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 …

… watching beautiful sunrises and sunsets (more sunsets now than sunrises, since our recent embraced work tends to keep us awake till late hours)…

… and live with the constant presence of our history,…

… feel the life in the community and taking part in it,…

 … and watching how climate change is taking its toll with some hot waves in the Summer (2003 was indeed the worst, but some others have already followed) and the sea leaving some of the beaches without much of the sand in the Winter (like in 2010).

Well, as we were saying,… we were thinking how sustainable our lives should be to keep being as good as they have been until then, and so that our two children (with six and three years old) could keep on growing with at least the same chances of having a good and safe future as we did back in the time when we were growing up.

By April of 2010 we knew that our municipality was starting a community garden program and we applied ourselves to it. On July 2011, we were called up to start the program formation on organic farming and we haven’t stopped gardening our vegetables since then.

In fact we have quite a group there, with some good friendships developing and lots of celebrations to bless our crops.

Meanwhile, about that same time, I (Isabel) came in contact with the Portuguese permaculture and transition groups over the Internet… and I found a new world that looked like it was just there waiting to be found!… For years I had been searching for such kind of knowledge and practical information and… there it was!…

On September 17th and 18th took place the Transition Initiative Course in Sintra, but although an attractive theme, it was still just an idea for me.

On November of 2011 I took notice of a meeting of the local (Cascais) Transition Initiative and I knew I had to come. Until then I had never left what I thought was my comfort zone. And then… I found Transition. After that meeting, Transition grew on me.

On early January of 2012, this time with Luis and the kids coming along, we went to another group meeting, where the core group assumed the disintegration of the existing Initiative.

Later on that month, after some thoughtful consideration, we (Luis and I) looked at each other and… as Rob says “if there is no Transition Initiative in your town, start your own” and so… We did!

From late January we started “Cascais em Transição” group on Facebook, we picked up the existing blog (from the previous group), and on early February we went to the Lisbon Initiatives Meeting and were invited to be on the National HUG (HUB) Meeting, the day after. It was so good meeting all of those whom became our Transition companions and they gave us such levels of inspiration and strength to go on with our new mission in Cascais!… We returned home with our hearts full of joy and motivation to carry on our work.

In the beginning of March we saw our Initiative group grow to six members and on March 23^th and 24^th we, Luis and I, did the Initiative Training Course in Linda-a-Velha.

In early April we, on behalf of the ‘Cascais em Transição’ Initiative, presented a proposal to the Cascais Municipality Budget 2012, a program started in 2011 by the Local Government to motivate local residents to have a more active citizenship, to participate in the local decisions and have a saying on how the local funds are spent. This year we presented a proposal and it was approved after being initially voted in the first presenting session!…

Here is Luis presenting the proposal (and you can see the satisfaction on his face, once we knew it had been approved).   

What we are trying to do with this proposal is to pass a vote on a decision to convert a local urban park and to create renewable energy infrastructures on the existing buildings and others like community gardens and community composting area, community wood ovens, cycling school, and a place or building where we can start some sensibilization and capacitation activities.

Now the proposal will be technically evaluated by the municipality budget department and after that it will be voted through the internet by the resident constituents. We shall know the final results in October.  By that time we also concluded we needed a Logo and we needed it fast if we wanted to have an image that presented ourselves to the outside as a Transition group. And this is what we came out with:

Still, on 17^th of March 2012 we were invited by the organization of ‘MUSA CASCAIS’ Festival to join them on a tree plantation campaign to neutralize the carbon footprint of the Festival.  It was quite a group of people gathered in this cause.

 Here is Miguel and Sofia planting their first cork oak trees with mum and dad.

 And here is our Mayor, Carlos Carreiras, carrying the oak trees up the hill. He turned to be quite a dedicated man. On that day he said that he wanted to plant one tree for each newborn child in Cascais while he was in office. Since that number had already been exceeded (65.000), he set a new goal: to plant one tree for each resident. We are 268.000.

On the May 5^th we invited all of Transition Initiatives of the Lisbon Area to join us in celebration for the national (and simultaneous) exhibition of the ‘In Transition 2.0’ film. It took place in the Cascais Cultural Center and it was followed by a picnic in the park where we all gathered afterwards and talked about it, exchanging experiences, expectations and points of view about what we had seen.  It had a good audience, with lots of friends from other Transition Initiatives, and not only from Lisbon, which left us grateful for their presence and for the outcome.

Now, about our most recent adventure on behalf of our Transition Initiative …

After planting some trees to help to neutralize the carbon footprint of the ‘MUSA Cascais’ Festival’, and since ‘MUSA Cascais’ is and has been from 2006 onwards strongly advocating in favor of sustainability, and of an active response to global warming and climate change – its tag is “Preocupas-te?” or “Do You Care?” – this year, we decided to propose to the organization of this Festival to land us a place or a stand in the grounds of the event, where we could promote Transition and demonstrate its practices.

When we met, instead of discussing the conditions or accepting our request, they proposed to us to go a “little” bit further in our ambitions and asked us to speak to our national HUG to know if, as a growing civic movement, we would be interested in turning ‘MUSA Cascais’ into a wide and transversal Transition Festival.

In such short notice, this year, with the help of the other portuguese local Initiatives we will all be able to raise a stand representative of the Portuguese Transition, capable of a good deal of promotion and demonstration of our Transition standards in this Music Festival.  Next year, with time, preparation and due efforts, we hope we will be able to share with the world our first Transition Festival.  This is the current lineup of this year MUSA Cascais’ Festival and it is not closed yet.

What can we say…  That good chances only unveil to those who stand with open heart and mind to what life can accept of them.

A big HUG from Portugal

Isabel and Luis Gonçalves

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 often use the analogy, in terms of food, of a cake.  Until recently, local production provided the cake (the bulk of our needs) and what was imported was the ‘icing’ and cherry on top, nice to have but we didn’t depend on it.  What cheap energy and globalisation has created is a situation where now the cake is imported from wherever in the world it can be found cheapest, and local production is just the icing.  In the same way that for food we need to urgently reverse this, for many reasons that will be only too familiar to regular readers of this blog, the same can be argued for building materials.

In the case of these alms houses in Sherborne, it literally was the building’s ‘icing’ that caused the difficulties.  With about 30% of UK road freight now due to the movement of construction materials, many of which already have a high level of embodied energy, I’d like to argue here that we need to think about construction in the same way we are starting to think about food, specifically in the context of the Atmos Project, a community initiative I am involved in in Totnes.

Historically, as well as being the only option people had, the use of local materials also led to the evolution of vernacular styles of building, so that each region had its own distinct styles of building, rooted in materials, culture and tradition.  As John and Jane Penoyre note in ‘Houses in the Landscape’ “in these simple buildings the available materials are the principal dictators of style”.  Mark Gorgolewski writes in The Green Building Bible:

“… as materials closer to their natural state will tend to have had less processing, which often means less energy use, less waste and less pollution.  Local materials can reduce the need for transport and benefits the local economy and community”.

