A couple of weeks ago I spoke at TedxExeter, a fantastic occasion with many great speakers (have a look at their website as more and more of the films from the day go online).  I spoke for the first time in detail about Totnes as a case study, and what, after 6 years, we can draw from the experience of Transition Town Totnes.  I hope you enjoy it.

At the heart of Bradova’s article is a sense that EDAPs represent a rigid planning for the future, akin to the planners of the 1950s who planned, and then executed, their big bold vision for post-war cities, even when it began to become clear that there were flaws in what they were doing.  She argues that Transition “went whole hog for planning”, and that this became the principal raison d’etre for Transition groups.  This is absolutely not my experience, as I hope to explore here.

Her article raises several important issues I think.  The first is that, as she acknowledges, she has yet to read ‘The Transition Companion’, the latest setting out of Transition.  The Companion is a complete revision of how Transition is presented, a sea change from the Handbook.  Much of her critique is based on the assumption that creating an EDAP is the objective of a Transition group, as presented in the Handbook.

The Companion takes a very different approach, arguing that an EDAP is but one of many ingredients that an initiative can pick up and do if it feels it would be useful (see that ingredient here).  Clearly for many Transition initiatives on the ground it doesn’t feel like a useful thing to put time into, given that 6 years into Transition you can count the number of completed EDAPs on one hand.  That’s not to say though that the entire concept of applying some intentional design to the challenges we face is of no value.

The original idea behind EDAPs was that the scale of what we need to do (reconfigure the places we live for a post peak money, peak oil, climate responsible world) is such, and the resources available for us to do it so small, and decreasing, that we need to think carefully about the best way to apply our energy and available resources to making it happen.  It is, in effect, a design project, rather than a planning project.  Here is a short film, that was an extra on the DVD of ‘In Transition 2.0′, about the Totnes EDAP process which gives a sense of the project and the spirit of it:

What Transition tries to bring to the debates around how we move to a more sustainable world is the suggestion that while it is great to start doing loads of projects, and as Vera argues, Incredible Edible Todmorden is a wonderful example of that,  it is also important to think about how the initiatives you kick off can build together in a more strategic way.  This doesn’t mean some Stalinist-style central planning approach, but can mean an element of intentional design.  Vera quotes Lewis Mumford in order to show a healthier approach to planning, but actually gives a more accurate description of how Transition initiatives are already approaches planning for the future:

“Organic planning does not begin with a preconceived goal: it moves from need to need, from opportunity to opportunity, in a series of adaptations that themselves become increasingly coherent and purposeful so that they generate a complex, final design, hardly less unified than a pre-formed geometric pattern. Towns like Siena illustrate this process to perfection.”

This feels to me to far better represent what Transition does than the rigid approach Vera attributes to it.  Permaculture design has long been one of the original foundations of Transition, and it takes an approach to design which isn’t rigid in the way she describes.  As a permaculture teacher I would teach people that the design process had the following steps, known as OBREDIM:

• Observation
• Boundaries
• Resources
• Evaluation
• Design
• Implementation
• Maintenance.

I also taught it as OBREDIMET, adding Evaluation and Tweaking onto the end, the idea that it is constantly being reviewed and adjusted.  It is this kind of active learning and ongoing reflection that is at the heart of an EDAP.

Vera writes in one of her comments in the thread that “I am not against strategic thinking per se; I am against strategic thinking as a big preamble to doing”, but this is really a misunderstanding of Transition.  Strategic thinking is never seen, or presented, as “a big preamble to doing”.  There is a huge amount to be said for just getting started and doing stuff, indeed it is what most initiatives do.   There is certainly no sense that they have to have done huge amounts of planning before they can plant a tree, forming groups, organise events, or whatever.  Hopefully yesterday’s post gave a sense of how important it is to just get started and start making things happen.
What we are seeing emerging from this global experiment that is Transition is a range of approaches.  Transition Town Brixton is a great example of a project-led initiative.  All kinds of projects have emerged, the Brixton Pound, Brixton Energy, food growing projects and so on, and as they emerge they support each other and work together as strategically as possible.  They have thought about, and decided against, doing an EDAP, preferring instead to drive forward on projects.

In Totnes, from Day 1 there have been numerous projects underway, and the EDAP ran alongside those, rather than everything being put on hold for 18 months while the EDAP was created.  The EDAP helped to identify a number of key initiatives, and a clear narrative, as well as some very useful and dynamic pieces of research.  Now a lot of new things are emerging, enterprises, projects, but they are seen as part of a coherent and well-connected narrative.

Transition Norwich started with a number of projects, and then a few people who felt qualified and enthused to do so undertook a piece of research called ‘Can Norwich Feed Itself?’ which did some strategic thinking about how the localisation of food in the area might happen and what new infrastructure this would require.  This identified a number of key initiatives, some of which are now underway.  The key points here are firstly that strategic planning can come at any stage of the process, and secondly that Transition only works because it creates a space in which people can drive forward what they are passionate about.  It is, in this sense, a ‘do-ocracy’, that its evolution and stages are shaped by the people who are doing stuff.

If there is a group of people who are fired up about the idea of creating an EDAP, then it’ll happen and will become a useful focus for the group.  It needn’t be a huge document in order to be useful, as the Dunbar EDAP (see right, above) demonstrated.  If no-one wants to do it, it won’t happen, and that’s fine too.  As energy builds from the projects and the impact they are having, it is likely that discussions will start to emerge about how they might be seen in an more strategic context, hence the ingredient on Strategic Thinking appearing in Stage 4 of Transition in the Transition Companion.  It is important to restate here that no-one knows how to do this, which approaches are best.  It is for the initiatives themselves to figure this out, to develop tools that work for them, not for me, not for Transition Network.

By Transition LA.

This approach, with its complexities, its self organisational nature, its trust in the process,  is entirely different to a well funded, centrally-driven planning process.  Vera’s criticisms also assume that Transition could, even if it wanted to, wield the kind of power that those sort of plans do.  This is, unfortunately, nowhere near being the case.  An EDAP, or any kind of strategic design process, is more about changing the story, changing the narrative, showing what’s possible, setting out how we could get to where we want to go, but not how we will get there.  I think that is a hugely valuable thing to do.  The Totnes EDAP was more of an Energy Descent invitation than a plan in the more rigid sense, as Michelle Colussi identified in her review of it:

In short, as impressive a document as Transition In Action is, it falls short of being an Energy Descent Action Plan. Instead, it seems to be more of a vision – a remarkably explicit, exciting, and community-based vision that tells us exactly what is to come about, but not how or by whom. Ultimately, the document acts like more of an Energy Descent Invitation, than a Plan.

This is part of the thinking that underpins an EDAP, that it is about creating a new story, giving a sense of the most strategic next steps to take, but always doing so in a way that thinks on its toes, adapts, is flexible and sees any EDAP as a narrative which sustains the projects that are emerging, rather than constraining them.  In his comments, Energy Bulletin’s Bart Anderson quotes from John Thackara’s recent review of ‘The Transition Companion’:

“One of the many virtues of this awesome and joysome book is that the word “strategic” does not appear until page 272; a section on “policies” has to wait until page 281. It’s not that the book is hostile to high altitude thinking; on the contrary, its pages are scattered with philosophical asides on everything from Buddhist thinking and backcasting, to time banking and thermodynamics. But the rational and the abstract are given their proper, modest, place.”

A different approach underway in Totnes, Hereford and Manchester as part of the REconomy project, and which could yet prove more useful than the EDAP, is the Economic Blueprint.  This isn’t so much a plan as an analysis of the local economy, which enables a clear understanding of the local economy, where money is spent, how much goes through local businesses and how much not, to enable to economic case for Transition to be made in a compelling way.  It allows, if you like, the ‘size of the prize’ to be measured.  It is a process that is harder to do as the kind of collective community visioning process outlined in the Totnes EDAP film above, being a fairly complex piece of research, but as a way of laying the foundations for the emergence of a new economy, and for arguing the case for that as powerfully as possible, it may prove more effective.

So, to wrap up, I think that if Vera were to read ‘The Transition Companion’ she’d be pleasantly surprised.  An EDAP is presented as one ingredient of many that a Transition initiative may choose to adopt as they create what they feel is the most effective path towards resilience.  It is never presented as an alternative to action, to projects.  The idea is to embody, somehow, the need for thinking strategically about how the emerging strands of Transition, as well as what already exists in the place, can best weave together to make Transition happen.  Exactly what that looks like will be different in every place, dependent on its culture, its interests, its passions and it skills.  The beauty of a network such as Transition though is that it enables the learnings as we figure it out to be shared as widely and as rapidly as possible.

Like buses, you wait for ages for Energy Descent Action Plans to come along, and then two come along at once.  This month sees the publication of two new EDAPs, from Llambed in mid-Wales, and Dunbar in East Lothian, Scotland.  For a crash course in EDAPs and a taste of those published thus far, see this ingredient from The Transition Companion.  These two high quality pieces of work represent two communities taking the idea of an EDAP and rooting it to their place, their community, their challenges. 

Transition Llambed (Lampeter)’s is titled ‘Transition Pathways: a first Energy Descent Plan for the Lampeter area” (download the pdf here), and was funded by the Rural Development Plan for Wales.  It sets its context as being peak oil and climate change, and assesses the current ecological footprint of the area.  They did a survey of the area which gave a sense of the levels of awareness of these issues, concluding that peak oil, and the vulnerabilities it raises awareness of, are a better way to engage people than climate change.  It sets out a vision for the area that emerged from a series of workshops that were run as part of the process of creating the plan.

