offers more than that. With wit and candor and by sharing what is already working, and not, for moving communities into a post peal oil, more sustainable future these folks could really use the Bucky-Fuller Challange Grant for furthering their great work!
Betty Dawes
22 Feb 5:16pm
The Transition Movement is just the type of action which Buckminster Fuller would have approved of and supported. Transitioners are working towards a better future than the one in prospect if the present way forward continues unchanged. Working with others happily, dispelling doom and gloom to make a better, sustainable life for ourselves and our children.
Betty Dawes
22 Feb 5:20pm
I support the Transition Network in the BF Challenge.
Aislinn
29 Mar 3:54pm
The Transition Network model is incredible and so inspiring. As a young person, I worry about the future world that awaits my generation of young leaders. The Transition Network model gives me hope that our future can be vibrant, sustainable, and better than ever. The focus on building positive, resilient, socially connected communities, inclusive to all, is a shining example of how an organization can make powerful shifts in the world by focusing not on what we don’t want, but instead on what we DO want. The latest research on positive institutions coming from the halls of our leading universities supports just this kind of framework for creating marked, meaningful change in society. Bravo Transition Network. I am wishing you success in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge!!
Kathryn Cholette
2 Apr 9:52pm
The Transition Network is facilitating the spread of an incredible global movement which not only helps create very needed grassroots change in community after community, the network also inspires hope, and a sense that together we can create the world we need. I support the network in the Buckminister Fuller Challenge.