Christopher Day writes that “local materials minimise transport energy, suit local climate, support local employment and society and reinforce locality identity, anchoring buildings into local culture … so roundwood instead of sawn, adobe or brick instead of concrete”.  As well as having far less embodied energy due to requiring so little transportation, they also often have far less embodied energy in their manufacturre, as the graph below showing overall CO2 emissions by weight [kg] released by production of 1 kg of twenty-four common building materials demonstrates (source).  Note that those materials on the right hand side actually lock up more carbon than they emit (depending on how far they are transported of course, a strawbale house in the UK built with Turkish bales would clearly not qualify):

Then there’s also the aesthetics.  The other day I was in Marlborough in Wiltshire, and took a walk around the town.  It is easy to be nostalgic about old buildings, and to assume that they are so characterful and attractive simply because they are old.  I would argue that the ambience that comes through in some of the photos below has more to do with the materials than with the age of the building.

The combination of brick, timber and cobbles is far more attractive than just one single material.

Clay wall tiles that were fired in kilns with variable temperatures produced tiles of a range of colours, from black to orange, which gives the tiled surface much more richness.

This timber frame house is a beautiful example of how the materials available locally dictated the design of the building and its character.

There has been a resurgence in interest in the use of natural and local building materials in recent years.  Cob building, strawbale, lime plasters, roundwood timber, hemp, clay plasters, have all experienced a renewal of energy, but are still almost only ever used in self build projects, and have yet to cross over into mainstream construction.  Yet, as Gill Seyfang points out, they are still very much in a niche and what is needed is “scaling up the existing small-scale, one-off housing projects to industrial mass production”.  She argues for the natural/local building niche “adapting itself to resemble the regime”.  Key to that will be scale.

Of course, running alongside the discussions about materials is the need to create truly low carbon buildings, in their construction, their inhabitation and eventual demolition/recycling.  The Larch and Lime houses built recently in Ebbw Vale are passivhauses (Larch House right), that is they are built in such a way as to require no space heating.  When I talked to the architect behind them, Justin Bere, he told me that most of the materials were local (stone, slate, locally made Rockwool etc) but hadn’t veered too far into the world of very local and natural materials.  Part of the reason for that is that for the kind of accurate modelling needed for passivhaus certification, data for many of these materials doesn’t yet exist.  I would argue that this is a pressingly urgent area for new research.

Enter the Atmos Project.   For the past couple of months, as well as my Transition Network stuff, I have been working a day a week on the Atmos Totnes campaign.  Atmos has been running for the past 5 years, since Dairy Crest closed their 8 acre site next to Totnes station, and since when it has sat and become more and more of an eyesore (you can read the story so far here).  The Atmos Project, as it became known, due to it being home to a building built to house Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s experimental ‘atmospheric railway’, has sought to bring the site into community ownership to develop it as a catalyst for new businesses in the town and as a demonstration of Transition in action.

The initiative did a lot of work, raised bits of funding to do design work, business planning and so on, but seemed to be getting nowhere due to the site’s owners’ unwillingness to engage seriously with the community.  So a couple of months ago we started a campaign, aimed to bring sufficient pressure to bear on the site’s owners.  We gathered voices from around the community, got a lot of media exposure, got people in the town out for a big photo opportunity and for a public meeting, and a couple of weeks ago, had a very positive meeting with Dairy Crest, and all of a sudden the project is moving forward with an energy that is a delight to see.

The tagline for the campaign has been ‘the heart of a new economy’, and it is seen as a development that in all that it does is focused on skills, training, the creation of new businesses and the boosting of the local economy.  It is of a scale where it can do some very exciting things in terms of construction.  One of the founding ideas is that the place that the development starts its very first question, is what are the local materials that we have to hand?  In the same way that I always used to teach on permaculture courses that the question should be “I’m going to cook a meal, what’s in the garden”, rather than “what’s in the fridge?”, that same principle could and should apply to building materials.

So, as the first part of the design process, and as part of what will form a key part of the brief for whoever ends up being the project’s architect, will be a list of the local materials available to such a project in Totnes.  We have commissioned a specialist in this to draw this up, including the places locally where they would be sourced.  My initial list off the top of my head is:

Timber: for construction grade timber, internal studwork, window and door frames, roofing shingles, laths, panelling, flooring, wattles, wood fibre insulation.

Clay: for rammed earth construction, cob walling, daubs, clay plasters, cob bricks, clay paints

Hemp: for use in hemp/lime construction, to make insulation, for hemp/lime or hemp/clay plasters and bricks

Slate: for roofing

Stone: for foundations, walls,

Reed: for thatching roofs, and also to make ‘reedboards’, an alternative to plasterboard

Lime: for plasters, mortars, renders, as well as in construction systems such as hemp/lime

Straw: baled, and used in ‘straw bale building’, chopped as an ingredient in plasters

Sheepswool: insulation

Horse hair/other fibres: used to strengthen plasters

Recycled Materials:  newspaper processed as an insulation product, car tyres, recycled bricks

It used to be that when a cathedral was built, a temporary village was built around it, with a stone masons’ quarter, a timber framers’ quarter and so on.  On the scale of something like the Atmos project, it may well be possible to do something very similar, processing the timber needed on site, making cob blocks, even hand-making tiles for external cladding.  If done skilfully enough, integrating training and apprenticeships, it could be a vitally needed new approach to development, especially when combined with the potential for the community to invest into the development.

Panels at Charing Cross tube station in London showing the various trades associated with the construction of Charing Cross in the late 1200s.

A development that from the outset seeks to source it’s metaphorical cake locally.  As the Euro crisis continues to unravel at a pace, as the academics are telling us that the only thing that will halt climate change is a massive economic downturn, or at least a huge rethink about how we make economic activity happen, we need a new approach to development.

Work in progress: Cob walls, hemp plaster on the walls, clay plaster onto lath on the ceiling, local timber window frames...

Could it be that we could create new housing, and new work spaces in such a way that each new development produces houses that lock up a lot of carbon in terms of their materials, generate very little carbon during their inhabitation, which create a diversity of new enterprises and livelihoods, show what deep public consultation in relation to development really looks like, all kinds of trainings, opportunities for people to invest in and benefit from the development, which create a huge sense of excitement and anticipation, invites the local community to get involved at regular stages and which create buildings and developments that feel timeless, rather than bound to a particular short-lived era of architectural fashion?  I think so.  I think the time is right for that, and that’s what we want to do with Atmos.  Watch this space.

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.

The idea is simple. You imagine different ways in which a post-transition society might also be a better one, and then try them out as a real-life experiment during a 24 hour period starting at dawn on 20th June 2012. Activities could involve family, friends, work colleagues, fellow students, community groups or even people you’ve never met before. It could involve the whole town or it could be more personal. You can come to the website to explore a menu of suggested ideas and activities, or add your own.

Here’s some ideas to get you thinking:

24 hours of only eating local food
24 hours of exchange without using money
24 hours of dawn breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight feasts out on our street
24 hours of life lived outdoors
24 hours of dancing in the streets
24 hours of guerrilla food growing
24 hours of bringing disused premises back into use
24 hours of talking with strangers
24 hours of slow everything
24 hours of consensus decision making in my school
24 hours of imagining a day in 2062
24 hours of transforming a derelict site
24 hours of getting active
24 hours of not using a car
24 hours of inter- generational gatherings
24 hours of swapping roles in my workplace
24 hours of activity in my local museum
24 hours of feasting and planning for the next generation
24 hours of getting the high street closed and having a carnival on the street
24 hours of making things for other people
24 hours of working less and living more
24 hours of reading together
24 hours of new community celebrations and ceremonies
24 hours of creating a community garden
24 hours of installing solar panels
24 hours of sharing your skills
24 hours of random acts of kindness and spontaneous beauty
24 hours of dreaming a new world awake

So this is an invitation to start having a think about what you might like to do for it, having some conversations with the people around you, and seeing what ideas it stimulates.  We think this could be a great celebration of what Transition does best, showing on the ground the kind of change that is possible when we gather together with our friends, neighbours and colleagues.  It’s over to you…

You can also read what Andrew Simms of nef said about it here.  