It then goes on to look in more detail at energy (both how to reduce energy use and the potential of renewable energy generation in the area) and food and agriculture (a kind of “Can Llambed feed itself” type approach), before distilling out concrete suggestions in its closing “Recommendations – a Transition Pathway”.  It is a bilingual publication, pick it up and look at it and it’s in English, turn it over and the other way up and it’s in Welsh!  It is a powerful vision underpinned by achievable steps, the first of which has already happened (a story you’ll hear more of  in tomorrow’s Transition podcast).

The second one is from Sustaining Dunbar, who are also a Transition initiative.  They have all kinds of projects underway, such as the Dunbar Community Bakery which opened recently.   The Dunbar EDAP, the ‘Sustaining Dunbar Action Plan’ (download here), is presented as being a draft, but it is a comprehensive document in its own right.  Like the Llambed document, it is based on a survey of the local community, in their case, over 1500 Dunbar residents.  The surveys showed that local people strongly want more local food, more energy efficient homes, neighbourhoods which are safe and attractive, more walking and cycling and more local jobs.  Hardly surprising, but not generally the assumptions that underpin most local authority development plans!

While the Totnes EDAP ran to 305 pages (as well as being available online), the Dunbar document masters the art of brevity beautifully, running to less than 30 pages.  After a page that sets the context, it then sets out its vision for food, energy, transport, health, enterprise, skills and eduction, each of which runs over 3 pages.  The second half is then a series of A3 fold-out ‘logic diagrams’ (see the food one, right), a great idea, which set out the situation now in terms of barriers and the current state of play, then the aim for 2025, then who needs to be involved and what they can do, and then milestones to know they are moving in the right direction, short term (5 years), medium term (10 years) and long term (15+ years).  For each it sets out how the local Council will have helped and supported the process.  I actually think it is quite a brilliant piece of work, and feels like a very do-able document, and a powerful tool for the Transition initiative, the community and the local authority.

This is what I love about Transition.  There are no ‘experts’ on how to do an Energy Descent Action Plan, indeed that’s really the whole point, we are all trying to figure this out together, bringing our own skills and insights to this, and rooting the whole thing in our own communities.  From the distant days of the Kinsale EDAP, that idea of the need to visualise where we want to get to and to then try and set out how we might actually get there has taken a number of forms.  ‘The Transition Companion’ makes the point that an EDAP may not be the best tool for everywhere, that something like the Economic Blueprint work being developed in Totnes, Hereford and Manchester may be a piece of work which better meets a more widely perceived need.  It’s all work in progress, but to read these two pieces of work which represent great evolutions in the development of this tool, is very inspiring.

In the UK, the main Transition-related story to make the national news over the past month was the suggestion by Ian Jones, CEO of Volunteer Cornwall, that Cornwall should set up its own currency, the ‘Cornwall Pound’.  The story made the national news and many references were made to the local currencies already in existence via Transition Towns Totnes (Devon), Lewes (Sussex) and Brixton (London).  Jones told the Daily Telegraph “It’s no good if we endlessly talk about our problems, we need to start doing something positive now if we are to avoid being at the mercy of the global storm which is currently raging.”

The discussion even got onto the BBC’s Politics Show (who have previously run stories on Transition currencies), with David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, arguing that “There’s no reason why Cornwall couldn’t have its own banknotes like Scotland, but it’s not viable or sensible for it to have its own central bank.  It can’t have its own monetary policy like we assume it’s not going to have its own army.”  Rather misses the point somewhat.

While we’re talking about local currencies, here’s something I missed at the time, Prince Charles going shopping with Brixton Pounds (see right)!   According to the article, “The Duchess of Cornwall has used some of the currency accepted by businesses in south London – known as Brixton Pounds – on a visit to a local market with the Prince of Wales.  Camilla bought a box of mangoes with a Brixton £10 note, introduced last year to try to keep the money of local people within the community”.  In case you missed it, you can hear a lot more about the current developments of the Brixton Pound in last month’s Transition Podcast (this month’s one will follow in 2 weeks time).

Here is one film about the Brixton Pound which gets out and asks people what they think of it (although it was made before the new notes and the ‘Pay-by-Text’ scheme were launched):

…and then here is a film about going shopping using the new Pay-by-Text scheme:

Heading north into Derbyshire, Transition Wirksworth are one of several local community groups in the town who hope to have more say in the future of their community. The town’s residents with the support of Derbyshire Dales District Council are hoping to secure funding via the UK government’s new Localism Act which was passed this month. Read the full story from the Matlock Mercury.   In Devon, the Newton Abbot Guide to Local Food and Drink has been launched and is an amazing collaboration of efforts by the Newton Abbot Local Food Group, an informal partnership between Transition Newton Abbot, Newton Abbot Community Interest Company, Newton Abbot Town Council, Teignbridge District Council and Devon County Council.

Transition Town Worthing have been running a course in working with willow:

… and work continues on their Energy Descent Action Plan.

The November newsletter of Transition Town Totnes is bursting with all things Transition related in and around Totnes (see right). Click here to see photos from this year’s annual Winterfest, or here to see a film of last year’s.  Transition Stroud liked the idea of a Winterfest so much that they are holding one too, this weekend!

In Dorset, Transition Town Bridport celebrated their last year and look ahead to the coming year at their second Annual General Meeting (see left) and launch a Spend Less Eat Better Campaign.

In Glamorgan, south Wales, Transition Cowbridge and Transition Llantwit joined forces with a local resident who set up The Vale says No campaign and were successful in preventing a test of the controversial shale gas fracking taking place in the beautiful Vale of Glamorgan. Read the full article in Permaculture Magazine.  And there’s more here in Treehugger.

In Gloucestershire, Transition Town Cheltenham held a Transition festival to celebrate their first year of community, environmental and creative activities in town (see poster below):

TTDorchester's Energy saving winner Lorraine Wong

Transition Town Dorchester ran an energy monitoring scheme which  16 local residents took part in over a 6 month period and which led to positive behaviour change (see left).  Jon Orrell of Transition Towns Weymouth and Portland decided to visit Occupy LSX (London Stock Exchange) at St Pauls’ Cathedral and wrote up this report on the website.

Jonathan Goldberg's great photo of Transition beekeepers.

In London, Jonathan Goldberg of Transition Kensal to Kilburn (K2K) is one of 6 photographers featured in a new online photography magazine called Backyard where people shoot pictures close to home and heart (you can see one of his pics to the right, of Transition K2K beekeepers).  Transition K2K were also busy at the recent Queen’s Park Day, where they pressed apple juice and gave it away to passers by:

Also from London, here is a great article about Edible Landscapes London, an initiative of Transition Finsbury Park, and a short film about what they are up to:

One member of Transition Town Bolton, who is also a cycling instructor, is offering bike lessons to adults in an attempt to encourage them to ditch the car in favour of a 2 wheeler.  Transition Town Shrewsbury’s Hydro Group is one of four Transition groups who are going for funding via Energyshare. To read about the other Transition entries or to vote before the December 3rd deadline, see Rob’s related post on Transition Culture.

In Suffolk, one passionate individual from the village of Little Cornard got the ball rolling and helped get Transition Sudbury and District off the ground. Read this lovely report in the local East Anglian Daily News on how it all unfolded.  One of the first things they did was to hold an apple pressing day (see left).

Transition Town Kingston have launched an online directory of eco-friendly businesses in the borough in time for the Christmas shopping season.   In West Sussex, an upcoming event is being held in Lewes and organised by South East Transition Initiatives called Food Resilience Preparation Day. A group has been gathering to discuss the issue via this forum and has identified three main forms of food resilience planning.  You can also see Transition Town Lewes’ December newsletter here.  We’ll be sure to follow up and get a full report on this event for the December roundup.  And I’ll tell you what, that Haslemere Transition Town know how to have a good time:

In West Yorkshire, Hebden Bridge Transition Town and Treesponsibility invited a member of the Beehive Collective to present “The True Cost of Coal”. The Beehive Collective based in Maine (USA) facilitates creative education about issues effecting people and the environment. See their stunning poster (right) and more just like it on their website.

Awww... a heart-shaped potato dug up by Norwich Farmshare...

Transition Norwich recently celebrated the third anniversary of their Unleashing.  A Transition Culture podcast captured some of the voices of those who have been working with the group, and their reflections on where they have got to in that time.  One of their key projects is Farmshare, a Community Supported Agriculture project, which recently held a Potato Day, where the idea was that they would walk behind the tractor and pick up the potatoes it was lifting from the ground.  Unfortunately, the tractor broke down and they had to lift 2 tonnes of spuds by hand!  According to their website, “blisters and creaky joints were more than matched by smiles and banter”.

Transition Town Marlborough, who are well on their way to becoming an official Transition initiative with the full support of the local council (a story told in last month’s Transition Podcast), have rejected claims to restrict cycling in a certain area of town.

Installers Michael Merry, left, and Dan Bowers with Alison Turnbull, project manager for Bath and West Community Electricity, and Shawn Robertson, project manager for Southern Electric, with one of the solar panels for the roof of the Mead Primary School.

Bath and West Community Energy, which emerged out of Transition Bath, have already begun commissioning the first solar PV systems on local schools (see right).  You can see a list of all the installations they’ll be doing before Christmas, and also this piece from the Wiltshire Times about the first systems that went up, at schools in Trowbridge and Corsham.

It is also worth a reminder about the new ‘Communities Living Sustainably’ fund launched by the Big Lottery Fund, which is looking for innovative projects building resilience and responding to climate change.  Could be a very attractive proposition for Transition initiatives.

