Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

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Archive for “Degrowth2012” category

Showing results 1 - 5 of 10 for the category: Degrowth2012.


8 Oct 2012

The emergence of regional Transition? A fascinating day in Lille

The question of what a top-down response to peak oil, climate change and economic contraction, and the regional rolling out of resilience, might look like, has been often discussed since the early days of the Transition movement.  There was the short-lived Somerset experiment, there’s been interesting work in Stroud, Bristol, Nottingham and various other places, but nothing yet that is especially coherent and integrated.  So it was with that in mind that I was really fascinated to be asked to go to Lille to speak at a one-day conference called ‘Assises de la Transformation Ecologique et Sociale’ organised by the Conseil Regional Nord –Pas de Calais, the regional authority for the Nord- Pas de Calais region.

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3 Oct 2012

A September Round-up of What’s Happening out in the World of Transition

Let’s start this month’s round up in Australia.  Transition Sydney also recently held an event about social enterprise and reviving local economies through resilience-building, entitled the ‘Living Economies Forum’, with a great range of speakers.  Here is the poster.  One of them was Michael Shuman, and here is his excellent talk, called “Building Resilient Local Economies through Local Investment”:

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2 Oct 2012

An interview with Silke Helfrich: “We have to reformulate the role of the state as enabler of the commons”

The other interview I did at the Degrowth conference in Venice recently was with Silke Helfrich, one of the editors (along with David Bollier) of the excellent recently-published book The Wealth of the Commons:  A World Beyond Market and State‘, a collection of 73 articles by activists, academics and project leaders (I wrote one on resilience) on the theme of the commons.  I recommend it.  Silke gave a fascinating presentation at Degrowth 2012, so one day, after lunch, I caught up with her and asked to her to tell me more.  Here, as usual, is the audio should you wish to listen to it, followed by the transcript.

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Discussion: Comments Off on An interview with Silke Helfrich: “We have to reformulate the role of the state as enabler of the commons”

Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Culture, Degrowth2012, Economics, Localisation, Politics, Resilience, Transition Initiatives


28 Sep 2012

My talk at Degrowth 2012 in Venezia

Here is the video of the event on the opening evening of Degrowth 2012 in Venezia (which I have blogged about extensively in previous posts), when I shared the stage with Serge Latouche, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Veronica Bennholdt-Thomas among others.  My talk starts at 1:48:20:

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Discussion: 1 Comment

Categories: Degrowth2012, Transition Initiatives


28 Sep 2012

‘Alternatives to development’: an interview with Arturo Escobar

At the 2012 Degrowth conference in Venice one of the highlights for me was the talk by Arturo Escobar (my notes from which can be found here). He is the author of Encountering Development and Territories of Difference, among others.  His talk looked at how Transition might look in the context of the Global South, and held many fascinating insights.  Here is the interview I did with him, first as an audio file, and below as a transcript.

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