Newton Abbot is Totnes’ neighbouring town, with a population of around 25,000.  Teignbridge District Council are presently conducting a development planning process, creating the template for the town’s development over the next 20 years.  A public event was held at the Courtenay Centre in the town to explore some of the issues raised by the planning process.  There were a few of us speaking, a local businessman who talked about the need to create new, and ideally greener, jobs.  There was a great talk by a woman from the Devon Strategic Housing Group which set out the near-impossibility of anyone under 40 actually being able to afford, bar having an inheritance or a very well-paid job (the average income in the town is £25,444), to buy a house. It was a stark reminder of what she referred to as the ‘generation gap’ in terms of those with, or without, equity in property.

I started my presentation with a recent quote from Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England:

“It is not like an ordinary recession where you lose output and get it back quickly. You may not get it back for many years, if ever, and that is a big long-run loss of living standards for all people in this country.”

I then talked about peak oil, and about climate change, arguing that these three challenges are central to any form of planning for the future.  I referred to the recent Lloyds/Chatham House report which concluded that “…energy security is now inseparable from the transition to a low-carbon economy and business plans should prepare for this new reality”.  I referred to the recent report by the World Economic Forum, identifying the key risks that need to be central in peoples’ minds for the next 10 years, and how they supported the assertion that these are our key three risks (see above).

If you are planning for next 10-20 years of the town and its surroundings, what is vital, I said, is that it is done based on realistic assumptions.  If your assumptions are that in 10 years time we’ll be ‘back to growth’, with more cars, more finance, more cheap energy than today, then such assumptions are deeply reckless and irresponsible.  I talked a bit about what Transition Town Totnes is doing, and about how any plan for the future must be based as much on plugging the leaks of the local economy as on attracting new businesses.

Teignbridge District Council are talking about the need to bring 28.5 hectares of new employment land into use, to create 41,000sqm of non-food shopping floor space, and to create 114 new affordable homes a year.  But what, I asked, are the assumptions that underpin this?  Economic growth is, to all intents and purposes, over and done with, the focus now should be on creating a post-growth economy for Newton Abbot, one based around skills, jobs and training, around meeting more local needs locally, and on happiness and wellbeing.

Well, it was a message that was well received by those in the audience, I saw lots of nodding heads as I spoke (unless they were just trying to stop themselves falling asleep).  What was so interesting was the next two speakers, especially the district’s Economic Development Officer.  “Well I don’t know about you”, she began by jauntily telling the audience, “but after those last two speakers I thought I wanted to kill myself!  But there is plenty of good news about Newton Abbot and I’m here to tell you about it”.  She then went on to wax lyrical about what a great mix of shops it has, what great car parks, how people come from great distances for the shopping experience the town offers.  The assumptions shifted back to a future of more shops, more cars, more spending, more growth.

Well fair enough perhaps, it is after all her job to talk up economic growth, and perhaps it is because I am half way through reading Richard Heinberg’s new masterpiece, ‘The End of Growth’, but it seemed absurd to me.  A few days before I had been listening to the BBC Radio 4 6′o’clock news, which had been about how youth unemployment in the UK had risen sharply, how EU ministers were openly suggesting that the whole European Union experiment might be coming unstuck due to the Euro debt crisis, and other tales of economic woe that seemed to come in relentless waves.  One business leader commenting on the UK youth unemployment figures, said “these aren’t the kind of figures you see in a recovery, these are recession figures”.  On some level with me, it felt like that bit in ‘Titanic’, where the sinking ship groans as it reaches a point of no return.  This was the gut feeling I still had as I sat in the Newton Abbot meeting. I was also still absorbing a new article by Chris Skrebowski in which he redefined what we mean by peak oil, so that it referred to the point when “the cost of incremental supply exceeds the price economies can pay without destroying growth at a given point in time”.  That feels rather like now to me.

The senior planner for the Council spoke last, and talked about how this would be a plan for jobs and growth (“your plan”) and how exciting it all was.  He showed the process whereby the land needed had been identified to the south and west of the town.  There was much talk of the need to ‘balance’ the needs of the environment alongside the need for employment, housing and so on.  The document prepared by the Council that we were given talked about climate change, “diminishing natural resources” and food security as “overarching sustainability considerations”, and spoke of building “local resilience to climate change”.  There were many good words in the document and in what he said, but the reality is that this is a plan based on the assumption that in the future we can expect just more of the same of what we had in the past, whereas most of the indicators are that we are moving into a very different world, a very different terrain.

To be fair to the Council, they have an impossible job.  Central government has told them how many new houses and how much new business space they need to get in place, and if the Council doesn’t figure where that is going to go then central government will intervene and tell them.  The current administration has adopted an assumption in favour of development, and is going all out based on the assumption that the thing that will get us out of recession is the construction industry (because of course it worked really well in Ireland, Spain and Greece).  As George Monbiot brilliantly pointed out recently, all development is now assumed to be ‘sustainable development’.

“The wrecking ball swinging from this chain is the government’s redefinition of sustainable development. “Development means growth”, the new document says, and “without growth, a sustainable future cannot be achieved.” All development thereby becomes sustainable, and all sustainable development must be approved. “A presumption in favour of sustainable development”, the draft insists, must be “the basis for every plan, and every decision … the default answer to development proposals is ‘yes’”.”

The new government’s definition of what constitutes ‘sustainable development’ now includes motorway service stations, roads to the airport and advertising hoardings.  Clearly the Council’s hands are largely tied, and the extent to which such a process can be a genuine public consultation is debatable, as was evidenced by the fact that a 2 hour and 15 minute meeting contained just 10 minutes for questions from the audience.  Yet, it stuck me there is something that they could do.