“Sunday May 13th 2012 will be declared “In Transition 2.0 film and information day” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland!  We kindly ask all German, Swiss & Austrian Transition initiatives to self-organize screenings of the movie at that date in their regions/towns/cities.  More info for the organizers (in German) & about the coordination here.

A screening in Bielefeld is already fixed; see details here.  We would love to generate a lot of broad, positive reviews and excitement about the movie and Transition in general at that date in the German-speaking region(s) of the world”.

From Transition Town Hannover, here is a short film called “Im Rausch der Rohstoffe”  which according to Google Translate means “In the intoxication of the raw materials”, which, erm, doesn’t really tell us very much.  Anyway, here it is:

… and here is an interview with Fabian from the local group:

From Holland, here is Paul Hendricksen speaking about a project he is involved with to build a new settlement of Earthships near Deventer:

From Ireland, Davie Philip from Transition Ireland and Northern Ireland National Hub reports that on March 22nd as part of the Ashoka Change Nation event, a number of Irish Transition catalysts met Rob Hopkins to discuss progressing a number of new Transition projects in Ireland.

While at Change Nation (which he wrote about here) Rob was interviewed for Ireland’s RTE Television:

Also, this Easter, Dermot Higgins and his son Fionn (from Rush, Fingal) will attempt to paddle across Ireland by kayak, from Dublin to Donegal (330km) in just six days.  The money they raise from their exciting expedition will go to their local Transition Town – Rush Open Organisation for Transition Status  (ROOTS). Read more in The Final Independent. Good Luck Dermot and Fionn!

From Portugal, here is a piece from the newsletter sent in by the Transition Portugal (a National Hub), entitled “In Portugal, creativity is used to find alternative ways of financing the 2-day Transition Launch Course”.   

Celebrating Spring, Transition Portugal stepped a little further towards a more sustainable and inspiring paradigm: during the weekend of 23/24th of March, the Linda-Velha Transition Initiative organized the 3rd Transition Launch Course in Portugal, the first led by Portuguese Trainers.

Adding to this special occasion, the organizing team and trainers decided to step outside of their comfort zone and test an alternative financing model inspired by the “Gift Economy”. Participants, who were also co-responsible for the course logistics (food and props), registered in the course paying a basic registration fee of €30 (confirming the intention and interest to enroll). At the end of the course, all people involved (including participants, trainers and organizers) were faced with the following question: “how much did this course worth for me; what are my true financial capacities; and how much am I going to offer to this course as a way of gratitude, supporting its continuity in the future?”

At the same time, the organizing team and trainers presented their ‘dream budget’ on the blackboard, specifying not only the real costs of goods acquired (mainly stationary) but also how much the organization and trainers would like to get for their work. The dream budget was €1290 … and a couple of minutes after… the sum collected was €1211 … Waw!!!… A dream came true… It did work!… Congratulations to everybody!

So in this time of change, notably for a country like Portugal, our recent experience demonstrates that blooming and flowering are here to stay. Lets show our dreams and colours! Trust we will be pollinated and tasty fruit will develop… Lets believe that bees will spread our pollen … Let’s create that magnificent Garden we envision to live in!

Reading Transition Town volunteers Charlotte Selvey, Sabrina Piergorossi and Ornella Trevisan in Palmer Park.

Over to the UK now, and TT-Reading have been busy planning sweet chestnut and walnut trees as part of their edible planting project in the town (see right).  In Cheshire, T-Wilmslow who were recently awarded a substantial grant from the Governments Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF), held a public meeting inviting local residents to share thoughts about the future resilience of the town.  In Derbyshire, T-Belper want to transform a local church car park in to an allotment and have met with a plethora of reactions from the towns councillors! Read more in the Ripley and Heanor News.

On the subject of tree planting, TT-Exmouth in Devon planted almost 50 trees opposite local Greenfingers Garden Centre who kindly provided a soup lunch to the many volunteers who turned out to dig.

TT-Honiton held a Seedy Saturday to mark Climate Week and to encourage people to swap and grow seeds. Hugh Fearnley- Whittingstall (who wrote the foreword to The Transition Companion) just happened to be in the neighbourhood and popped in (see left).  See a full write up and more pictures on the TT-Honiton website by Rufus Duffin.  Here’s a film about the Seedy Saturday:

Rufus also writes here about a successful evening of lively discussion with Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green after a viewing A Farm for the Future.  Here are Rebecca and Tim and some of the group at the event:

L to R: Rufus Duffin (TTH), Rebecca Hosking, Tim Green, Geoff Wilmot (TTH), Christine Planel (TTH). Photo copyright M.Wilmot 2012

Transition Town Honiton also held a big tree planting event:

Transition Town Totnes (TTT) with the Totnes Development Trust have launched a 6 month campaign called the Atmos Project in a bid to transform a derelict site in the town to a low-carbon mixed development for the community. If you missed Rob’s blog on the launch, you can read it here. This story was also picked up This is South Devon, and as part of the campaign, every day a new ‘Atmos Voice’, a member of the community speaking about the campaign, is posted on the site.  Jonathan Dimbleby popped by to launch the campaign outside the site itself:

Here is a great video of A Little Patch of Ground, by Encounters-Arts, a Transition supported inter-generational food growing and performance project which took place just outside Totnes, on the Dartington Estate.  TTT also held, together with Transition Network’s REconomy Project, a ‘Local Entrepreneurs’ Forum’ at the town’s Civic Hall, which brought together entrepreneurs, mentors and potential investors.  You can read about how it went here, or watch this film of the occasion:

In Ashburton, Totnes’ neighbouring town, Ashburton Futures, part of the Transition Network, recently, thanks to the LEAF Fund which many Transition initiatives have benefitted from, have made a series of films about how to make a diversity of local house types more energy efficient.  One of the hosts is Fraser Durham of Anahat Energy, who is also an active member of TTT.  Here are a few of them:

To neighbouring Dorset, where in Blandford, the relatively fledgling TT group held a Local Food Evening to engage the community.  The picture below shows an activity to map all their local food producers and suppliers:

Also in Dorset, TT-Dorchester’s energy group held an information road show on retrofitting and much more.

Penrith Action for Community Transition (PACT) organised a ‘Big Spring Clean’, in association with Eden District Council, Churches Together and Soroptimists (who I must confess I’ve never heard of, but Google reveals is “an international organization for business and professional women who work to improve the lives of women and girls, in local communities and throughout the world”).  Here is a film about it:

In London, Transition Kensal to Kilburn held a ‘Big Dig’, at Queens Park Allotment where a group of volunteers prepared an allotment ready to plant vegetables.  Here is a great time-lapse film of it:

In Hertfordshire, TT-Berkhamsted held an event during Climate Week called ‘What On Earth should we do about Climate Change?‘, and in Kent, Tunbridge Wells just got its first electric vehicle charging point in the town.  Transition Harborough and the Rural Community Council are hoping to gain a substantial investment from the Big Lottery’s Communities Living Sustainably Fund. In this Green Building Press article you can read their many proposals for positively transforming the town.  There’s more on this story in the local Lutterworth Mail.