Glen Ballinger outside his Maldon 50k local.

So, to Australia, where Transition Mount Alexander, Transition Bell and MINTI (Melbourne Inner Northwest Transition Initiative) all get a mention in this article which centres around the sustainable business practices of local Castlemaine outlet Green goes the Grocer.

At a recent event organised by the Municipal Association of Victoria called “Building Community Resilience and Minimising Risk”, which featured, among other speakers, David Holmgren and Sonya Wallace, (you can download their fantastic flyer/poster here), Andrew Lucas gave a presentation called ‘Councils and communities in Transition’:

…and Transition Network’s Rob Hopkins gave a presentation by Skype, complete with slides, which was followed up by a Q&A by Skype:

So, next to Canada.  Transition Comox Valley had a great turnout to their first ever gathering and were inspired by the creativity and vision that local people had to offer. Read more in the BC Local News.  In Ontario,  Transition Town Orillia held their second annual community fair at a local church (see pic below). Stalls, workshops and speakers highlighted items from composting to weight lifting for seniors (!) and affordable housing to knitting.

At the University of Prince Edward Island (the setting for the much loved Anne of Green Gables novels), George McRobie (founder of the ‘Intermediate Technology Group’ with E.F. Schumacher and co-founder of the New Economics Foundation) gave a talk on the Transition Movement in Europe & North America.

Some stories from Europe now.  You can listen to and read the transcript (all in German) of an interview with Rob Hopkins by Ursula Rütten for WDR5.de.  Also from Germany, here, as far as I can tell, are Transitioners from Goettingen, Kassel, Cologne and Berlin Friedrichshain who met on a permaculture course (?  Babelfish translator didn’t yield much useful information) and got together to plant a forest garden:

From the Netherlands, from Transition Town Nijmegen to be precise, here is a film, I think, about a community garden project:

Here is a short film from Monteveglio in Bologna, Italy, where the local council and the parks department revived (with, one suspects, some input from Transition Town Monteveglio, although that’s not specified) and old tradition of planting a new tree for every child born in the town that year, 44 to be exact:

In Belgium, Ath en Transition recently organised a screening of the excellent new film ‘Voices of the Transition‘, and the event made it onto the local TV news!  Here’s the clip:

Recently Rob Hopkins of Transition Network gave a presentation, remotely, to the Andalusia Convention on Climate Change and Urban Environment, which has now been put online, complete with Spanish subtitles:

On a similar note, Naresh Giangrande, also of Transition Network, recently visited Malmo (which, according to Wikipedia, is “in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden”).  He gave the talk you can see below, which also featured either someone drilling into the walls of an adjacent room, or someone with a terrible snore who fell asleep during his talk:

So, next let’s hop to New Zealand, and the town of Devonport.   In this North Shore suburb of Auckland, representatives from Transition community Grey Lynn 2030 and Devonport Transition Town held an open evening to “create the community we want to live in” and covered topics such as fruit trees, green screenings, waste, farmers markets and community gardens. Read the full report in the local Devonport Speculator.

Some Kiwi ingenuity! Yolanda Van Den Bemd (left) and Ellen Schlinder (right) are part of the Pt Chevalier Transition Town crew who look after the Old Homestead Community Garden.

In another suburb west of Auckland, Point Chevalier is home to The Old Homestead Community set up by Transition Town Pt. Chevalier in 2009 and now shortlisted for community garden of the year in the New Zealand Gardener Magazine’s annual awards. Check out the bike powered water system (above)!

From Transition Hickory: Robb Riordan adjusts the faucet where water flows off his roof. Rob and his wife Jacqui can store up to 6000 gallons of rain water in their cisterns.

In the US, Transition Ashland, Massachusetts (nb. there is also a T-Ashland in Oregon) introduced proceedings at a meeting to discuss their vision of a downtown Farmers Market which residents hope to make a reality by spring 2012.   A great article about the emerging Transition Missoula appeared in the Montana Kaimin – The University of Montana’s Independent Campus Newspaper since 1898!   The Riordans helped set up Transition Bermuda and now live in Hickory where they have continued their Sustainable Living Project aka Transition Hickory (see left).

It has also been fascinating over the last month to see the debates and discussions about where Transition and the Occupy movement meet.  In Virginia, an Occupy Staunton rally was organized by Transition Staunton Augusta, the Augusta Coalition for Peace and Justice and Virginia Organizing. Unlike a lot of the other Occupy gatherings across the US this group has operated largely with the support and cooperation of city government. Read the full story here in the Augusta Free Press.

Also in the town at another event, Transition Staunton Augusta co-founder Erik Curren led an information session in conjunction with Occupy Staunton and the American Dream Movement titled “How the 1 Percent Crashed the Economy and What We Can Do About It”.   Erik and his wife Lindsay are founders of Transition Voice where this article titled Transitioners debate how to engage Occupy movement was recently posted.  That’s about it for November, see you next month!

The second ‘Transition Podcast’, which will go into more depth about three of the stories in this round-up, will be posted in a couple of weeks. 

Local Transition groups put in a strong showing at Hillbrook school's local Sustainability Day, Brisbane, Australia.

It’s time for the monthly roundup of all things Transition from across the globe.   We’ll start down under in Brisbane, Australia where a Sustainability Day was held at a school in Hillbrook. The all-day event included music, speakers, practical demonstrations and workshops. Local Transition groups were one of many represented at the event which encouraged people to connect, enjoy and celebrate the school’s 25th year.

Much further north in Queensland, RealFood network together with Friends of the Earth invited people to a Recharge Kuranda Initiative which supports the aim of turning Kuranda in to a Transition Town. People gathered to discuss how this unique village in the rainforest could enjoy a future that is “energy- lean, less stressful, happier and healthier”.  Meanwhile, airing across the entire continent via Radio National, Rob Hopkins could be heard taking on Dr Chris James on ABC Radio’s Bush Telegraph.  Also, Transition Bellingen in New South Wales have just posted this film of a ‘Visioning Fair’ that they ran a couple of years ago…

Across the water, James Samuel of Transition New Zealand sent us this heart warming and inspiring film about a small town at the epicentre of a big earthquake. This film portrays the healing power of arts and the connected nature of the community in Lyttelton, the port for Christchurch, NZ. In case you missed it on Transition Culture, here it is…

Transition Ashville

Over now to North America where Transition Town Manchester (VT) invited residents to join them for an evening of ‘Green Drinks’.  Green Drinks is an organic, self organising international network which encourages people to meet up over social drinks to discuss a variety of environmental issues/concerns. Click here to find Green Drinks from Argentina to Zambia and a whole lot in between!  Down in North Carolina, here’s a great picture of the folks of Asheville who are now officially calling themselves a Transition Town (see right). Go Asheville!  At a meeting in Southern Humboldt County called ‘Beginnings in Briceland’ on May 15, 2011, Willow gave a talk to a rather small audience about Transition:

A few miles South in neighbouring Hendersonville, a forum titled ‘Who Turned out the Lights?’ was held at Henderson County Public Library which invited discussion on how the town can thrive in the face of higher prices for gas, energy and food.   Read about Transition Town Lyons in Boulder County, CO who get some great coverage in this Lyons Recorder article which focuses on the town’s ongoing success as it encourages all core community groups “to feel they are a healthy part of the fabric of Transition resilience”. One of the main goals of Transition Town Lyons this year is to tap in to “the collective genius of the community in the process of working towards the creation of an Energy Descent Action Plan” (EDAP) “.   Transition Albany just held their Unleashing (see left)!  Sounds like it was a fantastic evening.  You can read Transition US’s June update of other Transition happenings across the US here.

Further north and across the border in Canada, it was Transition Time for a Community Garden in Meaford, ON where an Eco class at GBSS (Georgian Bay Secondary School) handed over responsibility of running the garden to Transition Town Meaford and the Golden Town Outreach Food Bank (see right).  Transition Toronto just hosted a screening of The End of Suburbia with film-maker Greg Greene to kick-start their very own Transition Toronto film contest. Participants are invited to depict the future of Toronto communities in the year 2030, either after or during a successful transition away from fossil fuels.  Click here to read more…

In the Netherlands, it looks, as far as my understanding of Dutch will permit, as though Transition Town Breda have been giving away plants for free:

As for this one, also from the Netherlands, quite frankly I have no idea what’s going on:

Transition Rotterdam have been making a great community garden in the city, here someone walks us round it with a video camera:

…and Transition Town Dordrecht have been out in their neighbourhood picking up rubbish, followed by a relaxing evening by the river:

Transition Town Tilburg did some sort of an event that involved food, and also people talking… beyond that, frankly I have no idea:

From Germany, here’s a talk by Norbert Rost about Transition and the potential role of regional currencies (in German):

In Ireland, at Cloughjordan House in Co.Tipperary, people were invited to join a series of conversations called Networking for Resilience by members of FEASTA (the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) and Transition Ireland and Northern Ireland.  Transition initiatives from across Ireland and Northern Ireland will be meeting over the weekend of 30/31st July and 1st August for ‘Transition 2011′, their all-island gathering.  You can read more about it here.    You can also download ‘Transition Times’, Transition Ireland and Northern Ireland’s newsletter of stories of what Transition initiatives are up to across the island, here.  It is well worth a read, inspirational stuff.  In Transition Donabate/Portrane, they’ve been getting great TV coverage for their Chicken Link initiative:

In the UK, let’s start with my favourite film of the week.  Transition Bath recently created a vegetable garden in Hedgemead Park in the city, and produced this lovely film about the process…. inspirational stuff…

A proposal to build Scotland’s first urban wind turbine on the north Edinburgh coast has been launched by Greener Leith and PEDAL – Portobello Transition Town.   Penrith Action for Community Transition (PACT) are proposing a car club:

Transition Rutland having a good time...