They could stop looking at ‘environment’ as being a stand-alone box which refers to protecting things, heritage and increasing recycling rates, and instead replace it with the concept of ‘resilience’, in such a way that it runs through everything.  At the moment, the thinking goes like this, “we need houses.  So we’ll get developers to come in and build them, and make sure that they do so in a way that respects the environment’.  But how would it be if rather than skills, training, employment, the creation of local businesses being in separate boxes from ‘environment’, resilience thinking meant that every development of houses were asked to do as many other things as possible alongside the actual building of houses?

If each new development of housing used local materials, such as strawbale walls (the town is surrounded by some fine farmland), clay plasters (Newton Abbot is famous for its nearby ball clay deposits), local stone (similarly, there are good quarries nearby)?  If each development offered the opportunity, given the nature of the materials used, to train local young people, and get the long-term unemployed involved?  If this allowed much more of the money put into the development to stay and cycle locally.  If it allowed the town to become a centre for research into the practicalities of a post-growth economy?

If the houses that were produced were therefore more affordable, cheaper to heat, more beautiful, and ultimately, could be returned safely to the earth when future generations were done with them?  In permaculture we call this kind of thinking ‘Multiple Function’, getting each element of a design to do as many things as possible.  Bringing this thinking to a plan such as Newton Abbot’s would revolutionise the whole process, something that Transition Newton Abbot are trying to do.

Yet, when the reaction of the town’s Economic Development Officer to the idea that growth and cheap energy can no longer be relied on is “”Well I don’t know about you, but after those last two speakers I thought I wanted to kill myself!”, clear thinking about the future becomes that much harder.  Economic growth is a glittering prize that it takes a big step to stand apart from.  To be the first person in any given situation to question it as an assumption is to risk being seen in the same way the Magic Band were at Heathrow Airport in 1968.  While the reflections and discussion in the limited question time at the end of the evening showed that many people in the audience shared these concerns, sat on the panel I felt increasingly like Beefheart’s “pilgrim from the 25th century”.  Yet it is vital that we continue not to just question this shared assumption, but that we propose imaginative yet entirely workable alternatives, ones that actually tick more of the desired boxes than what is currently being proposed does.

The Beefheart story comes from the excellent ‘Captain Beefheart’ by Mick Barnes (Omnibus Press, 2000).

On Monday I did the second webinar for Transition US, looking at the ‘ingredients’ of Transition, and answering lots of questions about Transition sent in by people from across the US.  You can now listen to it in full here.  I started out by telling people that it was, in a way, an illustrated talk, in that I had uploaded a picture online they could look at, taken from the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion’ (which you can pre-order now).  Beautifully created by Marina Vons-Gupta, it communicates the idea of embarking on Transition being like opening the larder door and picking the ingredients for creating what you have decided to create.  Anyway, thanks to everyone who made it possible, and enjoy the recording.

Transition training participants expressed interest in living in more natural and less oil-dependent communities.

This week, Turkey joined the growing list of countries with communities signing up to become part of the Transition movement.Transition trainer Gerri Smyth came from Gilford, England, to lead the 21 participants from western Turkey, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the United States through a two-day seminar on how communities can respond to climate change by moving away from fossil fuels and building stronger, more resilient communities.

Smyth explained that the Transition Network philosophy stems from the idea of permaculture — a sustainable-living approach modeled after nature — which is appropriate, because the training session was held at Pastoral Vadi, a permaculture-based eco-resort near Fethiye, Turkey. Pastoral Vadi — translated as idyllic valley — has been working with area farmers to help them convert to organic production over the past 10 years.

Pastoral Vadi’s manager, Nebi Cihan Gankaya, organized the first-ever Transition training in Turkey to “learn how to solve problems in the community.” Gankaya recently received a grant from the Turkish government for the Sustainable Live Model in Yaniklar Village, a project that will improve the area’s sustainability through eco-tourism and develop a biogas energy-production facility.

Transition training participants expressed their interest in finding common ground to work with people who have different attitudes toward sustainability, to live in more natural communities, and to work toward communities that are not oil-dependent. The workshop led everyone through exercises for the two components of the Transition Movement — Outer Transition (the issues of Peak Oil, climate change and global equity) and Inner Transition (an introspection that examines how and why fossil fuel-dependent, consumerist societies have developed) — and gave them basic information they could take home and work on with community members.

Smyth provided examples of communities undergoing the Transition process and those who have been successful in already making the change, such as Heathrow and Totnes, England. Even Pastoral Vadi’s sustainability initiatives, including eco-architecture, permaculture growing systems, traditional wood-fired cooking techniques, and use of local and organic foods, make it an example of a Transition experiment. “This is a Transition project, whether it’s called one or not,” said Smyth.

This workshop was just a small piece of what participants need to make the Transition movement a reality in their towns. “We need to communicate beyond the usual suspects, beyond the green bubble. We need to make the movement inclusive and accessible to people who might not have gotten involved in an alternative movement before,” said Smyth.

“My hope is they received encouragement for being a part of the Transition movement and for starting their own Transition,” Gankaya said.

Freelance writer and UF contributing editor Lisa Munniksma is spending six weeks in Turkey as part of her round-the-world journey to learn about agriculture, food systems and sustainable living everywhere. Follow her trip at www.freelancefarmerchick.com.