Transition Town Leamington's 'Wool Day'

TT-Leamington held a wool day where people could learn to the crafts of spinning and felting.  Also in Warwickshire, T-Shipston are saying no to a proposed supermarket moving in to their town.  Marsden and Slaithwaite Transition Town (MASTT) are running a ‘Warmer Homes’ campaign, looking at how to make the area’s hard to treat houses more energy efficient.  As part of that, the Green Building Store made the following video to promote the campaign:

Thanks to Anita van Rossum of T-Chichester, in West Sussex, for sharing this great video of some of their activities.

Over now to Canada.  TT Sooke on Vancouver Island, hold a regular Transition Town Café to discuss ideas and engage the local community.  TT-Powell River featured this great Self-Repair Manifesto on their website – a must for any Transition up cyclers and fix-it fanatics (see poster, right)!

Also in British Columbia, Nancy Hofer of TT Comox Valley recently presented to the CVEC. The Comox Valley Environmental Council is a 21 year old ‘Not for Profit Society’ which acts as an umbrella organization for 20 local environmental organizations and local Municipal and Regional representatives. Read more about the meeting here in Canada.com.  In Ontario, T-Guelph held their second Resilience Festival over two days, read more in the Guelph Mercury.

From Barrie, Canada, comes this presentation, seemingly filmed on a phone from the back of the hall, about Transition in Barrie:

… and also to mention, in case you missed it, the launch of Transition Prince Rupert’s new website and fantastic Transition crash-course they developed.  You can read about it here, or here is Lee Brain from the group to tell you all about it:

In Tasmania, Derek Leahy ponders five thought bubbles (one of which is Transition) and tries to connect the dots regarding the forthcoming Day of Action on tar sands on May 5^th.  TT-Guilford in Western Australia held a successful weekend to build community resilience with over 100 attendees.  From Victoria, while browsing  the TT-Maroondah website, we came across this wonderful banner:

To Brazil.  Thanks for Isabela Maria Gomez de Menezes for this wonderful story and picture from T-Brasilândia who celebrated a Beauty Day dedicated to the beauty and strength of the women of Brasilândia.

Here is the story in English:

The beauty day, was a day totally dedicated to the beauty and strength of the women’s of Brasilândia. The event honoring the month of women was organized by women of the Transition Brasilândia, in the community of Vila Teresinha in Brasilandia.

Throughout the day the visitors could enjoy the hairstylist and treatments offered by Institute Embelleze, and also learned how to make turbans and braids with the girls of the collective ”Manifesto Crespo”or the Curly manifest, with the project ”weaving and braiding art”, which enhances and strengthens the memory and afro brazilian self-esteem. They also had massage available and the women from the “Brasilianas”,  selling their products made with recyclable materials.

During the event, an street art artist from the community,   painted a wall with themes of the event.  Closing the day they raffle a free registration in a Gym Club and distributed seasonings seedlings provided by the Office of Sustainability, to promote the habit of cultivating food crops at home.

For the Transition US March roundup of what’s happening in Transition in the US, click here.  In California, TT- Berkeley celebrated their first birthday with a Potluck meal.  The event also doubled up as an informative get together for those wanting to know more about Transition and how to get involved.  Frances Bigda-Peyton of Bedford-TT (MA) writes an article following her attendance at a recent comprehensive plan workshop and suggests that resilience is crucial for the towns’ future. 

Also in MA, T-Ashland have started a new programme called Grounds around Town which is a fantastic and innovative way to make use of the towns used coffee grounds.  Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition held an event called Education not Deportation.  Canton Public Library in Michigan has been hosting a Transition Towns series and this month was Getting Started in Organic Gardening with Bettylou who says you don’t need lots of space to start growing food.  T-Keene (NH) has launched a Neighbourhood Food Security (NFS) program which has a very specific goal – to produce 30% of food locally by the year 2030.

T-Staunton Augusta (VA) are transforming an unkempt lot in to a New Town Community Garden. Co-founder Lindsay Curren (also of Transition Voice) is excited by the amazing response she’s had so far (see right).  T-Port Angeles (WA) held their first public meeting and over 100 people turned up!

Thanks to Trish Knox of T-Woodinville (suburb of Seattle, WA) for sharing this fantastic Valley Vegetables Demonstrate story:

Saturday morning at the old Hollywood Hill Schoolhouse roundabout, valley vegetables crisply demonstrated their concerns over the threat to farming and rural character posed by a recent Woodinville City Council vote. The carrot was heard to sprout that soon urban sprawl would overtake the vegetable’s precious valley and destroy farmers’ ability to purchase land at a reasonable price. Standing in support of the vegetables to squash the vote and beet back urban sprawl were Sammamish Valley Alliance, Transition Woodinville and The Hollywood Hill Association.  Trish is second from left in the picture below:

Photo: Lincoln Potter.

Finally, we’ll keep one of the best to last.  Here is a great film from Chile about Transition in a town called Pucon:

To keep up with developments in Transition between these monthly roundups, keep an eye on Transition Network News, Transition Network Projects and Transition Voice.  If you would like to hear more about any of these stories in the next podcast, please let us know. 

“We’re on a mission here now with this group.  We all are co-ordinated and there’s something powerful about having fifteen people completely dedicated to the degree where we all know we’re going to do absolutely what it takes to make this happen in our community”.

Transition Prince Rupert, in British Columbia, Canada, launches its website today. Nothing extraordinary about that you might say.  But the process that led to it, and its contents, are a story worth telling.  The interview I did recently with Lee Brain, a young man who is one of the group’s founders, was one of the most inspiring I have yet published here at Transition Culture.  So inspiring in fact that it is, in effect, this month’s Transition podcast.  In today’s installment, he gives a fascinating taste of what it looks like when an emerging Transition group gives over some time to getting the foundations of its work as solid as possible before proceeding any further.  Here is the interview:

You can download the full curriculum they developed here.  It is a quite brilliant piece of work.  Here are a few of my favourite quotes from Lee’s interview:

“That’s what I love about Transition the most.  It’s the absolutely unknown process, you never really know if you’re doing it right, you never really know what’s coming next, you have to take it one step at a time, and it all unfolds, and if you can just surrender to the process and to what happens and not be too attached to any one thing or another, it all just kind of magically unfolds perfectly.  The right people come, someone serendipitously knows someone who has the materials to build a greenhouse, things like that.  You’re kind of lost in it, yet at the same time grounded”.

“I feel this movement is going to absolutely define the early 21^st century to mid 21^st century, and I can’t ever see it slowing down.  I think it’s absolutely going to really take this planet to a whole new direction”.

“The role of effective process and the role of facilitation is actually THE most critical aspect of Transition, because how people communicate, how people come together as a group, and the first question they ask themselves should always be “how are we going to work together?” rather than “what are we going to do?”

A while ago I mentioned the Big Lottery Fund’s ‘Communities Living Sustainably’ fund.  The shortlist was announced last week, and it was great to see 4 Transition initiatives among the 30 who got through to the second round of being given £10,000 each to prepare their bids, which will see 10 of them winning £1 million each.  Transition Norwich, Transition Market Harborough and Transition Minehead & Alcombe all successfully engaged in BIG funded projects in their own communities which have made it through to the second stage of the initiative.  Also, Transition Finsbury Park were part of one bid, and today Jo Homan from the group tells its story, and of the partnerships they have created to deliver it.  A great example of the Transition ingredient ‘building partnerships’. 