In Rutland County, volunteers from Transition Rutland (see left) have been busy encouraging people to get on their bikes though confidence training and free bike servicing. Read more in this local Rutland & Stamford Mercury article. Transition Hebden Bridge are exploring the possibility of setting up a water turbine near the town.

London Green Fair in early June was a free event held in Regents Park and Transition Belsize, Kensal to Kilburn, Kentish Town, Primrose Hill and Tufnell Park all worked together on the stall.  Alexis Rowell reported at Transition Culture about the emergence of two new Transition initiatives in north London, bringing the total of active initiatives in north London to 12.  Transition Town Brixton are fundraising to buy land 5 miles from London as a community farm.

it's Transition Dorchester's third birthday party!!

In Dorset, Transition Town Dorchester celebrated their third birthday with an outdoor party and AGM. They have all kinds of interesting projects underway, including the Under Lanche Community Farm.  London and Thames Valley Transition groups gathered at the Grow Heathrow gardens to share experiences, workshops and presentations and a tour of the site.  Click here to view a lovely photo essay compiled by Jessica Sumerling of the Grow Heathrow site over the last year.  You can also read Ben Brangwyn of Transition Network’s reflections on the gathering here.

Transition Town Kingston are compiling a database of all the productive trees in the area so they can get permission to harvest unwanted fruit and donate it to homeless shelters and nurseries.  Transition West Kirby are planning ‘Fruitshare’, which will, similarly, collect peoples’ spare fruit and give it away to the local community.  Transition Town Worthing are holding a story-writing competition:

TTT's Fiona Ward accepts the Ashden Award for Behaviour Change from Kevin McCloud.

Now, a small section devoted to Transition Town Totnes (TTT) in Devon who were recent finalist winners of a 2011 Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy and Behaviour Change via TTT’s Transition Together programme.   Read Chris Bird’s full article and view the video here on Transition Culture.  This fantastic achievement was picked up in the international press, the national press and the local press. Well done TTT!  Here’s a film about the award produced by the Ashden Awards folks.

A few Transition projects have been bidding for the Energyshare funding, which invites people to bed for different proposals.  Transition Town Poole have been bidding for a tidal scheme, a number of North London Transition groups have been applying to do energy efficiency work, Teign Estuary Transition wants to do lots of energy conservation work too, PEDAL (Transition Town Portobello in Edinburgh) want to put up an urban wind turbine, and the Totnes Renewable Energy Society is also bidding for funding.  Loads of other Transition initiatives are registered on the site, which is turning out to be a very interesting tool.  Please give them your support.  The site is easy to register on and you can vote for more than than one project, so give the Transition projects a boost!

Here are two Transition-related articles to read at your leisure; one is a blog piece for Forbes by Haydn Shaughnessy and the other is an article in the Sustainable Business section of the UK’s Guardian Newspaper which appeared following Rob’s attendance at this year’s RESOLVE conference in London.   Finally, a reminder that you can meet many of the people behind many of the projects outlined above at this year’s Transition Network conference at Hope University in Liverpool.  There are still tickets available, so hopefully we’ll see you there!

My thanks to Amber Ponton for pulling this month’s update together…

Some of the Transition Network team setting up before everyone arrived for last year's conference. We'll be doing the same thing again in about 5 weeks!

Things are shaping up nicely for this year’s Transition Network conference which will take place between July 8th and 11th at Hope University, Liverpool.  It’s going to be the best one yet.  What I want to do here is to give you your first taster of the kinds of things that will be on offer and what you can expect if you come.  Although, like last year, and like last November’s ‘Diverse Routes to Belonging’ conference, we will offer great virtual coverage for those around the world who can’t make it, still nothing beats being there in person.  Imagine immersing yourself for 3 days in the latest thinking on Transition, hearing from the most ground-breaking projects, going deeper into what it’s all about, putting faces to names you only know from reading them online, meeting hundreds of other Transitioners from all over, and going home revitalised, refocused and refreshed.  That’s what we’re talking about.  Here is a taste of some of what is being planned:

There will be 3 sessions of workshops, 10 in each.  Although the final list has yet to be confirmed, it will include the following:

• How to work well together as groups
• Kids in Transition
• The role of the arts
• Inner Transition
• An update on Transition local currency projects
• Transition Together and other street-by-street behaviour tools
• Community Supported bakeries, shops, farms, breweries….
• Social reporting (the Transition Network’s work to support the emergence of many new voices into the blogosphere)
• The Work that Reconnects
• Websites for Transition Initiatives: de-mystify the murk, share your problems and answers, discuss tools and more
• Transition as a collection of ‘ingredients’
• Social Enterprise
• Constellations
• Diversity and faith in Transition
• Action learning: tools for working with your Council
• Creating a new local food system: stories from various projects
• Group dynamics
• Resolving conflict
• ‘Engaging words’: how your writing style can affect your effectiveness
• Investing for Transition
• Transition education
• Measuring the impact of Transition
• Transition and health
• Engaging and working with your Council

Tasty eh?!  There will also be tours of Liverpool and the opportunity to see some of the fantastic projects underway in the city.  The city’s Transition groups will be our hosts.

The workshops are also, of course, only a small part of the overall programme.  There will also be many opportunities to meet other Transitioners and find out what they are up to, including the chance to meet in theme groups, so you can, for example, connect with all those who share your passion for local energy, food or education.  There will be some large group activities, which were, for many, the highlight of last year’s conference.

Also, this year we are trying a different approach, substituting Open Space, which has been a focal point for each of our previous conferences, with the Fishbowl technique, which will allow a much deeper exploration of some of the more charged and pertinent issues that you bring to the conference (a questionnaire will be sent round before the event to gather your thoughts on what those subjects should be). Our hope is that this will bring more focus and will be more insightful.

On one of the evenings there will be an opportunity for you to provide the entertainment in an Open Mike session, and on the other evening there will be the opportunity to hear some inspiring speakers and performers (exact identities under wraps for now!).  Add to this the practical events in the evenings, the chance for a game of football for those who feel so inclined, a full programme for kids, down time sitting on the grass in the copious sunshine we have arranged for the weekend and you have an utterly seminal 3 days that people will talk about for many years to come.

You can book your place, or find answers to any questions you may still have here.  See you there….  Oh, and if you need any final kind of a nudge, you might like to know that both Ken Dodd and Rolf Harris have received Honorary Degrees from Hope University….

TTT's Frances Northrop proudly displaying its new plaque...

Here’s a kind of half-formed thought that might possibly go somewhere if I start writing about it.  This September sees the fifth anniversary of the Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes.  We were deeply flattered the other day to receive a somewhat premature but very welcome plaque from the Town Council bearing the inscription “Transition Town Totnes: to celebrate their first 5 years of activity within the town”.  I’ll probably write a more detailed ‘Totnes: some reflections after 5 years in Transition’ in September, but this post was prompted by an email from a friend in Totnes, who grew up here in the 1960s and is very much a pillar of the community.  He had valiantly read my dissertation, ‘Localisation and Resilience‘, cover to cover and wrote with some reflections.  In his email he makes a very interesting point:

“Another conclusion occurred. Further mention of climate change, peak oil and sustainability is probably pointless. Again, you are either preaching to the choir or the resistant. By now everybody has heard of those terms and must be intimately familiar with them. I don’t think there is anybody left who can genuinely call themselves undecided”.

I thought this was a fascinating observation.  Although it is peak oil and climate change that initially inspire Transition initiatives and form the underpinning for much of the initial awareness stage, might it be that an initiative reaches a point where continued focus on those issues could be counterproductive?  His point is that most people have by now made up their mind as to whether they agree that peak oil and/or climate change are important issues or not.  Beyond a certain point it could be that continued highlighting of the issues actually risks dividing and alienating people rather than including them?

At the moment, the outward focus of TTT’s work is more explicitly about economic regeneration and social enterprise, rather than on promoting the issues of peak oil and climate change.  We are promoting the concept of ‘localisation as economic development’ and about to start work on an ‘Economic Blueprint’ for the town, working with the Town Council, Chamber of Commerce and other local bodies.  We are seeking to support emerging social enterprises and to create new mechanisms for inward investment.  While all of this, clearly, is underpinned by an understanding of peak oil and climate change, we haven’t actually held a talk about peak or climate change for a while.

In the forthcoming ‘Transition Companion’ (out in September), Transition is described has happening in 5 stages:

1. Getting started:  this is the beginning stage, where a group of people come together and form a group, inspired by the principles of Transition.  They start awareness raising and networking in their community
2. Deepening: here they start to become ‘Transition wherever’, a recognised initiative which begins to embark on distinct projects as well as becoming more organised in how it works
3. Connecting: then they start to go deeper, reaching beyond the ‘usual suspects’ and deeper into the community
4. Building: this is about embarking on the practicalities of intentional localisation, thinking strategically about creating new institutions, new infrastructure and supporting the emergence of new enterprises that ground the concept of ‘localisation as economic development’ in the local economy
5. Daring to Dream: what would it look like if every community had a vibrant Transition initiative and they were all actively transforming their local economies?  Here we step into the speculative and wonder about where all this could go.

In the first stage, peak oil and climate change serve as the absolutely vital framing, the inspiration and the motivator.  In stage two, an ongoing programme keeping them out there as issues is also vital.  By stage three, you are beginning to get into the field of the people who are open to knowing about it will probably already have picked up on it, and the rest of the people might be starting to feel a bit like you are ‘that lot’, like Transition is not for them, and starting to feel excluded from what is supposed to be a community-driven process.