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

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

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

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

Transition Ashville

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transition Rutland having a good time...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snow capped mountains and broad fertile valleys, welcome to Trieves; a region of France in the foothills of the Alps above Provence, and the host for the first major French gathering of Transition Initiatives. You won’t find Trieves on any map, and even Google seems not to know of its existence, however there is a strong local identity centred around ecological awareness, and it come as no surprise that it is the host of this, France’s first Transition conference. It is place of small holdings and many young people returning to the land.

You can get a sense of where Transition in France is heading; quite rightly so. You can taste the cultural identity of France embodied in Transition in France; something José Bové and Pierre Rabhi – and the Colibri folks would be proud of.  France is the last major European country to take up Transition, just ahead of Albania,  and about at the same stage as Portugal. Why has it taken so long?

An eco-house under construction in Trieve

The first day of the gathering, Fete de la Transition Après Pétrole, focused mainly on practical workshops. There was a sustainable building workshop, held at the home of one of the initiative’s members who is building a beautifully constructed eco home in St Sébastien. Participants were learning about post and beam straw bale construction, hemp and lime plastering, ground source heat pumps, how to site your home in this part of the world, and the various trade offs and decisions to make when building an eco home.

The other workshop focussed on solar ovens, a really viable proposition here where you get 300+ days of sunshine. The workshop involved building a simple but effective solar over that would cook a casserole in about 4-5 hours. Jeremy the workshop leader explained that the main barrier to take up of this technology was re ordering your life, and having to think of dinner right after lunch to give the low grade heat source the time to work its magic. We are so used to dense energy sources, the switch to less dense energy will require significant lifestyle changes and adaptations; some difficult, but many like this one just a change. The re-culturing of homo detritus to homo solar will be far reaching in many ways we can’t even imagine.

I learned of the somewhat chaotic and painful beginnings of Transition Geneve, which is dormant for the moment. There were many participants at the conference from Geneve, so it feels like more of a regroup than a collapse. I was told of the heart warming beginning of Transition Mayenne. A couple of friends just had to start this initiative, and have done so successfully. When there is the love and care for each other at the heart of a Transition Initiative, which I sensed from Transition Mayenne, so much is achievable and fun!

'The Petrol Monster'

Transition Trieve is launching today on day 2 of the conference, more on that later. It is an area where bio (organic) small holdings are cheek to jowl with larger conventional farming. And in their allotment project there is an uneasy peace between the older conventional, chemical growers, and the in coming bio brethren. There are many successful small holdings bringing many younger people into a very rural, and until modern time isolated community. I had ample opportunity to to avail myself of their wonderful produce. The day ended with a presentation of “La Décroissance énergétique” by the association Negawatt. They are an organisation that is doing some technically impressive modelling of the energy mix of France and charting ways forward to a low energy, low carbon 2050, suggesting a combination of energy efficiency, renewable technology, and energy descent.

Day Two

Semur in Transition is a small town south of Paris. I met three young farmers who were inspired to start a Transition Initiative by Rebecca Hoskins film ‘A Farm for the Future’. Their concern was to reclaim their autonomy as farmers. Farmers increasing don’t and can’t control anything. Not only the usual concerns of farmers, like the weather, but everything from sale of produce to financing are out of their control and this doesn’t work. In fact it is a source of stress that frequently leads to suicide. And farmers are traditionally an isolated community. So their challenge, as they see it, is to open a closed world and were wondering how to introduce techniques like open space into their farming community.  The editor of Silence, a prestigious French environmental magazine is part of the group from Lyon in Transition. He sees the Transition message as a synthesis of many environmental organisations and ideas.

Ferney Voltaire Transition, a town of 8 thousand near the Swiss boarder, is on fire. Five came to a London training and went home very inspired. One hundred and fifty attended their first film showing, ‘Local solutions from a Global Disorder’. Three weeks later they held an open space about forming an Initiative. A large crowd stayed on til past midnight, refusing to leave. The organisers had to close the hall, and not knowing what to do next they stood up and proposed forming an initiative, to which there was a resounding yes. This led onto a second open space shortly after where working groups were formed. Now four months later they are involved with the council planning transport policy. It’s has all gone so quickly, that the initiative has now eclipsed the scope of the initiators and taken on a life of its own, “just like it says in the book and on the training”, one said.

Transition France

A group, who has had virtual meetings coordinating Transition in France and calling themselves a liaison group, met physically for the first time. They invited me along to a picnic of bread and cheese, and cherries in an insanely beautiful spot overlooking the valley, with views of distant mountains. Their current aims are:

• To give individual TI’s more visibility through providing web resources
• Work with other organisations
• Encourage regional meetings
• Keep in touch with International Transition engage in debates and learn about practical action
• Support training in France
• Support rather than lead

There followed discussions about the legitimacy of their organisation, and whether TIs in France accept them. Some interesting questions are being asked of them by another similar environmental organisation, Colibris. Questions such as, How long to maintain the present temporary group before a more structured organisation with better and more direct representation of TIs can emerge?, How to make themselves better known?, finding funding, and creating contact people between themselves and the TIs.

They presented themselves to the TIs represented the next day, and although they decided not to ask for a vote of confidence as many TIs weren’t represented, support for the work they were doing was expressed many times. There was appreciation for them taking on the national coordination job, while working and being heavily involved in their local TI. Trieve en Transition was also much appreciated for organising this conference!

The sit-down supper at the Unleashing of Transition Trieve

Day two finished by Trieve in Transition official unleashing, with 6 mayors of the region speaking, and myself saying a few words on behalf of TN. We symbolically cut a plastic ribbon to mark the unleashing. A sit down dinner for 300 and singing and dancing went on into the night.

