In a second video, Chris and Graham get in off the roof and talk in more depth about how the scheme came into being, and the obstacles it overcame:

TT-Llandeilo in Wales are fighting to save their historic Market Hall while plans are being considered for a new Sainsbury’s supermarket to the north of the town – read more in This is South Wales.  Picking up a story from last month’s round up, which was explored in more detail in the last Transition podcast, here is an article in Treehugger on TT-Whitehead planting 60,000 trees which includes their fantastic video that we featured here last month.

Transition Heathrow: Credit: Kristian Buus

On the same subject, TT-Horncastle in Lincolnshire have been planting hazelnut trees (see above) as part of their plan to have an orchard spread around the town. Ian Westmoreland from Transition Heathrow (see right) came to give a talk in Totnes to talk about their Grow Heathrow project, which explored the place where Transition and activism meet.

TT-Bridport has joined forces with another local community group and have offered placements to unemployed young people to teach them practical skills.  TT-Dorchester and TT-Taunton in Somerset both held a Wassail at their local community orchards (see left)! Dorchester’s was followed by an orchard work day.   For those not familiar with the term, an orchard-visiting wassail refers to the ancient custom of visiting orchards, reciting incantations and singing to the trees in apple orchards in cider-producing regions of England to promote a good harvest for the coming year.

TT-Bolton have written this rational and forward thinking letter to their local council with 2 specific objections and 2 specific (and they believe achievable) aims for the next 14 year period.  At the end of the letter they refer to two articles which may be of interest, here and here.

So, to London.  Here is a very silly indeed video of Transition Crystal Palace:

Transition Kensal to Kilburn, like quite a few other London Transition groups, have been running Draughtbusting workshops.  These 3 videos take us inside what really happens at a Draughtbusting workshop….

Transition Town Tooting met to make some Transition New Year resolutions.  TT-Brixton have started a Family Group (see right) where everyone is welcome (everyone is part of a family in some way)! Read here for more details of their planned activities.  Transition Brixton’s Brixton Pound initiative also got a mention at the recent Davos Economic Summit!  Have a look a 4.30 into this interview with Stewart Wallis of nef:

While we’re on the subject, the Bristol Pound, the first city-wide complementary currency is coming soon, keenly supported by Bristol City Council.  You can keep up to date with developments at their rather impressive new website.

In a follow up to last month’s story, two very worthy hospices benefitted from TT-Shrewsbury’s post Christmas cardboard collecting initiative (which also featured in our most recent podcast). Read the full story here and see pic, left.

TT-Shrewsbury have also been busy as part of The Shrewsbury Hydro Group who are spearheading the new £100,000 power plan for Shrewsbury Castlefields weir (a story we heard about in a special podcast in December).  A lovely example of skills being shared for a good cause as TT-Worthing took part in a Winter Warmer campaign by knitting woollen hats, gloves and scarves for two local charities (see right).

Here’s a great idea: Transition Cardiff have started ‘Show and Tell’ evenings, where people from different sustainability initiatives in the area are invited to come and present what they are up to.  Here’s a film about it:

The Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF), run by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) recently announced 82 winning communities, who between them shared £4 million for community energy projects.  A quick look through the list of finalists shows that about 10 of them were Transition initiatives.  Among those, Transition Town Totnes got funding to retrofit Dartington Parish Hall, Transition Eynsham Area are now able to insulate local homes, Taunton Transition Town can now do some research on the best ways to reduce energy in Taunton, and Transition West Bridgford will be rolling out its ‘EcoHouses’ project, to name just a few.

Speaking of Totnes, Transition Town Totnes’ ‘Transition Homes’ project recently held an Open Day in the same Dartington Parish Hall, to inform local residents of their plans:

Internationally, the Transition initiatives that feature in the new film ‘In Transition 2.0′ are getting ready to preview the film tomorrow (Thursday 2nd February).  Transition Town Lewes are showing it in the town hall, and didn’t like Transition Network’s poster and so made their own (see right), Transition City Lancaster are showing it at Dukes, Transition Marsden & Slaithwaite are putting it on at the Watershed, Transition Monteveglio have had to cancel theirs due to arctic winds and snowstorms, Transition Wayland in the US are using the town building, Love Lyttelton in New Zealand will be showing it in their office, in a fire station in Moss Side, Manchester, in a Hindu Temple in Tooting,  in a school in Finsbury Park, in a hall in Koganei, Japan, in ‘Cinema Paradiso’ in Auroville, India and in Aldeia das Amoreiras Sustentável in Portugal.  Its premiere will be announced soon, and it will be more widely available for screenings from the end of March.

Popping over to British Columbia in Canada, a Shuswap resident (what a great name for a place) is interviewed about why she became involved in Transition in this lovely Salmon Arm Observer article (Salmon Arm, there’s another great name for a place!).  See also this related article on Ten Resolutions for Resilience.

Also in British Columbia, local resident and farmer Matthew Stewart (see below) has taken the first steps in getting a local Transition initiative up and running in the city of Burnaby which sits to the east of Vancouver. Read a Q&A with Matthew in Burnaby Now.

Growing a greener world: Moreno Zanotto, Matthew Stuart and Sarah Milton aim to create communities free from fossil fuel dependence, starting with community gardening and green transportation. Credit: Lisa King, Burnaby Now

TT-Woodstock is one of only two Transition groups in the East Canadian province of New Brunswick.  The group have built a solar-powered cooker that’s used at public events such as Canada Day, compiled a local food directory and established a community garden. They continue to actively encourage more local people to join them.