Fuel poverty, rising food prices and scarce resources are just some of the issues in the sights of BIG’s Communities Living Sustainably  programme which aims to inspire people to adapt the way they live, work and connect together to reap financial, environmental and health gains. 

Transition Finsbury Park is engaged with one of thirty projects across the country receiving up to £10,000 to draw up detailed plans to make their communities greener. Consortium partners involved in the funded schemes are working together to build local resilience, cross-sector coordination and community engagement to make this happen.

Transition Leading the Charge

The Finsbury Park Group is working with Manor House Development Trust in a cross-borough Partnership to explore ideas to tackle the five specific consequences of climate change relevant to dense urban areas: flooding, heat wave, drought, food scarcity and air pollution. The project wants to educate communities in Hackney and Haringey so that they can make long term positive changes in lifestyle. The Partnership also includes Berkeley Homes, Groundwork London, Hackney Council, Haringey Council and London Sustainability Exchange (LSx).

Transition Finsbury Park will lead the Partnership in coordinating activities to engage with communities face-to-face and inspire change and development in attitudes to sustainable living. The group will be seeking to build on existing initiatives as well as adapting and implementing new projects which have proven successful elsewhere. With only three months to fully develop plans for the initiative the group have no time to waste and are already getting the wheels in motion. With the welcome addition of some new and enthusiastic volunteers, it’s an exciting time.

Taking it to the Streets

Top of the agenda is the plan to initiate the Transition Streets project model in the Woodberry Down area. Transition Streets has enjoyed great success in Totnes, Devon and the Finsbury Park group are excited by the challenging prospect of developing and implementing the project for a very different, largely disadvantaged demographic in a densely populated urban area.

Transition Streets seeks to encourage a peer-led shift towards taking on sustainable living and positive social action through bringing neighbours together. Groups follow the guidelines of the programme and share experiences and ideas, exploring the potential economic, health and social benefits of positive change. The initiative seems ideally suited to the Big Lottery Fund’s £50m Sustainable and Resilient Communities strategy which states that it:

“aims to encourage behaviour change amongst individuals and communities so they can cope better with the environmental, economic and social impacts of a changing climate. Vulnerable people, including those on low-incomes or older people are less likely to cope with the negative effects of climate change such as floods and heat waves or severe cold weather.”

Existing initiatives that are in line for development include the expansion of Edible Landscapes London Ltd, operating out of the plant nursery in Finsbury Park, with a view to increasing the number of social enterprises operating from the site and creating a local “Food Hub”. This would see the emergence of the site as an outlet for affordable locally produced food, including fresh and preserved produce, offering advice, information and training on local food production in a friendly and welcoming environment.

In It to Win It!

Once plans are drawn up ten of the thirty nationwide projects will be selected later this year to receive up to £1 million to pursue and deliver their projects. Learning gained from the ten funded projects over five years will be shared with other communities in England to inform and influence others about making communities more sustainable.

We’ll keep our fingers crossed but we’re in with a great shout of getting the jackpot funding and pursuing an initiative that will make a real difference to the area. Congratulations to all the other Transition groups involved elsewhere in the country and best of luck with your projects!

You can also read a news story about it here, and you’ll find a film of Transition Prince Rupert’s first public event, which was included in an earlier round-up, here, and Lee himself appears in Part Two).  Michelle Colussi, a Transition Trainer and member of Transition Victoria, BC emailed to tell us that although there is no Transition Canada hub yet, there are over 20 official initiatives across the country and another 20 or so mullers, as well as 10 active trainers.  A summary of Canadian Transition projects in the areas of food and economy (both from last year) are located in blogs here and here.

Also in British Columbia, Alberni Valley TT Society turned the spotlight onto consumerism by screening The Clean Bin Project, a couple’s ‘zero waste, consumer free year’.  TT-Comox Valley held their fourth meeting. Click here (scroll down) to see some photos of the trade show style event.

We’ve heard of Transition Towns, even of Transition Universities (more to come on that later), but a ‘Transition Bus’?  From Quebec comes news of The Transition Bus.  The ‘Another World is En Route’ project comes to us from Charlotte and Camille who blog here about their latest on the road exploits from Québec province to Key West Florida.

And so to France.  Thanks to Kitty de Bruin who provided this story:

“In our community garden of 3000 m2, where we will grow old varieties of vegetables and herbs based in old kiwi storage boxes, given to our Transition group by a organic kiwi producer.  The garden sculpture will be made entirely from recuperated and recycled materials collected by the artist. Driftwood, plastic bottle caps, fish nets and lines, shells, recuperated metal wires and screws, as well as these little wheel-like pieces of plastic that have been washing up by the hundreds of thousands onto the Aquitaine coastline for the past few years now. For the longest time nobody knew what they were or where they were coming from. Now we know that a company in Portugal makes them. They use them in a mechanism to purify used water. When they are finished with them they are dumped into the ocean where they are later found in fish, birds and all over our beaches.

Using these little plastic wheels she is created a sort of picture diagram telling this story. It is mounted on a driftwood board. This board will be on top of a 3 or 4 walled structure made from many pieces of driftwood. Under it will be a hand-carved inscription “No More Pollution in our Oceans” in Portuguese and French.  It’s a little hard to describe in words, but the sculpture will be like a statue of mother earth. On top will be the head like the Earthglobe made from a lot of recycled plastic bottle caps. Built into the sculpture there will be birdhouses, refuges for insects, and shelters for rodents and other little animals.

The sculpture should also be interactive and visitors of the garden could carve their own environmental message onto any of the driftwood walls. It is work in progress, the design is made, and the photographs are the little “wheels”.

"these little wheel-like pieces of plastic"...

To read this story in French click here.  There’s a lot of Transition happening in Germany.  Our thanks to Gerd Wessling for this excellent 19 minute video feature (in German) about Transition Town Witzenhausen (one of the first official TT Initiatives in Germany) and the Transition Training course done there. To watch it click here.  Here is a great photo of TT Witzenhausen demonstrating solar cooking!

TT Witzenhausen -Solar cooking -photo credit - Evidero

From Holland here is a short film of a talk given by Transition Town Houten, and I think them talking about their website?

From Ireland, Davie Philip from the Ireland and Northern Ireland Network sends this story:

Panel discussion at Cloughjordan's Community Farming event : Ella mcSweeney (RTE Television) Andrea Calori (URGENCI) Yvonne O Donovan (Hazelhurst CSA) Bronagh Ui Dhuill (Transition Skerries), Amanda Daniel (Soil Association). Photograph: Davie Philip

“Although this was not an official Transition event, last weekend’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) conference in Cloughjordan Ireland was a great success and was attended by many of Irelands Transition initiatives.  On the weekend of the 17th to 19th of February hundreds of people from all over Ireland, and seven European countries, participated in a three day community supported agriculture (CSA) conference – Growing Together – in Cloughjordan, home of Ireland’s largest ecovillage. With panels hosted by Irish Television’s Ella McSweeney and Peter Young from the Farmers Journal and Open Space sessions facilitated by Cultivate Ireland’s Davie Philip, participants that included people from organisations like the Irish Seed Savers, Organic Centre, GIY (Grow it Yourself), and numerous Transition Towns – discussed what exactly a CSA is, and how they could go about setting one up.  Transition Skerries outlined how they went about setting up their local CSA and Transition catalysts from Dublin, Omagh, Kerry and Kinsale shared their experience in building food resilience in their areas.