By stage four, ‘Building’, while any strategic thinking, such as an Energy Descent Action Plan, a local economic blueprint or whatever, clearly needs to be underpinned by peak oil and climate change, as well as the end of economic growth, the focus starts to shift to economic regeneration and enterprise.  As the plaque from Totnes Town Council shows, at this point it is possible to be well and widely respected, but this is the stage where people are expecting great things and are expecting you to live up to the expectations you have created.

Shifting the focus to ‘localisation as economic development’ offers the opportunity for those who felt excluded by the peak oil and climate change focus to step in, and for your Transition initiative to be seen as addressing local challenges as perceived by most people (lack of employment, skills and training, lack of affordable housing and so on).  By this stage, awareness of peak oil and climate change are diffused into the DNA of the organisation.  As TTT nears its fifth birthday, this is certainly our experience.  People with great expertise and skills in business and livelihoods are coming on board to help drive forward our work in a range of initiatives and projects who may well not have done so before.

Topsham Ales share holders proudly displaying their share certificates... Credit: Mark Hodgson.

In Topsham in Devon, Transition Town Topsham began in the usual way, showing films, holding events, doing some practical projects.  They found though that engagement was only going so far.  “Is peak oil the thing that will unite and inspire this community?” they asked.  Probably not.  “Climate change?”  Again, probably not.  “Beer?”  Ah now you’re talking.  Topsham Ales was funded by £35,000 raised in shares being sold to 56 members of the co-operative they created.  It is rooted in the concept of localisation (uses local hops, spent hops go to local pigs, beers and labels celebrate local place and history) but not explicitly so.  Might there be a lesson to be learnt from Topsham Ales in terms of the need, at a certain point in the evolution of a Transition initiative, to shift its focus?  Discuss….

A recent Transition Training in Chile....

It’s the end of the month again, which means it’s time to bring you a taste of the wonderful Transitioney things that have been going on around the world. We’ll start in South America with some very exciting news from Colombia where they recently held their first three Transition Trainings, and here’s a report with a few pictures. And then there’s news of Chile’s first Transition Town at El Manzano in the BíoBío Region, started by three brothers who also established the Ecoescuela where they teach sustainable lifestyles.

Transition Town Fujino's logo....

Over in Japan, Transition Town Koganei recently held an awareness raising event for local leaders and stakeholders including the Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, local business owners, and people from various groups representing farmers, women, environment, local government, and non-profit organisations etc. They also held an Open Space session in Tsuru City, some mind map and timeline visioning exercises in Transition Town Koganei, and an all-Japan Transition Town meeting. They’ve started a bilingual wiki site called ‘Transition Town in Asia’, designed to help people in the ‘West’ find out about Transition activities in the Far East and will include an English page for each Transition Town in Japan, such as this one for TT Fujino. They’re also planning a big launch of the Japanese version of the Transition Handbook, which should be published soon. Thanks for the update Paul. They were to have an all-Japan meeting in the middle of March, but due to the very sad and unforeseen recent occurrences in Japan, the meeting has had to be postponed. You’ve been in our thoughts a lot.

Down in Australia, Transition Town Riddell recently launched their initiative at their first local food fare, which they’ll combine with a farmers’ market, tours of local food gardens, cooking demonstrations, tips on preserving foods…and…a bit of a treat…a lunch cooked by local chefs from local foods… Transition Town Perth is continuing its film screenings with the Economics of Happiness, while  Transition Town Maroondah’s ‘Organic Backyards Out East’ group is meeting regularly to help in each other’s gardens, go on excursions, share seeds and plants, and hold skills share workshops.

Transition continues to flourish in Europe where there have been more training events in Winterthur, Switzerland and another coming up in Freiburg, Germany. There has also been an open discussion evening in Winterthur, which generated much press coverage and awareness of Transition in Switzerland. There are about 40 Transition Initiatives at various stages of development in Germany with over 550 people registered on the German-speaking Transition website.  Transition Town Dordrecht in the Netherlands were recently out and about picking up rubbish in their area…

In the UK, Transition Town Oundle made an appearance at the Oundle Festival of Literature where a Transition Town Panel answered questions and gave advice on energy, recycling and transport for the ‘How Green is Our Oundle’ event at the festival. They also held a local produce recipe competition, with the recipes on display for sharing. Transition Town Grangemouth has got together with Recyke-a-Bike to sell refurbished bikes at cost price…Stocks are limited so don’t delay! Transition Town Finsbury Park recently met for a foodie event (see left) in the fantastic Blackstock Greenhouse where they cooked their foraged food, such as hogweed and nettles, and followed up with a discussion of what a food strategy should look like in N4. They also held an open space event ‘Show Me the Money’ to discuss support for local businesses, fair trade, ethical alternative banking systems and much more!  Well done Transition Town Tooting, whose Trashcatchers Carnival was shortlisted in the Best Event category of the national Climate Week Awards…

Here’s an article about some of the Transition Town Totnes peoples and their projects from Devon Life magazine, with some great pictures. Abbots Langley Transition Town Association held a very successful ‘Big Green Day’ (see right) to discuss how the community can work together to prepare for the effects of climate change, and all amidst an atmosphere of celebration and optimism.

South Ribble Transition Town held a clothes swapping party (see left) so that all those dedicated-followers-of-fashion could find some new outfits, while Transition Town Bromsgrove enjoyed their first local food fair where people could buy local food, participate in workshops and swap seeds, seedlings and plants… Transition Town Kingston took part in a ’Kingston Vision for 2020: A Green Energy Future’ event with people from the local community, local government, green industry and green business discussing this vision, the opportunities it could bring and how achievable it would be. Transition Town High Wycombe now has an energy group that’s part of the Community Carbon Task Force and will be organising community projects to share advice, information and examples and also provide funding to the local community.  Transition Town Marlow’s 100 solar project recently made the local news:

Sustainable Streatham recently held a meeting to decide whether to become a Transition Town or whether to put this on hold for a year…and you can find out here what they decided!… Chelmsford has now become a Transition Town, so we welcome them, and the group is inviting people to meet their members at the Big Green Bus… and we also welcome the new Basingstoke Transition Network.

As part of a Transition Town project and in celebration of living in Tottenham Road for 48 years, Fiona Green undertook a photography project to capture images of 45 people who live and work in her street…and you can see a few of Fiona’s pictures here. Taunton Transition Town has been very busy with their Transition Together project, and they’re inviting more people to join, so if you live in Taunton then why not get involved and save money on your energy, food and transport (see right). Transition Edinburgh South and Transition Herriot-Watt University have been awarded funding by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, so congratulations to both. Transition Town West Kirby has lots of activities coming up, including songs on toast and forages for razor clams.

Colleges and universities are getting increasingly interested in Transition: on Plymouth University’s campus there’s a Slow Food project AND a farmers’ market! Wow! Bristol University has a student kitchen on campus that’s run by students for students where they teach each other about food and cooking, and Transition Southampton has set up a skillshare with Southampton University to share cooking skills. The University of Brighton is starting a food coop that’s expanding into the community, and they’re also working with a scheme called ‘Harvest the City’, while their Eastbourne College campus has set up a community allotment and is working towards a Garden Share scheme.  Transition Town Worthing have been busy making short films as part of their Energy Descent Action Plan process… the first asks “what is Transition Town Worthing?”:

… and then the following three films look in more depth at peoples’ visions for the future of Worthing:

Transition Town Shrewsbury recently held a Climate Action Think-Tank workshop to develop effective messages for encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprints. They also thought about different messages for different age groups and also about the easiest actions for the greatest impacts. Great idea! Transition Town Andover held a light bulb amnesty where people could take their old light bulbs and exchange them for free new low energy light bulbs…

Transition Town Totnes’s Business and Livelihoods group wants to help new business ideas become a reality and also create the right conditions for social enterprise to flourish in the town. They’ll also raise awareness amongst existing businesses about the dangers of continuing with business as usual, and help them minimise these risks so they thrive in the future. Transition Cambridge just celebrated their third birthday (here‘s Rob’s write up of the evening, and some pics taken on the night) and here’s a fab video of pictures to show what they’ve achieved so far…

In North America, Transition Town Putney helped organise a 2-day Putney Economic Summit, which explored practical ways of reviving and enriching the local economy and community. Transition Colorado held a conference (see left) to discuss the contribution of localised food systems in the Transition of their local economy, and there’s a useful report here. Transition Newton recently held a workshop to demonstrate and discuss methods of bio-intensive gardening and composting, while Transition Town Manchester showed ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ to inspire people to plant hazelnut trees as part of their Hazelnut Planting Project.

Karen Lanphear and Richard Kuhnel were on the Prepper Broadcast talking about Sandpoint Transition Initiative and the wider Transition movement, and you can listen to the show here. Transition Mill Valley recently hosted a film screening with a talk, live music and discussions on strengthening the local economy and building community resilience, while Transition South Bay will soon be holding classes to learn all about their native plants, including which ones thrive best in the different ecosystems and how to care for them. In Transition New Port Richey, Eric Stewart recently gave a talk about Transition:

Transition Guelph, as part of their 'Resilience 2011' festival, celebrated Earth Hour by turning all the lights off in a local bar...