Heading south to the US, you can check out the US edition of the January roundup here.  From Massachusetts, this simple Resilience Questionnaire put together by The Jamaica Plain (JP) New Economy Transition seeks to find out direct from their residents just how ready their JP community is for change.  Also in Jamaica Plain, for their first Potluck of 2012, local residents Jenny Jones, Alvin Kho and Andree Zaleska shared their respective experiences of the Festival Garden, Egleston Community Orchard and the JP Green House.

A Senior center in Chelsea, Michigan is to host series of free classes on resilience, sustainability and the transition movement and kicks off with a program on “Chelsea’s Resilience 100 Years Ago.”  In North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, the first Transition Congregation sustainability workshop in the US has taken place with Transition Trainer Tina Clarke.

In Wyncote, Transition Cheltenham have started a Sunday Supper series with an excerpt from the film Gasland followed by a speaker and discussion about fracking.  Also in Pennsylvania, the Penn State Center for Sustainability did this review of The Transition Companion and held its second energy forum, ‘Marcellus Shale and Beyond’ which sought to answer questions such as ‘Why do we need our own energy plan?’ and ‘Who is going to fix a growing list of intractable problems?  Government?  Business?  Academia?’

In Utah, Transition Salt Lake City held a meeting at a local church to showcase their website, take part in a mind map exercise and share a potluck meal (see right).  Following a “Training for Transition” in December, Dummerston is the 9^th town in Vermont to start up a Transition initiative and this month held a potluck dinner, a screening of In Transition 1.0 followed by a discussion.

The spread of Transition in Brazil continues apace.  May East sent us the following reports of two particular recent developments there:

Transition Ametista: Town of 150,000 people, the largest Amethyst mines of South America. The town today stands over a Swiss cheese as they have been digging the subsoil for decades.  Recently they have been influenced by brilliant Brazilian permaculture designers friends of ours and decided to diversify economy, close the loops of extraction, created factory of eco-bricks, went back to grow grapes & vinyards, decided to age wines inside of the amethyst caves… a great case study.

We were hosted by the Major and had many reps of LA of the regional towns.  Marcello co-facilitated with me (see photo below).

Transition Rio – Rio has now many initiatives.  This is the third year; third group and I trust one of our trainers who is visiting the UK at the moment will be able to present all that is happening. Transition Brazil is planning a 2 day conference during Rio+20.

That’s it for now.  The next podcast, telling more about some of these stories, will be out in a couple of weeks.  If there are any stories you would especially like to hear more about, please let us know via the comments box below.

Here’s a great article from the latest edition (‘The Green Issue’) of Norwich magazine, to whom I am very grateful for permission to republish in full.  You can also download the pdf of the article here with more of Tony Buckingham’s excellent photos here. 

Close to home

In November, Transition Norwich celebrated its third birthday. Sabine Virani investigates a green initiative that is part of a global movement yet focuses on local need, local interest and local resources.

It was all going so well until the tractor died. Thirty members and friends of Norwich FarmShare had turned up at the five-acre farm next to the Postwick Park & Ride to bag the last of the year’s potato harvest. It was an urban-dweller’s day out and a nice way to spend a warm Saturday in October. All they had to do was walk behind the potato harvester, pick up the freshly lifted spuds and pop them in a bag. But half-way down the second row, the tractor gave up the struggle.

Fortunately for the farm, these were committed volunteers. The farm is a cooperative, and though the land is rented, the business is owned by its members, who give about nine hours a year of their time and pay a monthly subscription in return for a weekly share of the harvest throughout the year. Faced with a dead tractor, they simply grabbed the garden forks and started digging. In all, they hauled some two tonnes of spuds that day.

Leading a tour of the farm in late November, head grower Tierney Woods apologises that it is so bare. Yet the fields still seem generously full of chemical-free vegetables for cropping through the winter and into the spring: leeks, onions, spring cabbages, broad beans and garlic. There are a few carrots left, too – although the rabbits are showing an interest and might finish them off – and rows of purple and green ‘January King’ cabbages that look
fit for an artisan grocer’s in Primrose Hill. And then there’s the asparagus bed and the polytunnels.

In its first 12 months Norwich FarmShare recruited 70 members. By taking on two more acres, building soil fertility and cropping more closely, the cooperative hopes to increase membership to 200 in 2012.  Norwich FarmShare is seen by many as the flagship project of Transition Norwich, an initiative that was launched in St Andrew’s Hall in October 2008. Some 400 people attend­ed the launch, drawn by shared concerns about global dependence on a finite resource: oil.

For many at the launch, climate change was the overwhelming concern. But others were just as concerned about warnings from some petr­oleum geologists that global oil production has already peaked (a phenomenon known as ‘peak oil’), and that what is left will be harder and more expensive to access. Almost every aspect of modern life depends on oil, and some believe that the galloping rate and scale of oil-hungry development in China and India will have a sharp impact on the price and availa­bility of oil in the near future, leading to rapid and unprecedented challenges.

A different form of action

Many people still can’t really get their heads around climate change, much less peak oil. These are global issues, wrapped up in complex science and economics, accompanied by nightmare scenarios and outright (if diminishing) denial. It’s easier to ignore the lot and carry on as normal.

Yet while many of us continue to live as if we’ve never heard of these things – do you cycle rather than drive, or measure the tea water before boiling? – others are taking action. Not the save-the-rain-forests sort of campaigning action that’s now widespread, but something closer to home. In a wide field of environmental and progressive organisations, with countless opportunities to protest against government and big business, the Transition movement is creating a stir with a different approach.

Now a global phenomenon, the Transition movement dates back to 2003, when founder Rob Hopkins first learned of peak oil. At the time, he was teaching permaculture (an ecological design system) in Kinsale, Ireland, and was so struck by the concept, he had his students apply permaculture principles to create a local response to the challenge presented by peak oil. Their work was published in 2005 as the Kinsale Energy Decent Plan, which was later adopted as policy by the town council.