Community farming is a relatively new concept to Ireland, with the Cloughjordan Community Farm being one of the first in Ireland. With community farms, a relationship is built between the farmer and consumers. So both farmer and consumer share the risks, rewards and responsibilities of farming and growing food. Local members invest some of their time and money in the farm, usually as a weekly or monthly payment and some volunteering, like planting, harvesting or weeding. For this, they receive fresh, local, seasonal food and the farmer gets a guaranteed, regular income. Sessions included how CSAs can help strengthen community resilience were outlined by economic think tank FEASTA, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability and URGENCI, the global CSA network. There was also a specific session for farmers and growers on the mechanics of setting up and maintaining a CSA, hosted by NOTS – the National Organic Training Skillnet and films and a wonderful presentation from Amanda Daniel from the UK’s Soil Association. A network of communities and growers wanting to progress CSA in Ireland was launched and a training handbook on community farming is being produced from the findings of the event. Click here for more details.

Former Irish Minister for Food and Agriculture Trevor Sargent making a comment from the floor at the CSA Conference in Cloughjordan Former Irish Minister for Food and Agriculture Trevor Sargent making a comment from the floor at the CSA Conference in Cloughjordan

Also from Ireland, here is a short film about a World Cafe event run by Transition Town Kinsale, the place where Transition all began:

From Japan, after the earthquake and resulting tsunami that hit Japan last year, the option of rebuilding the country using renewable green energy is being seriously considered. In this Aljazeera article reporter Brendan Barrett talks about the Transition movement in general and also to Hide Enomoto of Transition Fujino.

We have this great story from the Portuguese National Hub:

A team composed of TIs from Lisbon invited all the Portuguese initiatives to gather and discuss the future of the National Network and the creation of the National Hub. It was a sunny, chilly day (5th Feb) with a beautiful blue sky.

That was a creative, inclusive and fun group! The truth is that, even in a country going through a widely known serious economic crisis, it is in fact possible to feel positive, to build very strong connections within a heterogeneous group, dreaming the ideal network and, at the same time, being with friends, laugh, sing, dance. All this while keeping in mind how incredibly challenging and serious the role of Transition Initiatives is NOW, in this social context.

In the end, the Portuguese TIs adopted, with success, the new concept of a ‘Transition National HUG” – the Portuguese hub is expected to be a particular one, responding to these particular local challenges – soon enough, there will be news about it (new chapter of this story planned to happen in April)!  For more pictures, music and dance check the video below (if you are not fluente in Portuguese do not worry, just wait for the first couple of minutes and you’ll get there!).

Here are a couple of stories from Australia.  From Tasmania, Andrew Olivier has sent out Sandy Bay’s first newsletter. It was interesting for us here at Transition Network to see a familiar name in there – Adrian Porter, ex resident of Totnes and once active in TTT who was invited to Waimea Heights School as guest speaker! Here is a pdf of their newsletter. Also, Transition Bellingen hosted its first World Café for 2012 and looked at what Coffs Harbour might look like in 2020 if they were a community that embraced the Transition model.

Prince Albert, South Africa.

In Prince Albert, Great Karoo, Western Cape, South Africa, 22 people including Hélène Smit gathered and held a meeting to discuss the possibility of the town becoming a Transition Town! Read Hélène’s blog piece here.

And so now to the UK.  Transition Network has been chosen as one of Britain’s 50 New Radicals – read more in Rob Hopkins’ blog post on Transition Culture or here on the NESTA site. NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative.

From Essex, here is a video clip sent in by Kamil from Transition Southend.  It features Ian Hurd talking about The Fantastic Food Exchange. This took place back in December, however this bartering and skill share fest could be enjoyed at any time of year and is well worth a watch.

TT Musselburgh - East Lothian. Left to right, Roger Knox, Jen Williams, Diann Govenluck, Heather Cameron, Sylvia and Geoff Mason, and Stephanie Kerr

TT Musselburgh are making plans to plant fruit and veg along the river Esk and even get a community orchard going on an industrial estate! Read more in the East Lothian News (see above).  TT Cheltenham are using a £5k govt grant to look at the prospect of the River Chelt providing small scale hydroelectricity.

Transition Town Worthing have made this short film about their recent Seed Swap.  The film uses ‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division as its soundtrack.  What’s not to love about that?

Transition doesn’t always manage to gain a foothold or generate enough interest to move it forward.  We were sad to hear that TT Sevenoaks are facing the prospect of closing down next year due to lack of interest from the local community.  If you have any helpful thoughts or suggestions for TT Sevenoaks, please send them here.  The Kirkbymoorside Environment Group, part of the Transition Town movement within this small North Yorkshire market town, outline in this short film how their recently purchased infra-red camera can be used by residents to detect heat loss from their homes.

One of the most fascinating stories of the past month has been the launch of Brixton Energy (see right).  TT Brixton’s Energy group are pushing for London’s first co-operatively owned solar power station and have a launched share option!   A very exciting initiative, the first Transition initiative to launch an energy company for a distinct urban neighbourhood.  We wish the all the best with it.  As we go to press, they just tweeted the following, “Printed Copies of our 100% recycled Share Offer are ready! “They look good enough to eat!..”professional, sleek & energised. Just love it!”.  You can follow them on Twitter @BrixtonEnergy.  There are lots of Transition initiatives on Twitter, it can be a good way to keep in touch with what they are up to between these round-ups.

Volunteers from TT Crystal Palace and Friends of Westow Park are clearing a park to make way for an edible community garden.  TT-Shrewsbury has been awarded £42,725 via the government backed Local Energy Assessment Fun (LEAF) scheme. Read more in this BBC news story.

The Hebden Bridge Transition Trees project

From Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, you can read this story about their Transition Trees project (see left), a truly joint effort between the TT’s Working Woodslands group, Blackshawhead Optimistic Gardeners, Blackshawhead Environmental Action Team and Hebden Royd Town Council.

Also in Hebden Bridge, read more about their HebVeg CSA box scheme (see right). From that part of the world, from the Leeds University Union, here is Ben Jackson, LUU’s Education Officer, to tell us more about the launch of their Transition University campaign:

… and here are Rhianon and Martha from People and Planet Leeds explaining Transition and how they’re involved in the campaign:

… and lastly Sam from People and Planet Leeds giving a really short summary about the idea of “Transition Universities”:

Sonoma Valley - Left to Right Melinda Kelley, Ed Clay, Tim Boeve. Photo Jeff Kan LeePress Democrat

Now let’s hop across the pond (metaphorically, no flights were taken in the making of this round-up!).  You can read the official Transition US February roundup click here.  In Vermont, T-Brattleboro is hosting a ‘sense of place’ series exploring connections to the natural world, mentoring, and regenerative community relations. The series concludes next month with lessons from The Peacemaker and The Haudenosaunee, a fascinating story of tribal war to peace shared  here in Culture for a Healthy World by Sophy Banks of TN.  From Washington State, here is a film of Judith Alexander talking about the Transition initiative she is part of in Port Townsend.  In California, Transition Sonoma Valley has had to turn eager people away due to their highly popular film nights which this month screened The Next Frontier – Engineering the Golden Age of Green. Read more about the collective genius of T-Sonoma Valley here (see pic right).  Here is a film about them too:

Alisa Viego - Kimberley Leeds. Photo credit - Suzanne Chun

In Alisa Viego, local resident Kimberley Leeds’s (left) desire to feel more connected to her neighbours was the driving force behind her starting up a Transition group. Opening up her home for regular pot luck meals served as the perfect catalyst.