Haliburton County residents invited their neighbouring Barrie Transition Initiative to tell them all about Transition, and the meeting received a positive response with a commitment to make Haliburton a Transition community as well. Transition Victoria will be presenting the case for Transition Towns at a Regional Climate Action Forum in Quesnel being hosted by the Quesnel Climate Action group. Transition Guelph recently held its Resilience Festival combined with their Great Unleashing. The festival was a huge success and exceeded their expectations…see here for some fab pics. They had around 250 people attend the Friday evening keynote speech, and over 500 visitors to Saturday’s Eco-Market! The afternoon talks and discussions were well attended and in the evening there was a potluck, concert, drumming and dancing with around 300 people enjoying these Unleashing celebrations. Congratulations!  Here is a short film made by their local bookshop about their top 5 recommendations for books about resilience (!):

We have great news for French-speaking Transitioners…the French voice-over for ‘In Transition 1.0’ is now complete and on-line, with many thanks to Jean-Luc Henry of Très-Saint-Rédempteur en Transition and all his helpers… Here are some lovely pics of the team recording the voiceover… (see left for one of them…)  Prince Edward County residents brought seeds to exchange, attended workshops and enjoyed a Seedy Saturday event sponsored by Transition Prince Edward County. The exchange was well attended by gardeners and exhibitors. Here’s a short film about it…

Happy planting or happy harvesting…depending on which side of the world you live…and we look forward to hearing all about your wonderful Transition activities throughout the month of April.  Finally, don’t forget to put the dates of the 2011 Transition Network conference in your diary!  It’s going to be the best yet…

My thanks, as ever, to Helen, for creating this round-up.

Localisation and Resilience at the Local Level: The Case of Transition Town Totnes (Devon, UK)
By Rob Hopkins
475 pp. University of Plymouth, Devon, UK – Oct. 2010. £15.00; available only in PDF at Transitionculture.org.

For several years groups of innovative, environmentally conscious people worldwide have been part of a social change movement called Transition. It strives to create relocalized communities that are resilient to the looming climate and energy crises, and in which “the future with less oil could be preferable to the present.” It all began humbly enough as a class project six years ago. Since then, it’s spawned thousands of communities, inspired a documentary and several books, been awarded millions in grants and vaulted its figurehead, Rob Hopkins, to something like celebrity status in southwestern England (really not sure about this bit! Rob…). If there’s a movement today that can be welcomed as a fulfillment of David Korten’s 2006 book The Great Turning, this is it.

The bible of Transition is Hopkins’ Transition Handbook (Green Books, 2008). But in hindsight Hopkins has come to view this book with a critical eye, noting fallacies in its reasoning that he attributes to Transition’s organic, ever-changing nature and its still being a young movement. Partly to address these flaws, he’s now come out with a second book, Localisation and Resilience at the Local Level: The Case of Transition Town Totnes. It’s the dissertation for a doctoral degree that he pursued for four years along with his activist work. Hopkins is now a newly minted Ph.D. and is marketing Localisation and Resilience through his Web site as a companion volume to Transition Handbook.

The dissertation is a case study of the first official Transition Town, the English market town of Totnes, long a popular tourist destination known for its alternative culture. Using interviews, focus groups, questionnaire surveys and other social science research methods, the study examines the degree to which the Transition ideals of localization and resilience have become a reality in Totnes. (Transitioners endorse a number of upbeat definitions of a resilient community, a popular one being “[a] culture based on its ability to function indefinitely and to live within its own limits, and able to thrive for having done so.”*)

When Transition began, Hopkins was an instructor at the Kinsale Further Education College in Kinsale, Ireland. He was teaching permaculture, an environmental design approach that dates back to the ‘70s oil crises. Not yet peak oil-aware, he saw his work primarily as a way of nurturing beneficial relationships within communities, rather than as a ticket to a gentle ride down our energy descent. But when someone did introduce him to peak oil, it dawned on him that permaculture just may be humankind’s best shot at salvation. He and his students embarked on a project to determine what steps their community would need to take in order to successfully weather the decline of oil. The result was a cornerstone Transition text, the very first Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP).**

Kinsale Town Council made the historic decision to adopt their EDAP, with the result that Kinsale is now a proud part of the Transition network.† However, it is in Totnes that Transition took off the fastest, hence Totnes’ status as the first official Transition Town and the home base for the movement. In just a few years, Transition Town Totnes (TTT) went from being the abstract aspiration of zealous volunteers to a limited company offering an array of programs aimed at promoting self-reliant, low-carbon living throughout the South Hams region (a few highlights include Gardenshare, the Nut Tree Planting Project and a local currency called the Totnes Pound).

It is challenging to generalize about results, since Transition is meant as a catalyst for community action rather than as a prescribed program, and different communities come up with different initiatives depending on their particular circumstances. But one general conclusion that Hopkins draws from his research is that the Transition approach has been effective in generating community engagement and initiating new enterprises.

Hopkins admits that Totnes still has a long way to go toward meeting its needs locally. However, he demonstrates that it could supply nearly all of its own food needs, the only exceptions being foods that require soil types not indigenous to the region. As for energy, Hopkins shows that local renewables could meet half of total demand, and that efficiency measures could make up the difference. On the subject of housing, he says that demand could easily be met with local materials (e.g., straw bales, earth, lime, car tires and other recycled objects, hempcrete and cob) but that ramping up current natural building efforts to a commercial scale has proven difficult. Lastly, with regard to transport, Hopkins notes Totnes’ high level of automobile use and suggests that a crucial step in reducing it will be to sway people’s attitudes.

Some of the study’s findings weren’t at all what Hopkins had hypothesized. For example, he originally hypothesized that the main obstacles to resilience and relocalization in Totnes would prove to be an absence of community cohesion and a lack of skills. But as it turns out, the actual stumbling blocks are largely issues of governance. Another major obstacle is the need for increased social enterprise, a still-little-understood quality that Hopkins suggests may be “the key to stepping across from thinking to doing.”

The oral history interviews give the dissertation an ethnographic feel and illustrate how profoundly daily life in Totnes has changed since the advent of cheap oil. The interviews are used to gain insights from the past that may prove useful in acclimating to an oil-scarce future. Hopkins’ team randomly selected townspeople with memories of the period from 1930 to 1955 and had them describe their recollections of the local economy and what practical skills people had then that they don’t have now. In one telling interview, a woman remembers the dreaded chore of doing laundry before electric washers and dryers were widespread. She recalls, “We had a mangle, you had to mangle your clothes! It was terrible. Your feet and legs would get wet, it was hard work.”

Hopkins is mindful of his positionality as a researcher trying to critically examine his own movement. “I am not able to assume an entirely impartial and neutral position in relation to the subject of this PhD,” he concedes. So in designing his methodology, he took steps to at least minimize bias. He had his assistants conduct interviews for him whenever possible, since interviewees who knew him might have been inclined to give him answers that he wanted to hear. And whenever he was conducting interviews, he would tell interviewees to “please answer the following questions as though I have no connection whatsoever with TTT.” He admits that these measures weren’t completely effective, but suggests that the resulting sacrifice of objectivity was made up for by the advantages of his embeddedness in TTT, namely, his trusted access to specialists in a range of fields and an understanding of the community “from the inside.”

Localisation and Resilience represents a solid case study of the first Transition initiative. It goes a long way toward filling some chasms in the resilience literature, which, as Hopkins points out, is still quite sparse. And of course, one of the ultimate tests of its academic rigor has been passed with flying colors, now that Hopkins has successfully defended his research and been granted a doctoral degree.

Hopkins’ Englishness automatically gives him an edge over other peak oil thinkers. England, like Europe at large, is implicitly more appreciative of the gift of abundant oil than is America, since it’s long been much more expensive there. And while the nation shares much of America’s oil vulnerability, it’s easier to get around there without fuel, since the area was settled long before the reign of the automobile. Localisation and Resilience offers no comment on the prospects for Transition on this reviewer’s side of the Atlantic; but it certainly has been heartening to watch the movement build steadily here, from just one official initiative in 2008 to 79 at last count.‡

_{* “Resilience – a few more definitions,” Transition Town Totnes, http://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/content/resilience-few-more-definiti… (accessed Jan. 29, 2011).
** Rob Hopkins, “Powerdown and Permaculture: At the Cusp of Transition,” in Gaian Economics: Living Well within Planetary Limits, eds. Jonathan Dawson, Ross Jackson and Helena Norberg-Hodge (East Meon, Hampshire, UK: Hyden House Ltd., 2010), 212-7.
† Adam Fenderson, “Energy Descent Action Plans – a primer,” Energy Bulletin, Jun. 7, 2006, http://www.energybulletin.net/node/16859 (accessed Jan. 27, 2011).
‡ ”Official Transition Initiatives,” Transition US, http://transitionus.org/initiatives-map (accessed Feb. 1, 2011).}

Here is the ingredient about World Cafe and Open Space.  I would love to be able to weave into it your stories about when you have used them, when they worked, and perhaps even when they didn’t.  Do post any thoughts as comments please…

Context

Thinking about the implications and responses to peak oil and climate change on your own can be dispiriting and lead to POST PETROLEUM STRESS DISORDER (1.1).  Brainstorming tools such as Open Space and World Cafe can be a pivotal part of your AWARENESS RAISING (2.9) work, and can also give birth to a number of PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS (3.9) and to people FORMING WORKING GROUPS (2.11).

(We are collecting and discussing these Transition ingredients on Transition Network’s website to keep all comments in one place. Please leave feedback and comments, suggestions for alternative pictures, anecdotes, stories and projects for this ingredient here).

The Challenge

We have become a society which increasingly believes that little can be done without input from experts and specialists. It is an approach which is often disempowering and ineffective. We need to rediscover how to unlock the collective knowledge, and indeed genius, that surrounds us, and engage it in addressing the big challenges of our times.