Keen to replicate the process elsewhere, Hopkins returned to Devon, where he launched Transition Town Totnes in 2006. A number of rural and urban Transition initiatives quickly followed across the UK, before the ideas caught on Australia and New Zealand. When Norwich resident Christine Way learned about the movement, she began to recruit the team who helped Norwich became 50th initiative to register with the Transition Network. There are now over 900 registered initiatives globally – with many more unregistered – spread over 35 countries.

Transition initiatives share a grassroots, community-based model, using the framework laid out in Hopkins’s The Transition Handbook (2008) and The Transition Companion (2011). In the handbook, Hopkins spells out a number of differences between Transition and more conventional environmentalism. Transition focuses on resilience and relocalisation, rather than sustainable development. Transition uses hope, optimism and proactivity – rather than fear, guilt and shock – as drivers for action. Its tools are public participation, arts, culture and creative education, as opposed to campaigning and protesting. And it seeks policy change not through lobbying, but by initiating projects that can appeal to voters – and hence politicians – of all persuasions. In the nearby Transition initiative Sustainable Bungay, a life-long Tory voter volunteers comfortably alongside a commited Marxist on a project that promotes local, seasonal food.

While there is a clear set of Transition principles and tools, each initiative is encouraged to develop independently according to local need, interest and resources. In its first three years, Transition Norwich has been exploring what resilience in Norwich might look like. Energy is at the root of the Transition movement, and Norwich developed two approaches to helping individuals reduce their energy usage. Christine Way began to lead Carbon Conversations, a model developed in Cambridge for people to meet in small groups to explore climate change from a personal perspective, and to think creatively about ways to reduce their own carbon footprints. A £20 fee covers the course book and expenses, and more than 100 people in Norwich have completed the six-session course. Way estimates that participants have reduced their CO₂ emissions by an average of about one tonne each. Meanwhile, taking a more homespun approach, 15 local Transition members set out, and rep­ortedly managed, to cut their CO₂ emissions to four tonnes annually, less than half the UK average.

The Magdalen Street Celebration is another Transition Norwich project, launched in 2010 by Helen Simpson, Karen Steadman and Stefi Barna. “Magdalen Street has the biggest concentration of antique, charity, second-hand and vintage shops in the city, and that fits with the Transition spirit of reuse and recycling. The vast majority of the shops are locally owned, and that is part of the Transition idea of localism. There are also shops that teach craft skills, and it has the largest number of international food shops in the city. So we saw the theme of the street celebration as representing creativity, sustainability and diversity. These are the things that make a neighbourhood vibrant and resilient.”

Transition Norwich has now run two Magdalen Street Celebrations. So far the programme has featured everything from bands under the flyover to medieval musicians in St Saviour’s church, with buskers, stiltwalkers and clowns roaming the street and Anglia Square. There are also creative workshops for families, and dozens of community stalls.

“The celebration seems to work as a way of bringing residents, shoppers and ‘fans’ of the street together, and to promote local businesses and local bands and artists,” says Barna. “It’s also a fantastic opportunity for the community to take charge of how the neighbourhood should develop. What do we want to do with the open space under the flyover? How can we support the businesses better?”

This Low Carbon Life

Transition Norwich currently has no committee, or ‘core group’, to help steer its course. So in its abs­ence, the communications group has taken on a greater significance. As part of this group, Charlotte Du Cann puts out a monthly news bulletin, listing upcoming local events. She also coordinates This Low Carbon Life, Transition Norwich’s daily blog of features. It’s written by a community of between eight and 12 regular bloggers, with a rota to ensure someone posts a blog every day. Often on a Sunday, the blog is open to anyone. Du Cann, once a fashion journalist and now a committed Transition member, doesn’t necessarily agree with everything that’s written, but says: “The blog is about creating an alternative media infrastructure, giving a voice to ideas that wouldn’t necessarily get into mainstream media.” Now going for two years and the model for a national Transition blog, This Low Carbon Life is something Du Cann is particularly proud of.

Another Transition Norwich project is the development of a low carbon cookbook. Transition events generally involve food, with participants each bringing a dish to share. The emphasis is on seasonal, organic, local or fair trade, vegetarian food. A group has been meeting for over a year, writing down recipes, taking photos, making notes and writing blogs. The cookbook will include not only recipes, but a directory of food-related issues, from food sovereignty and raw food to waste and the political, economic and social justice ethics of what we eat. They’ll be looking for a publisher this year.

Three years and counting

In November 2011, Transition Norwich celebrated these and many other projects and events at its third anniversary celebration. Rob Hopkins came to speak and share the work of Transition initiatives around the world. Asked whether he is still able to maintain the optimism for which he has been known since the early days of the Transition Movement, he responded by quoting entrepreneur and environmentalist Paul Hawken: “If you read the climate science and you don’t feel absolutely miserable, then you’re not really reading it properly. But if you tap into the movement of people who are doing something about it and you don’t feel inspired, then you don’t have a heart.”

Like most groups, Transition Norwich is not without its internal struggles. Several former members acknowledge that, while it has acted as a catalyst for FarmShare, Norwich Community Bees and various other things, it could do much more. One concern with Transition initiatives generally is their flat organisational structure: though this has various benefits, it can mean that nobody drives things forward.

One active member also notes, “There’s no mechanism for dealing with personality clashes and power struggles, which inevitably occur, so good will and good people are sometimes lost. Still, there’s room for those who want to solve a problem, who have a vision. We can get caught up in the people politics, but we have bigger battles to fight.” That sounds like an invitation to get involved.

www.transitionnorwich.org
www.transitionnorwich.blogspot.com
www.norwichfarmshare.co.uk
www.transitionnetwork.org

Also in Buckinghamshire, members of TT-Marlow are now trained in using thermal imaging cameras so they can help local residents see where they are losing heat from their homes and take appropriate action (see left).  In Lincolnshire, TT-Louth have teamed up with another community group called Groundworks to help those living in fuel poverty. Funding will enable them to carry out draught busting and other energy reduction techniques in around 20 local homes.