In Telluride, Colorado, monthly Green Business Roundtable discussions are taking place. The first session, led by  Michael Brownlee of Transition Colorado and Woody Tasch of the Slow Money Alliance looked specifically at building a more resilient community.  Here is a video of the event:

In Florida, an Occupy Tallahassee event held a presentation on Transition Towns and a Daily Kos reporter who is new to the whole concept of Transition went along to find out more.

Members of Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition at work in the Egleston Community Orchard.

From Massachusetts, Orion Kriegman, founder of Jamaica Plain (JP) New Economy Transition (who featured in last month’s Transition podcast, which I’ll embed here in case you missed it), talks about the local Egleston Community Orchard in this great Q&A session featured in local paper the JP Patch.

In North Carolina, the folks who attend the United Church of Chapel Hill are not only deeply committed to their faith; they are also committed to a carbon fast for lent! This article delves deeper in to the journey of one congregation and the steps they are taking to Transition to a more sustainable way of being.  In New Hampshire, Keene Transition held their 7^th annual seed celebration and sustainable community fair which included workshops, an open space event and a poster competition.

If you would like any stories included in next month’s round up do let us know.  Also, if you have any thoughts as to which of these should be gone into in more depth in this month’s Transition podcast, do put a comment below this piece.  

The REconomy Project: Local Entrepreneur Forum, taking place on March 21^st from 8:30am-4pm at Totnes Civic Hall, will bring local entrepreneurs, investors, and experts together for an all-day event that will include learning, networking, and deal-making.  Speakers for the event include Jonathan Dawson, Head of Economics at Schumacher College, Jason Mollring, Head of Connect at UnLtd. Connect, a social enterprise think and do tank, based in London, REconomy’s Fiona Ward, Rob Hopkins of Transition Network, Frances Northrop, Totnes’ Transition in Action manager and Lucy Siegle, Guardian columnist and One Show presenter, who will host a Green Dragons’ Den, where 5 of the best new business ideas in Totnes and District will try to impress the Dragons.  

“We fully expect that several new enterprises will launch as a direct result of connections made at this event,” said Frances Northrop, Transition in Action Manager with TTT.  “We’ve designed it to give local entrepreneurs the chance to meet investors and industry experts – and vice versa.  It’s up to them to seize the opportunities.”

Starting a new business in South Devon is challenging due to lack of available resources, such as access to start-up expertise, angel investors, and inexpensive office space.  By bringing experts and investors into the same room as entrepreneurs, organisers of the event hope to begin to overcome these challenges.  The Local Entrepreneur Forum is modelled on similar events that have proved to be effective in places like London and Silicon Valley.

The event will also mark the launch of a new enterprise incubator which will offer a suite of services designed to support entrepreneurs and launch new businesses, including business plan coaching, mentoring, a youth program, and investor matching.  Entrepreneurs at any stage of development are also encouraged to apply for the Green Dragon’s Den event.

The event is hosted by Transition Town Totnes.  TTT is a registered charity focused on developing community resilience and sustainability.  Helping to launch and nurture new social and sustainable enterprises is an important path toward this goal.  Other projects include the Totnes Economic Blueprint, REconomy Project Enterprise Centre, and Food Link.  For information on booking, click here, and to download the pdf of the poster, click here.

So today we have some good news, and some bad news.  First the good news.  We are delighted to announce four events that Transition Network is involved in at the Guardian’s Open Weekend, which is coming up 24-25th March at the Guardian’s new offices in London.  On Saturday 24th, we are presenting, at 1.45pm, a workshop called “How to start a community business” which looks at how to create a community-supported food business.  The presenters are Greg Pilley of Stroud Brewery (as mentioned in yesterday’s post), and Dan McTiernan of The Handmade Bakery (one of the stars of ‘In Transition 2.0′).  The event will be facilitated by Transition Network’s Peter Lipman.

On the Saturday evening at 8pm, we can now proudly announce, will be a screening of ’In Transition 2.0′.  It will be introduced by the Guardian’s environment correspondent John Vidal, and after the film Rob Hopkins and producer Emma Goude will take questions about this film.

On Sunday, at 1.45pm, Transition Network will be presenting a second workshop, this time called ‘How to start a community currency’.  Facilitated by Rob Hopkins, it will include Ciaran Mundy from the Bristol Pound, and Simon Woolf from the Brixton Pound.  The workshop be interactive, and give you all the ideas and advice you need to start such a scheme where you live.

Finally, at 5.30pm on the Sunday, an event called “How I did it” brings together Rob Hopkins of Transition Network and Julia Davenport of Good Energy to, according to the event’s website, “share their remarkable stories about building environmental change”.

So now to the bad news.  By the time the programme was confirmed and we were allowed to publicise these events, all the day tickets for the event had sold out!  Bah.  However, if you happen to be one of the lucky few with a ticket to what looks like it will be a great event, you will soon be asked to choose which events you want to attend, so please do come along and support these exciting happenings.  For those who don’t have tickets, we are assured that some of these events will be filmed and put on the Guardian’s website.

Brixton Beer

I started my investigations by catching up with Helen Steer from City Farmers.  She told me that the idea had first emerged at the AGM of Incredible Edible Lambeth in October 2011, inspired by the ‘Brockwell Bake’ where people grow urban wheat on allotments which is then milled to make local bread.  She met with the Independent Brewers Association in London who were very enthusiastic, in fact as she put it “they bit our hands off!” when the idea of their buying and using these locally grown hops was raised.

One of the unexpected side effects they have found is that the idea acts as a great way to get men involved in gardening, a nice antidote to the fact that the majority of people involved in community gardens apparently tend to be women.  The plan is to pilot the idea over the 2012 growing season in a number of gardens across London, and to produce a starter pack of rootstock and tools, as well as instructional videos for backyard hop growing.  The idea then is to gather the harvest together in September and to brew a beer from the hops, which would then be shared at a harvest party.  Longer term plans include the possible launch of a Brixton Brewery.  Here is the longer interview I did with Helen (I am trying an approach in this post of mixing audio with writing, and making my research available for you to go into more depth if you’re interested: I hope it works for you):

The idea in practice

This is a wonderful and very attractive idea, especially as a way of making a community brewery truly feel like a community brewery. But is it practical?  What are the obstacles such a project might encounter?  Well it turns out it’s already being tried in at least one brewery.  I spoke to Greg Pilley of the Stroud Brewery, and it turns out he’s been growing hops in his garden (40 plants), as have a number of other people close to the brewery.  On one day in September, the hops are harvested, brought to the brewery, and a pale ale called ‘Brewers Garden’ is created which everyone involved then gets 9 pints of when it is ready.

Stroud Brewery describes it thus:

“These hops have been grown by members of our ‘Hop Club’ in their gardens and allotments. The hop bines were harvested on Sunday 5th September 2010, and members congregated at the brewery to hand pick the hop cones, and enjoy a few ales. Hops are dried in our home made ‘oast’ and go into this years brew of ‘Brewers Garden’”.