Day three

The Transition Clinic in Trieve

Workshops dominated this day. I held a Transition Clinic, creating a world cafe to enable hot topics to be explored. Sixty of us (and four film makers) were working and moving around in a space better suited for twenty. It was a good lesson in how the space in which you are working can create difficulty, and also the cooperation shown in working with difficulty.

In the afternoon I convened a ‘Transition Interior’ workshop. There is an appreciation of this work, particularly amongst those find it familiar territory, that excites and ignites a fire to Transition like no other aspect of what we do. It has to be done well and respectfully; more so then other areas of our work (I humbly include myself in this category). There are, of course, good reasons why many find inner transition difficult territory. This reticence to ‘go there’ speaks of pain, loss, and difficulty, and as in Permaculture the problem is the solution. Inner Permaculture is an area less explored then other areas of a ‘permanent’ or sustainable culture and probably one of our greatest resources.

Transition in France has taken off. Two trainings are taking part this month, in Semur and Grenoble. The first official initiative has unleashed. The French hub web site has 35 initiatives listed. The French language edition of the Transition Handbook is doing well.  The signs are good, I wish them bon chance!

Naresh Giangrande

Rob adds:

Just after Naresh sent me this to post here, I had an email from a friend passing on a comment from a friend of hers in France.  “a wandering story-teller came by with her donkey to the place I used to live in, and told all sorts of stories (really for children), BUT….she started off by waving Rob’s How To Be A Transition Town manual in the air, saying it was her bible and everyone should read it! Tell him she’s talking about it all over the Drome”…

Nelson Mandela Bay Transition Network's ‘introduction to food gardening workshop’

It’s time to share news of all those wonderful Transition activities that you busy Transitioners have been up to this past month…  The first alert – in case you haven’t already heard – is to tell you that the Transition Network is now on Facebook…have a look!  Starting the rounds down in Australia, Transition Town Triangle Plus and Clean Energy for Eternity recently held a meeting to set out a ground breaking plan developed by Beyond Zero Emissions to move Australia’s energy systems on to renewable technologies in just 10 years… you can do it!

Over in South Africa, Nelson Mandela Bay Transition Network has been busy with an ‘introduction to food gardening workshop’, giving a presentation on Transition, and attending a talk on fracking (by Shell, very scary stuff) in an environmentally sensitive area of South Africa (watch it here).

Transition Town Worthing and Transition Town Shoreham are planning to re-develop the disused Upper Beeding cement works into a heritage, training and employment centre to promote local regeneration and foster sustainable lifestyles…wow some big projects being planned! Also from Transition Town Worthing, we have a little film made at the Farmer’s Market to relaunch their energy group:

… and they have been hard at work creating their new permaculture community garden…

Transition Town Maidenhead is enjoying their rounds of Green Drinks, so why not join them if you’re around that way…  In Amersham, Sam Free explains what Transition is:

Transition Town Totnes's food group hold a social get together meal...

Southend in Transition see their role as a networking one to help bring together and foster communication between all the Transition-related activities going on in their area. Sounds great! Congratulations to Paisley Transition Town for winning a share of £300,000 in the latest round of the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund awards. Transition Town Cheltenham has a great line up of activities for the spring, with workshops and gardening and beekeeping and movies and clay oven-building… Dundee West Transition Town helped Friends of the Earth and People and Planet to organise a Hustings on green issues for their SNP candidate. Transition Town Totnes have updated us with all their activities over the last month, so have a look and you may get some new ideas, and here are some really lovely photos of their people and activities…

In Highbury, in London, Manisha Abeyasingh who explains what Highbury Transition Towns Food Growing Project is about:

Transition Rutland get their bikes out...

Transition Town Christchurch will be holding an open-house cafe event with seeds and plants to swap, gardening magazines and recipes to share, and a fair trade stall with chocolate-tasting sessions…so try and get along to support. Transition Rutland has been busy with bicycle activities including free bike checks, cycle confidence training for adults and a community bike ride, all with the aim of getting more people out of their cars and on to their bicycles. Transition Town Hebden Bridge recently held a very successful Give Away Free Day where people were invited to have a bit of a spring clean and leave things they no longer need outside their homes labelled as ‘free to take’. Items included a huge tent, a child’s car seat, lots of furniture, a bike…what a great idea! Transition Town Sturminster Newton made this short promotional film to promote their work:

Transition Town Belsize recently held an evening of mourning and seasonal celebration, which drew inspiration from Joanna Macey’s work. Delphis-eco, together with Transition Town Wandsworth and Seed Pantry, will be creating an urban food growing space at their offices as part of the Capital Growth partnership initiative that aims to create 2012 new community food growing spaces in London by the end of 2012. In Bristol, Transition Montpelier is starting up its Urban Greening Workdays from May, so if you live round there why not lend a hand with planting trees, digging veggie beds, putting in waterbutts and more…no experience necessary, just bring some enthusiasm and a little bit of spare time. There’s a new Transition initiative at Dundee Transition Town, so we welcome you and wish you the best. Paul from Transition Cornwall recently spoke at an Ultra-Low Carbon Farming event in Parliament where he addressed MPs about farming without fossil fuels and shared ideas on how to make UK agriculture more resilient.

OVESCO, the Ouse Valley Energy Services Company, which has overlaps with Transition Town Lewes, recently took their pedal bike power-generating thing to Transition Chichester’s Energy Fair as part of a road show OVESCO and the Transition Town Lewes Energy Group have been taking to events in South East England.