Core Text

An early Open Space event organised by Transition Town Lewes

We have become used to the idea that if we want to make change happen what we need is a coachload of experts who arrive, walk around with clipboards and then subsequently send us a plan to implement.  However, much of what we need is already present around us, all we need are the tools that enable us to unlock the collective knowledge and ideas of our community.  Two of the approaches used most often in Transition are World Cafe and Open Space.  I will try here to offer a concise overview of both, hopefully in such a way that you would run a session on either with this book propped open next to you.

Open Space Technology [1] is a tool for using with groups from 800 to 1,000 people who need to explore a major issue. According to its originator, Harrison Owen, it is based on 4 simple ‘rules’ …

• Whoever comes is the right people
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
• When it starts is the right time
• When it’s over, it’s over

…. and one ‘law’, ‘The Law of Two Feet’, which states that:

“If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds themselves in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their feet and go to some more productive place.”

So here is a step-by-step guide to facilitating Open Space.

• You’ll need a room large enough for those attending to be able to sit in a circle, and a wall you can stick things onto, and also a number of distinct places (rooms, tables, corners) where conversations can take place.
• You will also need a clear question, which has been circulated in advance in publicity and invitations for the event
• Sit participants in a circle.  In the centre is a pile of sheets of A4 paper and pens, and on the wall is an empty timetable, with the timings of the different sessions on one axis, and the various breakout spaces on the other.
• Explain the rules of Open Space and that the only prerequisite for proposing a question is that you undertake to host that discussion and take legible notes of what is said
• Anyone with a question writes it on a sheet of paper and sticks it to the wall (you may well end up with more questions than you have slots available, in which case consolidate relevant ones together)
• Once your timetable/agenda is complete, allow people a few minutes to look at it and work out what they want to go to, and then ring a bell, or something similar, to announce the convening of the first session.
• In theory, the rest of the day will now organise itself!
• At the end of each session, ring a bell to let people know it is finished, then go round and collect up the note-filled sheets, and put them up on the wall in the area you have pre-designated as the ‘Market Place’.
• Leave 30-40 minutes or so at the end for a go-round, for reflections on the event and the process itself, rather than issues raised.

'Powering Totnes Beyond Cheap Oil': an early TTT Open Space event

Open Space works not only as a tool for gathering ideas, but also serves a powerful role in somehow leading to the emergence of practical projects.  There is something in the intention of conceiving ideas and meeting others who share that passion which also serves to bring ideas into being.  For example, in October 2006, Transition Town Totnes held an Open Space event on energy called ‘Powering Totnes Beyond Cheap Oil – rethinking Totnes’s energy supply’(see left).  It is fascinating, nearly four years later, to look back and see how many of the ideas and visions which emerged during the day have subsequently come to be realised.  At least 10 of the ideas, mostly substantial projects, are now underway, sometimes, but not always, held by the people who had originally suggested them at the Open Space event.

Why might it be that this Open Space event appears to have led to the emergence of new initiatives?  It is partly because those who had the ideas brought them to the event looking for collaborators to make them happen, partly because the ideas informed the work of TTT and partly because it brought ideas out into the open and began a process of exploring their feasibility which, in turn, attracted others.

A World Cafe session with local Councillors organised by Transition Town Totnes

World Café has been summarised as being about “awakening and engaging collective intelligence through conversations about questions that matter”.  It is a powerful tool for exploring specific questions. It differs from Open Space in that it is less chaotic and self-directed, offering a powerful way of exploring specific questions and issues. It is based on the idea that for many people, the place where the richest conversations take place are places where they feel relaxed: at a table – be it a kitchen table or a table in a café – with a cup (or glass) of something in their hands and perhaps some biscuits.

Here is a step-by-step guide to running World Café:

• Plan the event well, frame the question(s) that will be explored, decide who should be there and how you will invite them, where and when it will be, and what outcomes you are hoping for from the event
• Create a hospitable space, somewhere people will feel comfortable, with round tables set out café-style, with room at each for around 5 people, with paper tablecloths, marker pens, flowers and perhaps a candle, and provide food and drink
• Make sure that the questions you will be exploring (either one overarching one or a number of questions that explore different aspects of an issue) are relevant to those attending, are clear, thought-provoking and invite reflection, invite the exploration of possibilities and connect those present to why they came
• Encourage everyone to contribute by maximising the number of interactions.  Every 15 minutes, a bell is rung indicating it is time to move to another table. Over the space of a few hours, participants get to meet most, if not all, of the people in the room, and exchange ideas and thoughts with them
• Each time people move to another table, they bring threads of conversation they were at to a new group of people.  Each table has a Host, whose responsibility it is to scribe the points raised in each conversation on the tablecloth, so as to create an accurate (and legible) record of what was discussed.  Each time the groups change, the new session begins with the Host sharing what was previously discussed at that table, and the new people briefly share what happened at the tables they were on previously
• At the end, the event is drawn together through a sharing of the collective discoveries.  You might pin up all the written-on tablecloths for all to see, you could have a ‘go-round’ where each host summarises the main conversation points on his or her table. This could then be followed by a more general ‘go-round’ to give people an opportunity to share reflections on the process, how it went for them, and what deeper questions were raised. This process can also be continued by typing up the sheets and emailing them out to everyone a few days later, as ‘minutes’ of the discussion.

So there you have it, ambience, good food, conversation, lots of mingling and an outpouring of ideas; World Café, and Open Space, in a nutshell!

The Solution

Find ways of enabling people in your community to find solutions to the challenges facing them. Use Open Space and World Cafe (making sure you are clear as to where it is most appropriate them) to facilitate community brainstorming and to draw out the ingredients of a collective vision for the future of the community.  Well designed and facilitated, they are extraordinary tools.  Make sure that each event has clear questions, and trust in Open Space’s ability to enable people to self-organise.  For anyone with leanings towards being a control freak, running Open Space is terrifying, but trust it, it works!  Both tools are flexible and inclusive and can be used in many different contexts. However care must be taken to not use them in ways in which they are not suited.

Connections to Other Ingredients

Facilitating these events offers a great opportunity to practice STANDING UP TO SPEAK (1.8).  Holding brainstorming events can be a great way of generating MOMENTUM (3.6) if an initiative has got stuck, and they can also be focused on addressing particular issues, such as ENGAGING LOCAL LANDOWNERS (4.8).  Ideas and insights they generate can provide very useful input for ENERGY DESCENT ACTION PLANS (5.11).

Please leave any comments here.

Councillors from Somerset County Council taking part in a Transition Training

Context

Building a constructive relationship to your local authority can be a very constructive thing for both organisations.  Once your initiative has dealt with BECOMING A FORMAL ORGANISATION (2.7), it could set about BUILDING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS (2.12) with a range of organisations, including the Council.  Such an approach can happen either as a single initiative, or could come from a NETWORK OF TRANSITION INITIATIVES (4.2).

(We are collecting and discussing these Transition ingredients on Transition Network’s website to keep all comments in one place. Please leave feedback and comments, suggestions for alternative pictures, anecdotes, stories and projects for this ingredient here).

The Challenge

To be able to really have an impact, you will need to develop a good working relationship with your local authority.  Often community organisations are seen by their Local Authorities as disorganised, reactionary, unrepresentative and troublesome.  Community consultation processes can be tokenistic and exclusive, leaving community groups feeling sidelined and unheard.  Many community groups end up feeling excluded from local politics, and they retreat into knocking their local authority, rather than engaging and, for example, putting people forward for office.

Core Text

Let’s suppose that your Transition initiative decides it is time to go and talk to the Council, in order  to try and engage them in your work.  What is the best way to make sure it goes well, and what are the things to avoid that would mean it goes disastrously badly?  A recent report by the Community Development Foundation [1]offers four tips to help community groups wanting to approach their local authorities:

1.       Your group must be persistent, positive and ready to work with others

2.       You need patience and networking skills to find the right person within the Council who is interested and supportive of your work

3.       You must have something to bring to the table, for example, how can your group help the Council to meet its targets?

4.       Often the Council is already dealing with other Third Sector groups, and it might be that you will have more of an impact if you go as part of a coalition

Alexis Rowell was a Councillor in Camden for four years and one of the founders of Transition Belsize, and in his book “Communities, Councils and a Low Carbon Future”[2], he sets out his advice for Transition initiatives wanting to approach their local council.  Firstly, he suggests, Councillors are only human, and spend much of their time being berated about different problems and crises, and therefore they love people who bring solutions rather than problems.  Think, when you are preparing to meet with them, what your initiative can do that helps them to solve a problem that they are facing.

Secondly, try and make them feel like a part of the process.  Invite them to events, you might consider inviting your councillors to film screenings as a guest of honour, and invite them to comment after the film, to offer their thoughts.  You could invite them as ‘Keynote Listeners’ to your events (as Transition Network did with Ed Miliband in 2009 when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change).  When you organise events, organise them in their field of vision, even if they can’t make it, they should be getting a sense of the buzz you are generating, at second hand at least.  You might also invite them to Open Space events you are holding, indeed you could give them first refusal on dates when planning the event to ensure that they manage to attend.

Thirdly, think clearly about why you are going to see them.  What are you asking for?  Don’t go too early: as Alexis warns, make sure you get all your organisational ‘birthing pains’ out of the way first.  It works better if the ‘buzz’ around your work reaches them first, or if you have a practical project under your belt first, to show that you aren’t just another ‘talking shop’.  Make sure you have a clear ask, don’t just turn up empty-handed.