Starting with the basics: a crash course in hops

Let’s go back to the beginning and have a quick crash course in hops.  One great place to start is with an episode of BBC Radio 4′s ‘Food Programme’ that looked at the revival of the UK hop industry.  It would appear that the first hops to arrive in the UK turned up in 1524 when Flemish planters arrived and started growing them here.  Initially they were grown for their medicinal and herbal properties.  They were introduced into brewing as a preservative and also to introduce a bitterness to the beers, replacing the use of herbs and other bittering agents, such as bog myrtle, that was used up to that point.

The role of hops in brewing is two-fold.  According to Ray Daniels in ‘Designing Great Beers’:

Hops provide bitterness to counteract the sweetness of malt, this making the beverage more palatable.  They also provide some antibacterial properties that at one time increased the safety and potability of beer.  Today this quality still aids the preservation of beer.  Hops also contribute more than just bitterness.  Although it seems incredible that a single element of one plant could do so much, hops also contribute appealing flavours and aromas to been when handled in the proper way by the brewer … hops are indeed a source of tremendous richness and variety in beer flavour”.

I spoke to Martin Crawford of the Agroforestry Research Trust (who has produced an essential fact sheet about hops), who told me that traditional varieties grow up to 6 metres tall, but that there are dwarf varieties which grow to 2 metres which are better suited to back gardens.  According to Martin, there is only one dwarf hop that is commercially available, called ‘First Gold’.  Here’s my full interview with him:

Dr Peter Darby: outstanding in his field (sorry)

At the moment, almost all the hops grown in the UK are either grown in Kent (as was documented in George Orwell’s fantastic “Keep the Aspidistras Flying”) or in Herefordshire.  I spoke to Dr Peter Darby, who is in charge of the National Hop Association for Wye Hops, and is one of the UK’s leading experts on hop breeding, and asked him why that was.  Does it indicate that those are the places with the best soils and the best microclimates for hop growing?  Apparently not.  It turns out that with the industrialisation of brewing, and the demand for large amounts of beer that was generated by the British Empire, that large workforces of pickers were required, so the large urban centres of London and the West Midlands provided that, and it fitted in nicely with the picking of other crops, most notably apples.  Prior to the British Empire hugely increasing demand for beer, hops were grown in most parts of the country.

He told me that the UK hop industry is now relatively stable after years of decline, due mainly to a shift from growing hops to add bitterness to growing hops to add flavour.  This has been helped by the emergence of a strong microbrewing culture and more craft brewers.  About a quarter of hops grown in the UK are exported, and the UK imports about a third of what is used here.  Current production, were it all to be retained for UK brewing, would only be enough to meet two-thirds of demand.  Most brewers like to use a mixture of UK hops and imported hops, because, he told me, imported hops grown in sunnier climes, can give beers a ‘high impact flavour’.  Traditionally though, they were grown in every county in the UK, and could be again.  Here is the interview I did with Dr. Darby:

The advantages and disadvantages of growing urban hops

In some ways, growing hops in ‘patchwork farms’, that is, a number of gardens across a city, is ideal.  According to Martin Crawford, the two main challenges that affect hop growing, aphids and mildrew, will sweep through hops on a field scale, but in a more dispersed context, in a more biodiverse setting, should be less of an issue.  They can be grown in containers, although they would need to be pretty deep containers as hops need a deep soil.  Again though, growing them in containers could actually be a benefit, as it prevents them from suckering, something they are prone to.

Also, given their inclination to climb and to clamber, being able to grow up buildings and other structures, so long as they are accessible for harvesting, can be an advantage.  Dr. Darby added that hops are well suited to urban growing because they are classed as horticulture, rather than agriculture.  He also stated that hops are a plant that needs quite a lot of attention, something that is easier to provide on a small scale.  He added another dwarfing variety that would be suited to urban growing, called Golden Tassels, or ‘Diva’.  There are others too, but they are fiercely protected, and can only be grown under licence from the National Hop Association.

Dr Darby cautioned, however, against the idea that growing hops is an easy thing for the amateur to pick up.  The pests and diseases to which hops are vulnerable can be dealt with, but knowing what you are looking for and how to deal with it takes some training.  City Farmers are already assembling their team of volunteer hop growers, and have been surprised by the levels of interest, and the quarters from which it is coming.  One of their local councillors has asked be become one of the growers.  It will be interesting to see the degree to which the skills required to to prevent pests and diseases trashing their first harvest can be communicated through videos and leaflets.

Another key challenge revolves around drying herbs on a community scale.  On the large scale, hops are dried in huge warehouses where warm air is blown through them.  According to Dr Darby, hops must either be used straight off the plant (what is known as “green hopping”) or dried within about 4 hours of being picked.  This is to avoid them becoming musty or losing a lot of their volatile oils.  To dry them they need to be warmed at 30-60°C, in a long steady dry (10-12 hours), with a high air throughflow in a darkened space in order to bring their moisture down from 80% to 10%.

Drying hops at home. Photo courtesy of GreenWellies on Flickr.

On the home/community scale this is tricky.  It is too low a temperature for the domestic oven, and more like a greenhouse on a hot day (hardly reliable when you have only 4 hours to get the drying underway!     Martin Crawford suggests a blacked-out polytunnel or the use of an attic (this is September we’re talking about remember, attics should be pretty hot then).  He also states that building a thermostatically controlled medium-sized drier shouldn’t be too complicated.  Greg Pilley at Stroud Brewery dries some, but only on the domestic scale.  Here is my interview with Greg:

Another challenge for brewers using green hops is that as brewers they are, in effect, flying blind, in that hops usually arrive having been tested for bitterness and so it is not clear what they are introducing into their brew. For this reason, when Greg Pilley brews his ‘Brewer’s Garden’, he still has to use some bought-in hops for the bitterness, and the garden-grown green ones for flavour.

Another practicality is how much could actually be grown in urban gardens.  Greg grows 40 plants in his garden, which he reckons yield him 5kg of green hops, which would dry to 3kg.  Each year his brewery requires 600kg of hops for its brewing, by which calculation he would need 200 other gardeners doing the same if he were to be drying and using Stroud-grown hops.  Do-able but ambitious.  The beauty of hops is that, as a climber, you can still grow other things underneath them, and allow them to clamber up buildings or ramble through trees.  You can also, as Martin pointed out, eat the young shoots, lightly steamed, they are sometimes referred to as “the poor man’s asparagus”.

So, should the hop fields come to town?

Looked at in isolation, encouraging lots of untrained amateurs to take on planting  potentially demanding crop in a dispersed way across a city doesn’t perhaps seem like the brightest idea.  However, placed in the context of creating a community growers, sharing their experiences, focused around a community brewery initiative in which they have an interest, it starts to make a lot more sense.  As a way of land use and gardening helping to build social capital, it is very valuable.  As a story to unpin and help promote a social enterprise it is fantastic.  Me, I’m intrigued, and think that certainly for our initiative, this will be a central part of what we are planning to do.

Greg Pilley will be speaking, along with Dan McTiernan of the Handmade Bakery, at one of the events that Transition Network is convening at The Guardian Open Weekend in London March 24th at 1.45pm.   My thanks to Jonathan Smith, who sent me a really good guide to growing hops on the small scale which you can download as a pdf here.