Their share launch to finance the ‘community power station’ on the roof of the local Harveys’ brewery is going well, here is a film of Chris Rowland of OVESCO on the roof where the panels will be installed…

…and then they held an amazing launch event, as documented here…

In Ireland, Transition Town Kinsale recently held their Spring Fair which concluded with an evening concert in Kinsale FEC’s cob/cordwood amphitheatre:

In other parts of Europe, we’ve got a great film from Transition Bielefeld with some interesting road action…, and here’s another fantastic film showing Transition Deventer working hard on a piece of land loaned to them by the council where they’re learning skills in sustainable building and vegetable growing…wonderful!

Transition Town Witzenhausen set up a stall recently opposite a rather loud brass band.  It isn’t clear who got there and set up first…

Over in North America, Transition Wayland recently hosted a talk by Tina Clarke of Transition US, and one of their members was interviewed by Wayland Patch, which you can read here.  Transition Town Chelsea put on a few special events to mark Earth Day, and there’s a new group getting started at Transition Kensington so we wish you the very best! Transition Town Phillips recently held a Mother Earth Day and Potluck with poetry, singing, face painting and spending time getting to know each other more. Transition Long Prairie is ready to go into their community and put into practice the ideas they’ve come up with during their study group sessions…so we wish you all the best! Transition Honesdale and the Ellen Memorial Health Care Centre are starting up a community garden with 25 plots for local residents who don’t have gardens but want to grow their own food…fantastic!  Transition Victoria gave an introductory talk about Transition to the Regional Climate Action Forum hosted by the Quesnel Climate Action group.

So here Helen stops and bids you all farewell. Keep up the wonderful work you do for Transition, for your communities and for this beautiful world we all share. I’ll be watching as Transition continues to grow and flourish… Thank you all for the fantastic things you do.

Our deepest gratitude to Helen for all her work for Transition Network over the past two years, and we wish her all the best on her onward travels… we’d also like to welcome Amber to the fold, who will be doing next month’s update, among other things!

Mark, who organises a very popular local comedy night in Dorchester, hands a cheque for over £1,000 to Jenny of Transition Town Dorchester in support of ‘Under Lanche Community Farm’, a TTD initiative on land leased from the Duchy of Cornwall.

Context

Access to land is vital to many of the practical initiatives that rebuilding your community’s resilience requires.  Whether you are trying to initiate PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS (3.9) and LOCAL FOOD INITIATIVES (3.10), or whether you are thinking on a much greater scale in terms of STRATEGIC LOCAL INFRASTRUCTURE (5.5) and enabling opportunities for SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP (5.2), this is an important ingredient.

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

The Challenge

Promoting the idea of local food production and the rollout of urban agriculture, whether in the form of market gardens, allotments or back gardening, will clearly struggle if no land is made available to make it possible.  Many settlements, even if they are built to a high density, will have both land within them that could be used, and also land around them.  Ensuring secure access to this land will be vital.

Core Text

The localisation of the production of food, fibre, fuel and so on will, by necessity, require obtaining access to land.  Our towns and cities could be a network of intensive market gardens, productive fruit and nut-bearing trees, of fish and vegetable-producing hydroponics systems set up on areas of hard standing, of productive ponds and new allotments.  Such a tapestry of land uses would greatly increase the biodiversity and food security of the community, but of course none of it is possible if no-one has access to any of the land needed to make it a reality.

A look at an aerial photograph of any town or city shows plenty of unused pockets of land in or around it, but there are a number of reasons why that land may prove problematic to gain access to.  It may be that the owner is holding onto it in the hope of getting planning permission for development at some point in the future, it may be that its ownership is contested, that it is owned by the local authority to have no use for it, it may even be that nobody actually knows whose it is!  Before we look at the stories of how different initiatives have secured access to land, let’s first cover the basic principles.  In order to be able to own or lease land or property, your Transition initiative will need a constitution, and will need to be a legally recognised entity.  There are only 4 organisational models (in the UK at least) that can do this:

• A Company Limited by Guarantee
• Industrial and Provident Societies
• Community Interest Companies
• Charitable Incorporated Associations

If your Transition initiative is an unincorporated association or a Trust, legally speaking it is not able to exist as a legal person separate from the people who run it, and therefore it cannot hold or rent land in its own name.  However, this can be overcome by one person in the group doing so on behalf of the organisation, although it should be noted that in that example, that person would be taking on the legal liabilities for the purchase/lease[1].

So, how have different Transition initiatives managed to access land in their area for projects?  Here are some stories from across the Transition Network.  For Rachel Roddam in Transition Derwent, one of the keys to accessing land was active engagement in the community in a range of groups, which has proved a great way of embedding Transition, and also taking any perceived fear out of making land available to Transition groups.  She is a member of her local Hall and Recreation Ground committees, which had previously ignored engagement with the Transition initiative on particular projects, but now, with a re-energised committee, gives them a much fairer hearing.   This active engagement has opened the door to a number of potential local food projects.