Transition Town Cheltenham recently held a festival at the Gardens Gallery, Montpellier Gardens, Cheltenham, celebrating one year of Transition activity in the town, an event captured in this great video:

Chesham market has been crowned the Greenest Market in Britain. The market was established in 2010 by TT-Chesham in partnership with the local council.  Congratulations all.   Moving into Hertfordshire, Abbots Langley TT just has received a council grant to help them promote their activities within the wider community.  Also in Hertfordshire, Transition Northaw have started Community Beekeeping.  This video shows them “moving the new nucleus into our top bar hive”:

Incredible Edible and Transition Town in Wilmslow, working with Cheshire East Council, recently planted an orchard of fruit trees, captured in this film:

Clearly planting community orchards is very much in the air, because the good people at Transition Town Worthing have been doing it too, and have made one of their great films about it:

TT-Harborough is making a bid on behalf of the town for a slice of The Big Lottery’s Communities Living Sustainably fund and have asked the community to come forward with ideas.  Heading west into Shropshire, when the local council ditched kerbside collection of cardboard waste, two members of TT Shrewsbury decided to jump in and do something. In the run up to Christmas they decided to collect and recycle local residential and businesses cardboard themselves and all money raised from the innovative scheme was split between two worthy causes. You can also read more about it here in the Shropshire Star.

In Surrey, a local councillor has put forward a proposal for making Horley a Transition Town which has created much follow up discussion around the idea of a Horley Pound including who might grace the currency notes.   TT-Kingston get a positive write up in this SW Londoner article.

Transition Stroud held a ‘Winterfest’ that brought together the wide range of projects underway in the area:

One of the most exciting bits of news from December was that Transition groups were 3 of the 4 winners in the Energyshare/British Gas Energyshare vote (a story captured here and in this recent Transition podcast).  One of those was Portobello TT and Greener Leith in Edinburgh, who won £50k from Energyshare for their wind turbine proposal. If planning permission is granted for the site on a local water works, the turbine could be up and running by 2013 and powering up to 1300 homes. Read the full story here in the Scotsman.  Portabello TT have also been busy this month creating their own Free Energy Saving Guide which is a free download and really rather lovely.

In West Lothian, T-Linlithgow have an ambitious million pound action plan for sustainable travel around the town and hope to source the funding to enable their vision to become a reality. Go Linlithgow!

From Monmouthshire, we are grateful to Marcus Perrin of T-Chepstow for submitting this lovely story to us:

Children from Chepstow’s Pembroke Primary School ‘evening bike club’ were thrilled to receive an invitation to Llandaff Cathedral last month to meet Princess Anne and celebrate their achievements The after-school club was started by keen cyclist and parent Jayne Worrin before the summer holidays with Transition Chepstow members Jennifer and Nik Peregrine helping to maintain the bikes. Following huge interest from pupils and securing funding from the organisation Bike Club, the group is going from strength to strength. Additional volunteers are being trained to teach the children vital cycling skills and it is hoped children will be able to repair their own cycles with the purchase of a tool kit. While most children have their own bike to ride, the club has accepted repairable ones kindly donated by the local community, for those who do not. Bike Club is a joint initiative led by ContinYou, UK Youth and CTC, the national cyclists’ organisation. In Wales key partners also include Youth Cymru and ContinYou Cymru. More info on the bike club here…

Leaving the UK now and heading to Australia, in Queensland, over in the Scenic Rim, one of the Tamborine Mountain Transition founders is assisting the Southern Gold Coast in its Transition efforts. Part of their awareness raising included screening In Transition 1.0 at the Gold Coast Arts Centre.  In case you haven’t seen it, here it is:

http://vimeo.com/8029815

News to follow soon about the sequel, ‘In Transition 2.0′ which will be out in late March.  T-Nambour in the heart of the Sunshine Coast held info and conversation tables at their local Big Pineapple Growers’ Market throughout December.  Scroll down the page a short way to read their thoughts and vision about a Big Pineapple Revival (see right)!

From the US, you might enjoy Rob Hopkins’ responses to 9½ Questions in this article for TheAtlantic.com, and also this piece about the first ever Transition Congregations, offering a training and workshop specifically to interfaith groups.  For other stories from the US, check out their December round-up here.  In Chatham-Kent in Canada, Ignite Chatham-Kent is a high-energy evening of five-minute talks by people who have an idea, and who have the guts to get on stage and share it. Organized by local volunteers, Ignite Chatham-Kent is a force for innovation, excitement, and fun in the community.  One of their presenters was Lance Meredith, who gave a talk called ”Transition Initiative for Chatham-Kent”.

In Ireland, TT-Tralee held a Transition Christmas Fair which celebrated the many positive things happening within their community, and in Transition Voice, Kurt Trumble gives a traveller’s perspective on Kinsale, the birthplace of the Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) which led to the setting up of Transition in Totnes.

TT-Whitehead took to the airwaves on youth station Tune FM to talk up Power NI’s BIG Energy Saving Challenge (see left).  They have also been out planting trees, as captured in this wonderful film (tree planting with a Sigur Ros soundtrack, quite made my morning).  The tree planting captured in the film is just a warmup, in a few weeks they plan to plants 60,000 trees!

http://vimeo.com/34400137

From Holland, here is a film of a presentation about Transition which unfortunately loses its sound after about 3 minutes, but given that most of you probably don’t speak Dutch anyway, and if you can you can probably read her slides which is some compensation, we thought we’d put it in anyway:

Lastly, let’s go to Portugal, where Portalegre em Transiçao held a community winter jam-making event.  You can see photos of it here, or read a more detailed report of it here.  Basically, they facilitated a completely self-organising event, where people decided what they wanted to make with winter fruits, the local council made a kitchen available free of charge, and 30 people gathered and taught each other how to make jams and preserves.  I love the poster, and it sounded like a fantastic occasion.