If you get to be asked to make a presentation to the Council, there are a few definite dos and don’ts:

• Do dress the part.  Wear a tie, or wear something smart, have a haircut if needed.
• Don’t take your family friends, dog or cat along with you.
• Don’t spend the first ten minutes showing them peak oil graphs and pictures of stranded polar bears.
• Don’t slag them off, presenting them with a list of ‘the Council doesn’t do this, and it doesn’t do that…” and so on….
• Do tailor your presentation to your audience.  If you are addressing the Financial directors, tell them how Transition can save them money.  If you are talking to the disaster planning officers, tell them how Transition can help build resilience, and so on.
• Do practice in advance, make sure your co-presenters know who is doing what
• Do try to get one or two sympathetic councillors on board first in advance of your presentation
• Do offer your services as experts in consulation processes, such as Stroud (see below)
• Do try to not come across as unfocused, pie-in-the-sky woolly liberal activists…

Michael Dunwell of Transition Forest of Dean, who has done a lot of work with his local council on trying to embed Transition thinking at Council level, told me that for him, working with his Council really impressed on him the importance of having done the Transition Training.  He identified two reasons why this is the case.  Firstly because “the training itself strengthens and supports commitment and feeds the desire to see a healthy community”, without which it would be hard for people with little previous experience of local government to be able to withstand much exposure to it.  Secondly because it brings you into contact with people who have experience of working with government, and this encourages you to seek their help. He concluded, “I have found that the impenetrable jargon of local government makes you doubt your own ability to think or speak, so be sure that you can express to yourself what it is you believe in, only utter what you know you can understand and don’t try and out-jargon the others.  It really is important that the Transition message speaks a different language”.

Transition Stroud have cultivated a close working relationship with Stroud District Council.  Speaking at the IDEA Conference in June 2009, Simon Allen and Cllr. Fi Macmillan told the story of how that relationship emerged[3].  Transition Stroud became involved with the Council’s Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) which held a series of ‘Inquiries’.  When the Inquiry about food came around, the group realised that there were “no specialists on food supply in the district and we know as much as anyone”.  The group focused on producing the report for the food inquiry, along the lines of ‘Can Stroud Feed Itself?’  They spent a huge amount of time on it, with a great deal of research pulled into the process, and the final report was accepted as evidence to the Think Tank on food policy.  The Council later said that they saw this as a turning point in the relationship between Transition Stroud, the LSP and the Council.  Asked to suggest some tips for other Transition initiatives based on their experience, they offered the following:

• Don’t worry if your transition group looks ‘home-knitted’ – we’ve got energy, commitment and great ideas
• Focus on what you want to achieve and not what sets you apart
• Look out for the people in your Transition groups who are up for collaboration
• Start working on something – anything- to build that relationship – take some risks and learn to trust each other
• Careful communication, review and reflection build that trust
• It won’t be an easy fit first off. You have to work at the relationship
• It won’t happen overnight. Be patient
• Remember internal concerns have to be managed
• Don’t get hung up on the outcomes because outcomes might change, just work on shared agenda.

One of the most amazing resolutions ever passed by a local authority in relation to that passed in Monteveglio in Italy in late 2009.  Among other things, it committed the authority to:

“Strategic partnership with the Association Monteveglio Città di Transizione [Transition Town Monteveglio] with whom this administration shares a view of the future (the depletion of energy resources and the significance of a limit to economic development), methods (bottom-up community participation), objectives (to make our community more resilient, i.e. better prepared to face a low energy future) and the optimistic approach (although the times are hard, changes to come will include great opportunities to improve the whole community’s quality of life)”.

I asked Cristiano Bottone of Transition Town Monteveglio (TTM) for the story of how the resolution came about.  He said that it began with his giving talks about peak oil and Transition, which were well attended by local councillors.  This led to the forming of TTM, who organised talks by a series of speakers and other events, as well as hosting a Transition Training by Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks.  Around this time, local elections were pending, and some within TTM decided to put themselves forward for election, while others felt they would be more effective continuing with the Transition initiative.  Those running for office used Transition approaches, such as World Cafe, to generate ideas which were then woven into their electoral platforms.  In the end, they were all elected, resulting in a situation where TTM and the council now work side-by-side in a very positive partnership, in spite of recent cuts in public spending.  Cristiano offered three tips for successful engagement of local authorities:

1.       When communicating with institutions always talk to the people, never to their roles: generate empathy, and speak to the parent, the citizen, the carer, rather than the title on the door of the office

2.       Create the conditions for change #1: create a ‘new way’: when done well, Transition can create a new social and political space which is quickly noted by politicians, and which gives both they, and the local people, new room for expression

3.      Conditions for change #2: move beyond competition:  Transition offers an approach which strives to take the competitiveness out of local politics, cooperative activity, working together to achieve change with everyone contributing, is much more likely to succeed.

The Solution

When your initiative feels as though it is ready, and it feels that it has sufficient momentum under its belt, make an approach to whoever seems the most sympathetic person within the Council.  Explore ways of collaborating, how they can help, and how your Transition initiative can feed into Council policymaking.  Explore options for funding, or any other kind of support.  You might explore the possibility of passing a peak oil resolution, or offer your services in helping draft policy on areas where your group has expertise.

Connections to Other Ingredients

Be mindful of not swamping your councillors with POST PETROLEUM STRESS DISORDER (1.1), feeling the obligation to expose them to endless peak oil graphs.  When you get to meet councillors, or give them a presentation, be aware of HOW OTHERS SEE US/HOW WE COMMUNICATE (1.6).  Invite councillors to your AWARENESS RAISING events (2.9).  The Council might be able to help you with getting VOLUNTEERS (3.2), with OFFICE SPACE (3.1), with ENSURING LAND ACCESS (3.13) and with support for PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS (3.9).  They can also give a great deal of support with your ENERGY DESCENT ACTION PLAN (5.1) process and could potentially be a partner for COMMUNITY RENEWABLE ENERGY COMPANIES (ESCOs) (5.4).  Finally, it would be good to find ways to help them meet their objectives, perhaps offering them support with drafting PEAK OIL RESOLUTIONS (6.2), or carrying out ENERGY RESILIENCE ASSESSMENTs (4.5).

[1] Gautier, A. (2009) Green Up! Five ways to work with your Council on the environment and sustainability.  Community Development Foundation, London.

[2] Rowell, A. (2010) Communities, Councils and a Low Carbon Future: what we can do if Government won’t. Transition Books.

[3] Told in more detail at http://transitionculture.org/2009/06/24/what-can-happen-when-a-transition-initiative-and-its-local-government-work-together-the-stroud-story/

Please leave any comments here.

Copies of the report were distributed to the Town Council and last week I attended a meeting where I gave a brief presentation about it, following which the Councillors talked about how proud they were of TTT, and then unanimously passed a resolution supporting our work (here is a report from the local press).  The resultant report can be downloaded here (it’s a big file, about 5.5MB).  As TTT is a community organisation with no core funding, we are offering this report for free, but we hope that having read it you might feel inspired to make a donation to support our vital work:

My favourite bit of the report, the Executive Summary, sets out in numbers the impacts of TTT thus far:

People visiting Totnes to find out about Transition have brought an estimated £122,000 to the local economy • over 300 people have visited the town to undertake Transition Training • TTT raised the funding for the 74 solar panels on Totnes Civic Hall which will generate around 13,000kWh (a third of its demand, leading to the Council saving over £5,500) • 186 hybrid nut trees have been planted throughout the town • over 4000 Local Food Guides (in 2 editions) have been distributed • our Garden Share scheme means that now 30 gardeners in 13 gardens are able to grow food, providing food to over 50 families • over 70 businesses now accept the Totnes Pound • organised over 140 public events • more than 1,000 students at King Edward VI Community College have now participated in our ‘Transition Tales’ programme • over 75% of people in Totnes and Dartington are aware of TTT’s work • more than 600 people attended 4 workshops on renewable energy • there are now 59 ‘Transition Together’ groups in and around the town, who will each reduce their carbon emissions by 1.2 tonnes, each saving £601 per year • over 50% of those households are low-income • ‘Transition Tours’, a structured tour designed for those who want to visit the town to learn about Transition has, so far, had a local impact of £52,166 • The work of TTT  has inspired an international network of thousands of Transition initiatives • TTT has formed partnerships with 25 other organisations • the creation of the Energy Descent Action Plan engaged over 800 local people, gave talks to 35 local organisations and held 27 public meetings • 50 people have learnt to garden through our basic gardening course • over 400 people attended ‘Winterfest’, a one-day celebration of the work of TTT • 3 annual ‘Edible Garden Crawls’ have been attended by over 500 people • the 2010 ‘Energy Fair’ was attended by over 400 people • TTT’s email newsletter is received by over 2,000 people • TTT’s Garden Share scheme was the inspiration for Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall’s national ‘Landshare’ campaign • Produced 10 short films about various TTT events • ‘Estates in Transition’, a day conference co-organised with Dartington, brought 65 local landowners and managers together to explore the impacts of peak oil and climate change • 57.2% of local people feel TTT’s work is either ‘highly relevant’ or ‘relevant’ to their lives • the Heart and Soul group provides support to 15 people working in TTT so as to minimise incidents of burn-out • TTT’s website has over 4,500 registered users • our annual Seedy Sunday events each attract at least 200 people • a recent grant of £75,000 from Community Builders is supporting our efforts to bring the derelict Dairy Crest site back into community ownership • TTT has generated a great deal of media coverage, including BBC’s The One Show, Al Jazeera TV, ‘In Business’ on Radio 4, and pieces in most daily papers, as well as regularly attracting international media attention….