Environmental Change Makers, the precursor to Transition Los Angeles and many of the local initiatives now springing up across the city, began by working with a local church in 2008, who were keen for them to dig up their lawn and make a food garden.  The garden is extended each season, and is maintained by a mixture of local neighbours and Transitioners, who also use the garden for running their reskilling courses.  Much of the produce is distributed by the church.  The success of this project led to the group being asked to support and advise other similar projects.  Joanne Poyourow from the group offers these tips gleaned from their work so far:

• land access that depends on a single decisionmaker (church priest, school principal) is MUCH easier to move forward.
• it doesn’t matter if the groups align perfectly on why they want a garden.  For instance, the church members aren’t fully on-board our peak oil concerns, but they have other reasons for wanting a garden in that space.  if you can structure a “win/win” situation, you have the potential for a great partnership.
• land access that is tied up in large-scale politics is very challenging to obtain.  Despite high visibility, it is probably not the best place to start because it takes so long to show results.  It might be wiser to allow these laggards to follow at a later stage in the Transition timeline.
• when you can get a shovel in the dirt early, even in a small way, it invigorates the whole team.  Enthusiasm builds, everyone gets a taste of the possibilities, and things get moving a whole lot faster.
• using resources (community connections, know-how, materials sources, etc) from one small project to build another small project helps spread impact quickly and very visually.  Environmental Change-Makers brought the community connections we had made via the church garden to bear on the middle school garden and that helped the groundbreaking happen much sooner.
• Capitalizing on an existing trend — like the Alice Waters movement for school gardens — really helps move things along quickly.
• Projects don’t have to be big to be very successful, and to get lots of publicity and attention.  The church garden isn’t a lot of square footage, but it sure gains media attention, has built community familiarity, and has won neighbourhood affection.
• Starting small allows you to take care of and maintain the land well. There is a huge learning curve — how to take care of the land, how to build the soil back to fertility, how to achieve/maintain high levels of productivity.  Our society doesn’t have this know-how, we have been through “the dark ages” and now need to rediscover the knowledge base.  You don’t need criticism for under-maintained or abandoned-looking land to add to your burden while you’re getting geared up.
• Design things so that the garden is highly visually attractive.  This point — to bring art into it — is emphasized in other aspects of Transition, but it is worth saying about land access.  Our first garden was built on a front lawn in an area where (we later learned) the homeowners association prohibited front-yard vegetables.  Yet those same people featured our garden on the neighborhood Garden Tour in spring 2009!  If you make it aesthetically beautiful, it wins people over.

Land access of a less conventional nature has been secured by the ‘Food From The Sky’ initiative[2] in Crouch End in London, an offshoot of Transition Belsize.  They have been working with their local Budgens supermarket to increase its stocking of local produce (it now stocks 1,500 products from within 100 miles of the shop), and have now started a food garden on the roof of the shop.  Getting access to the roof proved complex from a legal/insurance perspective, but now the garden is providing produce for the shop and for local people, and is attracting many volunteers, including pupils from the local school.

Planting the Scilly orchard, March 2010.

On the Isles of Scilly, Transition Scilly wanted to create a community orchard, and approached the Duchy of Cornwall, who own most of the land on the islands, to ask for a suitable plot.  The Duchy weren’t keen on letting land to Transition Scilly as an unincorporated organisation, being much happier with leasing land either to individuals or businesses, so one of the members who is already a farmer on the islands, leasing land from the Duchy, added to site to the portfolio of the land he rents.  The two-thirds of an acre was identified by a sympathetic and supportive land steward, and the orchard was planted at a community tree planting day (see left) in March 2010 and is now growing nicely[3].

The old saying “if you don’t ask you don’t get” is well illustrated in the story of the North Queensferry Transition Initiative in Scotland and their quest for a site for a community forest garden.  They began discussions with Fife Council, who invited them to look at the maps of land they own and to identify any sites they were interested in.  Fortuitously, the site they identified is owned by a part of the Council that has a very supportive allotments officer, who is taking their designs[4] to the planning department.  Turns out he is big on actively encouraging models of community gardens as opposed to traditional allotments because it simplifies things for the Council, who only need one contract with one organisation, rather than multiple leases to individuals.

The idea that a Council might actively encourage local community groups to take on land it owns is something that you might find a lot more interest in as government cuts mean that Councils are actively needing to find other ways of managing their assets.  Transition Newton Abbot found that very shortly after their formation, they were approached by their local Council who offered them use of a site in the town that had been unused for 20 years and had become a bit of a jungle.  Their advice for other initiatives is to find out what pockets of land the Council owns and have struggled to find a use for, those sites will be a good place to start.

Often though, the reasons for land not being available are more complex and are outside anything that a Transition initiative can influence.  Almost by definition, land in or on the edge of a settlement is subject to great pressures in terms of possible future development.  Darren Woodiwiss of Transition Town Market Harborough[5] told me that “we must be one of the most in-filled settlements in the country with every pocket of land having been built upon of speculatively purchased by Architects or builders apart from two plots”.  One site is owned by the local Council who have it earmarked for affordable housing, and the other by a family who don’t want it built on, but also don’t want it used by anyone else.  The group has decided to wait until the Local Development Framework is published in the hope that then some sites will be excluded from development.  This earmarking of land for possible future development and its resultant mothballing is one of the greatest barriers to innovative land use.

In Narberth, 10 years of trying to get the local Councils to provide new land for allotments had been unproductive and left many in the community to associate the word ‘allotment’ with feelings of intense frustration.  In 2008 a new approach was taken, and a new group approached a co-operative landowner who was keen to support their efforts.  The 3 acre site was leased on a 10 year lease at a reasonable rent, ploughed and divided into plots.  The allotments have been well subscribed and there are now plans for a community orchard on the site.  The group found input from local Transition groups and the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens very helpful.  If your pursuit for land gets ‘stuck’, it may be worth adopting the lesson from Narberth of taking a fresh approach to the challenge.

One big success story in terms of opening up land for community food growing comes from the Isle of Man.  Three years ago the Permaculture Association launched a campaign called “I want an allotment”, where the public were told how to lobby their local authorities, while at the same time, the local authorities were alerted that this was going to happen.  Three hectic years later there are now 7 new allotment sites, most of which can be linked to the campaign.  An all-island planning guidance manual is now being prepared and landowners are being encouraged to see allotments as a form of diversification.

The site design plan for Transition Town Dorchester's Community Farm.

All of this need not take ages either.  The Transition Town Dorchester group, inspired by Transition Network’s ‘Local Food’ book, decided they wanted to start a community farm.  The used GoogleEarth to identify odd bits of land in the area, and identified five.  With the help of the local Town Council they looked into who owned the sites, and found that four were owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.  They called the Duchy office, expecting to be put on the long finger, but had a very productive conversation with an intrigued official who told them “put together a proposal, send it to me and I’ll see what we can do”.  The group duly created their proposal, described as “all very official and professional” and sent it in.

They met with the Duchy official, found that the site they had initially preferred wasn’t available, but that three other sites were.  They negotiated a 5 years tenancy (£200 per year for a 2 acre site), as part of which the Duchy paid for fencing the site, installing paths and also provided top soil.   The site was designed as a mixture of vegetables, a polytunnel, orchard, poultry and a wild area (see right).  The project now has a name, ‘Under Lanche Community Farm’[6], and membership is open to anyone.  When the agreement was signed, a public meeting was held, and now the project is well underway, a local comedy night donating over £1,000 towards the project.  Timing from initial idea to securing the lease of the site?  8 months.

The Solution

Access to land can be secured in a range of imaginative ways.  Work with landowners, seek land that is currently unused and which can be used for free (such as through a ‘Garden Share’ scheme), fundraise to buy some land into community ownership, or invite landowners to see opening up access as being in both their and the local community’s interest.

Connections to Other Patterns

Obtaining access to land will require drawing in many other patterns.  Working with other organisations and persuading them to engage in making land available will require STANDING UP TO SPEAK (1.8), BUILDING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS (2.12), and possibly ENGAGING THE COUNCIL (4.4) and ENGAGING LOCAL LANDOWNERS (4.8).  In order to be a body that can legally lease or own land, you will need to consider BECOMING A FORMAL ORGANISATION (2.1) and also formulating some innovative approaches to FINANCING YOUR WORK (3.3).  Once you have gained access, THINKING LIKE A DESIGNER (1.4) will be hugely helpful in planning the site, and knowing how to manage and inspire VOLUNTEERS (3.2) will also be important.  You will also need to think about COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP OF ASSETS (5.8) and possibly COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE/FARMS/BAKERIES (5.9) as one model of using the site.

[2] http://www.foodfromthesky.org.uk, and here is a short piece about the project from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10424392.

[3] You can keep up to date with the Transition Scilly orchard on their blog.

[4] http://sites.google.com/site/northqueensferrytransition/groups/food-growing-group/food-forest

[5] http://www.transitionharborough.spruz.com/

[6] The farm has its own blog.

Please leave comments here.

Of course one of the dangers of writing history is the people that you leave out, so I apologise in advance, by its very nature I am scrabbling about in my memory here and this is by no means an attempt to be exhaustive, but from my memories of the period 1996-2005, here are some of the people I think should such a history should record (apologies also for the fact that this is inevitably a pretty Munster-based selection…).  There are the permaculture pioneers, the people who were teaching permaculture up and down the country, often using their own evolving sites as their classroom: Marcus McCabe in Clones, Richard Webb, Graham Strouts in West Cork, Philip Allen in Belfast, Dominic Waldron, the straw mulch man, Klaus Hauschild, and John Dolan, the pond wizard.

In the media there were people who pushed this whole thing forward too, getting stories about what was going on into the mainstream media.  There were the various publications, Don Coughlan’s The Source, which didn’t make it beyond a few editions but was great while it lasted, Sustainability Magazine which also recently stopped publishing, Construct Ireland which has done a huge amount to spread green building ideas in Ireland.  There were the broadcasters, Duncan Stewart who has made very influential environmental programmes for years, George Lee who made ‘Future Shock’ for RTE about peak oil, and writers such as Iva Pocock and Adrienne Murphy who got stories into the press about these things from early on.

There were the ‘Monsanto 6′ who pulled up the first Monsanto trial crops in Ireland, John Seymour, Gavin Harte, Pauric Cannon, Davie Philip, Adrienne Murphy and Richard Roche, who ended up not being prosecuted. Also, in terms of food, and pushing for looking at food in a different way, organisations such as the Dublin Food Co-op were years ahead of their time, and writer and cook Darina Allen has done a huge amount to push the idea of local food in the Irish mainstream.  The Irish Seed Savers have done amazing work protecting the country’s genetic heritage and making it available again to growers.  Madeline McKeever in West Cork is now doing similar things, selling local heirloom seed varieties. Dominick Cullnane ran the Mallow Garden Festival for some years and created a very high profile space for many innovative ‘green’ businesses and craftspeople to read a wider audience.

Then there are the building and construction pioneers.  Architects like Brian O’Brien and Mike Haslam of Solearth Architects, designers of The Village in Cloughjordan and green building pioneers at a time when nobody knew what they were on about.  Other architects, such as Paul Leech, Sally Starbuck, Tony Cohu, Rachel Bevan, who were bringing ideas about sustainability into their work at a time when the national push was for as much construction built as cheaply as possible, usually using concrete blocks.  There are the pioneers of different natural building approaches, Marcus and Kate McCabe who built Ireland’s first strawbale house and are now great hemp advocates, the many timber framers up and down the country who tried to break concrete’s stranglehold, the people who learnt cob building, often at The Hollies, and went on to do it in other places.  There’s The Village project, many of whose members have been involved since 1997, and only now, 13 years later, are actually building their houses.  It is a project that is the embodiment of tenacity and patience.