Claudian Dobos in Romania wrote to us the other day: “Last month we had the first seminaries organized in Romania with the tematic of TT.  The first was held in Cluj Napoca and was facilitated by Anne Ambles (TT Mayenne). A Romanian premiere. with the participated more than 24 person in this first moment. The organization was facilitated by the Romanian Permaculture Nework. The other cities were Baia Mare and Sighet.  Anne just took part of her holidays to facilitate this moments.  In January it will be held a seminary in Bucharest, Iasi and Cluj Napoca by Claudian Dobos.  Great news for Transition Movement in Romania for 2012!”

And finally, here’s an article on Resilience and the Resource Crunch as featured in US industrial news website Thomas Net.  Thanks, and do send us your stories for next month’s roundup.  In 2 weeks time we’ll put out the podcast of this roundup, going into more depth on 3 of the stories here.  To hear the December podcast click here, and for the November one, click here.

• Transition Norwich’s Farmshare CSA project, interviewing one of its founders standing in the very field where the CSA is based and hearing the joys and the realities of running such a scheme
• Bath and West Community Energy‘s recent share launch which raised £721, 350!  Find out their plans, the story so far and their very ambitious plans for energy generation in their area
• Transition Llambed (Lampeter) who have just taken on a 20 year lease from their local council for their local hall, and have great plans to turn it into a Transition resource centre and farmers’ market.

At just over 15 minutes in length it’s rich with stories, inspiration and the voices of people out there doing Transition on the ground.  You can play it here, or download it to listen to on the train, while you’re cooking, or out running.  We do advise against listening to it whilst swimming though, on health and safety grounds.  Do let us know what you think….

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. 

It’s a brisk Autumnal Monday morning. I’m at Edible Landscapes London, an offshoot of Transition Finsbury Park. This is the cutting edge of no-dig, agroforestry, predominantly perennial and definitely low-maintenance gardening and our practice challenges conventional gardening wisdom. I’m talking about deeply ingrained habits of digging and tidiness. Tell a trad gardener that they’re working too hard, that they don’t need to dig every year or remove every weed to the compost heap and it’s like whipping the (strictly manicured) lawn from under their feet. They wince and clutch onto the spade handle more tightly. Then something shifts … they pause and blink. The inner re-set button has been pressed. They re-boot and start telling you how many tomatoes, beans and pumpkins they grew this year and how they’re excited about the batch of seeds they’ve ordered, the sexy new cultivars they’ll be trying out next spring. I smile bravely and my eyes stray back to our pride and joy: the showcase bed.

It’s a bit of a magnet that. People walk around it and point at the signs, their “oohs” and “aahs” of admiration trailing over the foliage. They like reading the little signs that tell them the name of the plant, what parts they can eat, perhaps how tall they grow. There’s over 50 different types of plant in this bed but we also have a shady salad bed and an edible hedge. We aspire to have a foodie pond and a structural plants bed as well. The latter would feature those badass pole and twine makers such as bamboo, willow, hazel and New Zealand flax. We grow around 100 different types of plant, about 60 of which we want to promote. These chosen plants range from the slightly unusual (Caucasian Spinach, Siberian Pea Tree, Service Tree) to the familiar (Musk Mallow, Sweet Cicely, Fig) . Our criteria: tough, low maintenance and tasty. For the curious, they are listed here.

But pimping out these lovely plants to Joe public is not all. We also learn about them: how to recognise them, how to propagate them, how to eat them. We can pause there, on the eating, easily our favourite bit of the day. Some volunteers turn up at 1 o’clock just to enjoy the shared meal. Often people bring in a home-made dish: Deanna’s legendary bhaba ganoush; Gemma’s sunflower (and other bits) pate; Kiraz’s cracked bulgar wheat thingies. Always delicious. And to go with them: breads, hummous and a fine array of freshly picked leaves and flowers. It is at this table that bonds are formed, allegiances made, loyalties silently promised to the plants we love to eat. I have a thing going with horseradish leaves but also adore the milder violet leaves and handy tubes of tree onion (great for scooping up hummous). I tend to shun anything lemon balm or nasturtium, though since learning about the nasturtium seeds’ impressive protein content (26%) I am trying to overlook its faults. I’m also quite keen on the lemon balm cordial Gemma makes. Which just goes to show.

Actually, Gemma is also well worth pausing on: this project would be almost nothing without her. She came along to an early meeting to dissuade us from proceeding. She felt that we didn’t realise how much work would be involved and that our time would be better spent supporting the existing projects in our area. We’re very lucky to have kept Gemma’s interest and our goals have gradually shifted to reflect her own passions. Originally it was simply going to be a tree nursery, and probably just apples and pears at that. Now we’ve gone full blown forest garden. Rather than selling householders the odd blackcurrant, we want to sell or give food growing projects the whole kaboodle. Gemma has, rightly, argued that many food growing projects fail after the first year because they’re planted with high maintenance plants that need to be replanted each year and then mollycoddled. High maintenance plants and annuals have their place, but it isn’t at food growing projects that need to survive beyond that initial burst of enthusiasm.

