This month’s podcast goes into more depth on three of the stories from the April round-up of what’s happening in Transition. We hear from the High School Joan Segura i Valls in Santa Coloma de Queralt (in Catalonia, Spain) who have just completed a big project about Transition, from Transition Oamaru and Waitaki District in New Zealand about their Sustainable Skills School, and we hear from Tooting about their Treasuring Tooting event that took place last weekend. Do note that you can embed it on your own website, and that it is also now available on iTunes.
[Here's a great story from Portugal. My thanks to Isabel and Luis for sending it in]. Hello everyone. We are Isabel and Luis, from Cascais, in Portugal. We have lived here (in Cascais) for the last 15 years, with the blue sea and fabulous sand beaches nearby, on one way and amazing mountain sides on the other, sensing the earth and the sea …
What might we learn from the construction, between1438 and 1448 of the Hospital of St. John in Sherborne (see above) that might shape the way we think about construction in the 21st century? While the bulk of the building was built using local oolitic limestone, it was dressed with Lias stone from Ham Hill, some 12 miles from the building site. However, in those days, without the internal combustion engine, 12 miles was a long way to carry stone (you try it). The meticulous accounts kept of the project at the time show that the cost of transporting the stone by cart cost more than the stone itself. As Alec Clifton-Taylor says in his seminal ‘The Pattern of English Building’, “it was the great difficulty of transporting heavy materials which led all but the most affluent until the end of the eighteenth century to build with the materials that were most readily available near the site, even when not very durable”.
I am delighted to be able to announce today the Festival of Transition, an initiative of new economics foundation, Transition Network, the Ramblers Association, Mission Models Money and UKYCC. The idea is that rather than flying to Rio, putting nearly 4 tons of carbon dioxide into an atmosphere that really doesn’t need 4 tons of CO2 put into it, we stay at home, and do stuff that models the kind of world we want to see. It is a celebration of change, of practical responses, of community, and we hope that it will be a global event, not just in the UK. All kinds of great events are already being planned over the time of the Festival. The crowning glory will be the 24 Hours of Possibility, a real life experiment in living differently, in showing what’s possible, on the day the Earth Summit begins, 20th June.
This was included in yesterday’s round up, but I think it deserves a post all to itself. The other day, through the marvel of Twitter, I received a message “Dear Robin. In the South of Chile, The Pucón Iniciative of Transition made a Film!!!” (my Twitter account is @robintransition). The link took me to this wonderful film. One of the great joys of Transition is hearing stories of it popping up in unexpected places. This film is a joy.
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
Read more»
Subscribe
Keep up to date with my posts by subscribing to email updates:
