An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Usually when I go to events I tend to be the ‘resilience guy’, or one of a handful of people who work with and think about resilience who tend to gather at the back of other events and bemoan the fact that no-one has talked about resilience yet. So I was fascinated when I saw that the British Red Cross was hosting a one-day conference on resilience, the first that I’ve been aware of. They had stated that the objectives of the day were to:
share and generate learning on how resilience building works in practice in various settings and from a variety of perspectives – in other words, what works well and why?
understand how humanitarian agencies can effectively contribute to building resilience within communities.
About 200 people attended, including researchers and policy-makers, community activists, people involved in refugee services,emergency/humanitarian response,health and social care and age-related resilience. It was a fascinating day, and one that I’d like to share five of my lightbulb moments from the day.
How does this resonate with your experience of being involved in Transition? Your group is highly effective, generally harmonious, communicates clearly and effectively, has power dynamics which are understood and enjoyed by everyone, deals creatively with conflict and runs its meetings in such a way that people look forward to them and love being part of them. If your answer sits anywhere between “absolutely not” and “hmmm”, then you might enjoy this short video:
https://youtu.be/NmEC3BCOBq8
It’s an introduction to Transition Training’s new ‘Effective Groups’ training and resources, developed by trainer Nick Osborne, who also narrates it. I spoke to Nick, and what follows is a choice of audio from our conversation broken into different questions, or some notes for those who would rather read the key points.
We’ll start this month’s Round up in Crystal Palace in London, and news of the ‘Palace Pint’. Crystal Palace Transition Town started the initiative inspire by the nearby ‘Brixton Beer’, and more than 80 people have now planted hops in their gardens as part of the scheme. CPTT have teamed up with local brewers Late Knights in Penge, who will brew a special brew using the hops and who will also run sessions throughout the year where people can learn to brew. Hops were also planted in the Crystal Palace Museum Garden and in the Grape and Grain pub’s Tipsy Garden (see pic above).
You’ll have seen ‘Dragons Den’ on the TV. Five successful entrepreneurs sit in a row, each with a pile of cash in front of them, and one after another people come in front of them to pitch their business ideas to either be humiliated, ridiculed or fought over as the Dragons seek to outdo each other for the best ideas that come through the door. As with so much in our culture, it’s about competition, the strong surviving, the weak being the laughing stock in clips on YouTube in perpetuity.
Last Friday I had a taste of a very different kind of Dragon’s Den, one that is still giving me goosebumps when I think about it, and about the potential I saw there. Last Friday was the second Totnes Local Entrepreneurs Forum, organised by Transition Town Totnes and the REconomy Project, and it was quite stunning. Here is a short film I made about the day:
South Hams District Council took an active role in the creation of the Totnes & District Local Economic Blueprint, so I sat down with Richard Sheard, Chief Executive Officer at SHDC and began by asking him why he thought the Blueprint matters.
You can download the Blueprint here, and see the first review of it here. Have a good Easter.
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