I’m just going to pick on annual plants (although we do encourage some of them). See, annual plants are nature’s opportunistic one hit wonders. Bit of woodland gets cleared and up they pop for their day in the sun. They know it’s only a matter of time before they’ll get superseded by their shrubby cousins and the ground cover plants that can handle a bit of shade. And the annual seeds accept that. They lie around ‘resting’ for years, waiting for their next shot at fame. However, almost the UK’s entire current plant production is based on annuals. Like worn out soap opera stars they get rolled out again and again, filling up our fields and flowerbeds. We’re living on a diet of Peggy Mitchell and Ken Barlow. It wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t so high maintenance.

Look at it like a spectrum. At one end: mature woodland and at the other: annual plants. Picture a massive arrow labelled ‘force of nature’ pointing towards the mature woodland end. That’s what we’re fighting against. Annuals take more energy or inputs than any other kind of food growing. And you know the weird thing? There’s lots of edible plants that aren’t annual. I honestly don’t know why we’ve ended up so hooked on them. It’s probably something to do with control, economies of scale and mass production. Course nature doesn’t do mass produced monoculture because it’s a recipe for disaster – the plants quickly run out of food and and then, because they’re stressed (too much exposure, not enough water, competing for the same food etc.) they all end up catching the same illness and die.

Then there’s the soil to take into account. It hates being dug up. *Really* hates it. Microbes and minibeasts that were living perfectly happily where they were get killed or re-located willy nilly. Fungus that was doing a great job growing through the soil, redistributing nutrients and feeding plants, get hacked to pieces. Not many people understand that these ubiquitous fungi form symbiotic relationships with plant roots, giving them nutrients in exchange for sugars. Look carefully at well-seasoned soil and you’ll see the fine white hairs growing through it. Do gardeners realise that their spade is like a bulldozer hitting a rainforest or like a deep sea trawler scraping the sea bed? Probably not. (And we don’t tend to say that to people either because it can sound a little ranty.) In addition, undug soil plays an import part in locking up greenhouse gases. And then there’s the whole weeding to bare earth versus mulching thing. Don’t get me started.

Let’s look at the future, Plants for a Future. Last weekend I visited this hugely important project, which I’ve written about here. We are in debt to Addy and Ken Fern’s pioneering vision to catalogue and raise people’s awareness. Pictured here is a day lily the edible flower they chose to adorn the cover of the seminal work, Plants for a Future: Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World. And we wouldn’t be without Martin Crawford’s truly fabulous book, Creating a Forest Garden or as we like to call it, the bible. We hope that in time we can offer something comparable to the Agroforestry Research Trust project here in London.

It just remains for me to say how much we love our magnificent community of comfortably rooted, well mulched and well lit plants. We want you to come and see them, the little show offs, hear them speak for themselves. They do it with such flourish and with a vocabulary that makes my heart race. They always get the last word.

You might also enjoy Jo’s online spreadsheet which lists all their plants, propagation info, timings etc.

‘Resilient to what?’

The first point of call in any discussion about resilience is ‘resilient to what?’  Fascinatingly, this document states that, when it comes to community resilience, “community resilience work should prepare for all relevant hazards and threats, prioritised as the community considers appropriate”.  So, rather than being determined from above, their suggestion is that it is for communities themselves to determine what they see as the greatest risks.  However, they do also point to the National Risk Register for civil emergencies, which illustrates what it regards as being the key threats communities need to build resilience to in the following graphic:

However, in terms of a recognition of the risks that are most pressing and likely, this chart clearly contrasts with that produced earlier this year by the World Economic Forum, which puts all of the above as way below what it regards as the 4 greatest risks, in terms of likelihood of occurring within the next 10 years and in terms of perceived economic impact: climate change, ‘energy price volatility’, fiscal crises and economic disparity.  None of these even make it into the National Risk Register’s table.  A friend of mine recently attended an event about emergency preparedness in Brussels which explored possible scenarios that could emerge from a collapse of the European economy.  The scenarios presented left him quite traumatised, yet in comparison, the Framework’s scenarios seem pretty tame, and somewhat more ephemeral in comparison!

Yet the Strategic Framework document, if read with the thought in mind that it is referring to resilience to peak oil, climate change, and economic contraction, actually reads in places like something Transition Network might have produced (as we will see).  That certainly took me by surprise.

Defining resilience

Throughout the document, resilience is defined as:

“The capacity of an individual, community or system to adapt in order to sustain an acceptable level of function, structure, and identity”

…and community resilience as:

“Communities and individuals harnessing local resources and expertise to help themselves in an emergency, in a way that complements the response of the emergency services.”

It states that its role is to “invite individuals and communities to prepare themselves in the event of an emergency”, but also makes it very clear that, amazingly, “there is no dedicated funding for the programme”.  It restates the commitment, central to the Big Society concept, “to reduce the barriers which prevent people from being able to help themselves and to become less resilient to shocks”.  Like the Big Society, it assumes that communities can self-organise around community resilience with no resource for any of their work.  They do acknowledge Transition as one of the few community-led initiatives actually looking at resilience, and which is actually manage to inspire people to action around the theme of resilience:

“Resilience is also a key part of other kinds of community activity, for example the Transition Towns movement and the Greening Campaign where resilience is a longer term ambition for communities looking to adapt to climate change”

However, this does rather miss the point, suggesting that they are addressing “longer term” issues like climate change.  It is true that many of the impacts of climate change, and peak oil, and economic contraction, are longer term, but many are not, and indeed the window of time within which to profoundly modify our ways of doing things certainly is not.  And as the World Economic Forum argues, they look likely to be the most significant over the next 10 years.  That looks pretty short term to me.

The aims it sets out rather fascinatingly read like the aims of Transition Network!

• increase individual, family and community resilience against all threats and hazards;
• support and enable existing community resilience, and expand and grow these successful models of community resilience in other areas;
• remove the barriers which inhibit or prevent participation in community resilience at a local level;
• support effective dialogue between the community and the practitioners supporting them;
• raise awareness and understanding of risk and the local emergency response capability in order to motivate and sustain self resilience;
• provide tools to allow communities and individuals to articulate the benefits of emergency preparedness to the wider community;
• and provide a shared framework to support cross-sector activity at all levels in a way that ensures sufficient flexibility to make community

With such a clear recognition in a government publication that these ought to be key aims in terms of resilience, one would imagine that the work the Transition movement has been doing over the past 5 years, and the practical initiatives it has led to the ground, would have deserved more than one sentence in this publication.

Shifting the thinking slightly: a Transition take on resilience

The perspective on resilience that the Transition approach brings to this discussion would be useful to explore in more detail here. Rather than making do with the definition set out in this report, (“the capacity of an individual, community or system to adapt in order to sustain an acceptable level of function, structure, and identity”), Transition adds another layer onto that, of arguing that community resilience, if done properly, could be about much more than just being able to ‘sustain an acceptable level of function, structure and identity’.  Rather, it argues, it offers the potential for stimulating the kind of economic revival at the local level that is so keenly sought at the moment.  A more resilient economy could be a more viable, entrepreneurial, biodiverse, flourishing economy.  As I argue in ‘The Transition Companion’:

“making a community more resilient, if viewed as the opportunity for an economic and social renaissance, for a new culture of enterprise and reskilling, should lead to a healthier and happier community while reducing its vulnerability to risk and uncertainty …. resilience is reframed as a historic opportunity for a far-reaching rethink”.

The new market in Portobello.

For example, setting up a food hub to create viable links between local producers and consumers, adding infrastructure for local food processing (such as Transition Norwich’s new community mill, or Portobello Transition Town’s new organic market, see right), creating urban food production and identifying new sites for that, mapping local foodsheds and supporting small farmers, setting up Community Supported Agriculture systems, all build food resilience and a community’s ability to respond in an emergency (much more than food stockpiles), but also have very beneficial impacts on the local economy too.  These kinds of things would have helped greatly in building resilience to, for example, the lorry drivers’ dispute of 2000 when food supplies in shops became dangerously low.

Likewise, setting up community energy systems that are in community ownership can also put in place infrastructure that would also be beneficial in terms of an acute emergency, while also boosting local economies.  It is for this reason that Transition Network and others are arguing for a Community Tariff to emerge from the Feed-in-Tariff review.  With Greg Barker, Energy and Climate Change Minister, recently tweeting that “Under Labours #FiTs, there is no way 2 differentiate btwn community projects + a hedgefund. We will change + create a new community tariff”, things look hopeful.  This could have a huge impact.

The document clearly states the principle that “the Government role is to support, empower and facilitate; ownership should always be retained by communities who have chosen to get involved in this work”.  This feels like an acknowledgement of Transition’s role of not waiting for permission but getting started building community resilience from the bottom up.  That’s not to say that a bit of more formal support wouldn’t be a good thing from time to time to actually accelerate the creativity that the Transition process can unleash!

Likewise, the building of social capital, creating a stronger sense of community and sense of optimism about that community’s ability to respond, as was observed through Transition Town Totnes’ ‘Transition Streets’ programme, is a key aspect of emergency preparedness.  Local currencies, such as the Brixton Pound (see left) and the forthcoming Bristol Pound, can be a powerful catalyst for rebuilding the connections between local businesses that a resilient community will need, and can focus thought on how local traders can best support and trade between each other.  Whether an emergency happens in 6 months or in 6 years, the additional resilience they will have created will still have a valuable impact.

Given the current government focus on localism, enterprise, decentralisation and resilience, I would argue that reframing community resilience as being about much more than how it is presented in this document would have huge benefits across the board.  It would focus the mind on what kind of new infrastructure would be needed, what new business opportunities emerge, and add an additional layer to the current obsession with recreating growth at all costs.  Does new housing which is not both built to very high standards of energy efficiency and built using local materials represent a huge missed opportunity, and actually reduce community resilience?  Is the continued undermining of local food economies through the enforced imposition of supermarkets ultimately self-defeating from a resilience perspective (as New Economics Foundation’s ‘Plugging the Leaks’ work suggests)?  Let’s have a bit of ‘joined-up thinking’ here please.

Certainly the Transition take on resilience is at odds with the one set out in this Framework, and to that set out in most academic literature on resilience, but as a paper by Alex Haxeltine and Gill Seyfang of UEA argued:

“Transition has been framed in terms of building (or rebuilding) resilience in local communities.  So far, the movement seems to have successfully used resilience as a motivating framing concept.  The lack of specificity used in the framing of resilience has probably contributed to resilience being perceived as an appealing goal by the wide range of citizens who have become involved with the movement”

In other words, it’s not resilience explained in the conventionally accepted way, but something about this expanded definition seems to be working, so maybe we’ll let them get on with it…

Features of community resilience

The Framework also identifies what it sees, from looking at a number of communities, as the key features of community resilience.  Viewed with the slight shift in thinking that allows us to imagine it is referring to communities responding to resilience in the way set out above, it makes fascinating reading:

• “People in resilient communities use their existing skills, knowledge and resources to prepare for, and deal with, the consequences of emergencies or major incidents.
• They adapt their everyday skills and use them in extraordinary circumstances.
• People in resilient communities are aware of the risks that may affect them. They understand the links between risks assessed at a national level and those that exist in their local area, and how this might make them vulnerable. This helps them to take action to prepare for the consequences of emergencies.
• The resilient community has a champion, someone who communicates the benefits of community resilience to the wider community. Community resilience champions use their skills and enthusiasm to motivate and encourage others to get involved and stay involved and are recognised as trusted figures by the community.
• Resilient communities work in partnership with the emergency services, their local authority and other relevant organisations before,  during and after an emergency. These relationships ensure that community resilience activities complement the work of the emergency services and can be undertaken safely.
• Resilient communities consist of resilient individuals who have taken steps to make their homes and families more resilient. Resilient individuals are aware of their skills, experience and resources and how to deploy these to best effect during an emergency.
• Members of resilient communities are actively involved in influencing and making decisions affecting them. They take an interest in their  environment and act in the interest of the community to protect assets and facilities.

Implications and reflections

So, having read the Framework, here are some of the standout thoughts for me:

• Community resilience, they seem to be arguing, is really important, it needs to be led by communities, but there’s no money to help them with that
• The best people to organise and enable community resilience are those communities themselves
• No thought appears to be being given to how the need for enhanced community resilience, the engagement of people in this work, sits alongside the localism agenda and the Plan for Growth, and the inherent conflicts that emerge between the two
• You need to figure out yourselves what it is that you want to build resilience to

But the question for government is whether the urgent dash for growth at all costs (which they are taking to calling ‘positive growth’), could actively undermine the ability of communities to respond in the way argued for in the Framework.  I was recently sent a very attractive hardback book (see right) called ‘Working together. Delivering growth though localism‘ produced by the Department for Communities and Local Government. It contains a section where the term ‘sustainable development’ is redefined thus:

“‘Sustainable’ means ensuring better lives for ourselves, but does not mean worse lives for future generations, and

‘Development’ means growth.  Accommodating new ways by which we earn our living in a competitive world, housing a rising population, and responding to changes new technologies offer”.

In other words, sustainable development is now any development which sustains growth.  So here we have two agendas, one that is about stimulating economic growth at all costs, downplaying climate change and peak oil and removing all obstacles to large businesses doing what they like, and another which is about enabling communities to self-organise and actively respond to those things that they think reduce their resilience.  Both are central to the UK government’s agenda, yet they run in complete parallel to each other, seen as entirely distinct and separate.  However, if they were seen as being part of the same thing, as the Transition movement has argued, and has modelled in practice for 5 years, the benefits could be enormous.  It would take only a fairly subtle shift in thinking, but it may turn out to be the thing that actually stimulates the economic activity, skills, training and investment they are presently so desperately scrabbling for.

Often flooding, and the other risks in the National Risk Register, are challenges that people don’t feel drawn do much about because they feel they are beyond their being able to usefully have an impact and they tend to be seen as issues emergency services deal with.  What the Transition movement has done over the past 5 years is to bring the subject of resilience to life for people, to make it relevant, exciting even.  People can sense new possibilities in the concept of resilience that weren’t there 5 years ago.  It would be great if the next time this Framework is published, rather than just citing Transition initiatives as some kind of brief case study, it was able to argue that, as well as the sandbags and other elements of community emergency preparedness, an accelerated programme of economic localisation must also be a key component of any realistic programme of community resilience.  Perhaps as well as the bodybags and the sandbags we also need foodhubs and SPIN farming?

The spirit of the Framework is that the onus is on communities to organise around resilience.  If nothing else, the fact that Transition is now mentioned specifically creates a very useful basis for discussions with your local emergency response team, local NHS, or your local police.  There is now a more common language, it’s over to us to demonstrate that the work of Transition initiatives is not peripheral, but has the potential to be central to any effective programme of community resilience.  This Framework is a very useful tool for initiating those discussions that matter.  As Robert Jensen argues in a piece in the latest Yes! magazine, “no political project based on denying reality can be viable for the long term”.

Earlier this week I was in Norwich for the third birthday anniversary celebrations of Transition Norwich’s Unleashing.  I had been meant to speak at that event, but had been unable to attend because I was ill, so it was great to get there finally and to be able to take part in their celebrations.  Here’s a reminder of what that event was like:

This three-years-on celebration featured a new film about Transition Norwich (which I’ll post here when it is online), a talk by me followed by questions and answers, and then lots of chatting, eating cake, drinking tea and signing copies of The Transition Companion (unfortunately the batteries ran out in my recorder, so I have no audio of the actual event itself).  At the end of my talk I dedicated it to Richard Douthwaite, who had passed away the previous day.  Transition Norwich are doing some amazing things, and in order to capture some of the voices of some of those who have been involved and the story of Transition Norwich thus far, I interviewed 6 members (thanks Tierney for the loan of the batteries!) and on the train home created the following short podcast capturing where they have come from, where they are now, and where they think they are going.

My thanks to everyone there for their amazing hospitality.  Here are a few photos from the visit….

Josiah Meldrum of Farmshare showing off a prize turnip after a tour of the site....

Transition Norwich's Chris Hull gets the evening underway...

Elena introduces one of the sections of the evening's event.

Some of the fine cakes on offer at the end of the evening.

The next morning I visited the Grapes Hill Commuity Garden in Norwich, which had been recently reclaimed from a rather unloved piece of tarmac, and is now home to over 220 different plants, many of them edible.

Here are some photos to accompany the podcast….

Information about the Tres Hombres

Captain Jorne Langelaan telling the assembled visitors about the ship.

Exeter Brewery's beer stowed safely in the hold.

This is a big week for ‘The Transition Companion’.  This is the week that pre-ordered copies will be mailed out (Wednesday), the London book launch will be held on the roof of Food from the Sky in Crouch End (also Wednesday), and that we will be holding a Twitter launch (Thursday).  The Twitter thing will run from 2.30-5.30pm, and will be an opportunity to ask questions about the book, request signings, discuss points in it, or whatever you like!  The hashtag will be #ttcomp, and all are welcome (@robintransition).  Here is this week’s Transition object film, a rather lovely one about Transition Belsize and their Draughtbusters project.