Brian Rogers, Sligo’s last master thatcher, who has done so much to keep that art alive, and Dan McPolin of Narrow Water Lime Services, who first got me fired about about lime. Christy Collard and Saul Mosbacher introduced the chainsaw into construction, bringing the concept of the reciprocal frame roof forward with each new construction. There was the then Mary O’Donnell (since divorced and I forget her new surname) who did an amazing job in the mid-90s trying to build a methane biodigestor near Skibbereen that would have used local slurry to power a swimming pool and ice rink, many years ahead of her time, and came very close to realising it.  Quentin Gargan and Clare Watson who, among other great work promoting renewable energy and running for political office among other things, built a very well researched and gorgeous strawbale house.

There were those who pushed for a new way of looking at Ireland’s woodlands, for a move away from monocultural forestry to  a more diverse and productive approach.  Jacinta French and Paul McCormick started experimenting with growing nut trees in West Cork, and Mike Collard, whose Future Forests nursery has been a huge catalyst for the planting of broadleaf trees and more unusual productive trees (as well as for the idea that chainsaws can do a lot more than just cut down trees).  Joe Gowran and Mark Wilson’s ‘Coppice Association of Ireland’ did great work promoting the idea of coppicing, and Ted Cooke reconnected people to their cultural connection to the forest through story and through experience.  Ian Wright and the Irish National Forestry Foundation created, at Manch, a series of demonstration trials to show the potential of broadleaves in Irish forestry.  Then there was the woodland survey work that An Tasice did, pushed forward in West Cork by Jacqi Hodgson, Tony Cohu, Joyce Russell and others.

There were the educators too.  Sonairte in Meath was one of the first environmental education centres in the country, as was The Ark Permaculture Centre in Clones, Co. Monaghan.  There are the organic colleges, An T-Ionad Glas Centre for Organic Education and the Organic Centre in Rossinver, as well as the pioneers within the universities, such as Tipperary Institute, one of the first off the block in terms of weaving sustainability into their courses through the work of people such as Seamus Hoyne and Kevin Healion.  There’s Dr. Anne B Ryan at NUI Maynooth, who has researched and published on the whole notion of ‘enough’.  There is the permaculture course at Kinsale Further Education College, started due to the vision of its Principal, John Thuellier, and the ongoing training work done at The Hollies Centre for Practical Sustainability by Thomas and Ulrike Riedmuller and others.

There were those who argued for treating waste water in a different ways, promoting the idea of composting systems and of reed bed construction, Marcus McCabe, Feidhlim Harty, Olan Herr, John Dolan, often found up to their knees in water, but who did much to shift the idea that the septic tank is king.  Who can forget Marcus McCabe, at a conference in Dublin full of planners and architects, passing a bucket round the audience containing the well-composted output from his family’s bucket toilet system?  There were the economists, people who argued that the financial path being pursued by Ireland in its Celtic Tiger boom was unsustainable, in particular Richard Douthwaite, the only person mentioned here who does get a mention in Liam Leonard’s book.  The pioneers of the early local currency experiments in the country, both LETS schemes and printed currencies.  And of course Dr. Colin Campbell, the founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, who gave talks up and down Ireland, and whose presentations to the Irish treasury led to his nickname of ‘Dr Death’.

And then finally of course, there are the networkers, the people who connected all the bits together.  Davie Philip, networker par excellence, initially with Caoimhin Woods, who put on the Convergence Festival every year as a way of networking and building a movement, and who has provided an extraordinary service to it ever since.  They produced the ‘Source Book’, the country’s first green directory, which subsequently moved online.  There are, of course, many many people I have forgotten or never heard of who should be in here.

I think that the work of these, and other pioneers, should not be forgotten in any history of the environmental movement in Ireland.  Of course such a movement needs the campaigners, those who lobby politicians, who mobilise campaigns against environmentally disastrous projects.  But there are also the stories of the pioneers, the craftspeople trying to retain and promote traditional crafts, the people who have often taken great financial risks and leaps into the unknown because they felt that certain things had to be done, allowing those who came after to learn as much from their failures as from their successes.  With the Celtic Tiger well and truly now unravelled, and Ireland staring into a very uncertain future, it may be that much of the work of those mentioned above is finally coming into its own, and deserves to take its place in the history books.

Permaculture students at Kinsale FEC make final changes to their permaculture design for the college grounds in advance of presenting it to the rest of the students (May 2005).

Context:

The ability to embed good design thinking in Transition is a key tool for its success. Permaculture design offers the clearest and most practical tool for doing so, and it offers an approach that ought to underpin PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS, as well as the ENERGY DESCENT ACTION PLAN process, and also the core thinking processes of the wider initiative. Although many people associate permaculture design purely with LOCAL FOOD INITIATIVES, it ought to be seen as central to the larger process of STRATEGIC THINKING which the initiative is building up to.

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

The challenge:

A community group that comes together to redesign itself so as to be more resilient and more able to function in a post oil world needs to have, at its fingertips, the thinking tools in order to understand how to apply systems thinking, integrated design, how to see systems as intertwined and connected. It needs, as it were, a grounding in being able to see possibilities rather than probabilities, and the ability, without the need for extensive retraining, to be able to think like designers and to think holistically.

The Core Text

Permaculture is a tricky thing to explain to people in a quick snappy soundbite without also producing a flipchart and drawing pictures of chickens and greenhouses with lots of arrows joining things up (believe me I’ve tried!). There are as many definitions of permaculture as there are permaculture practitioners, so I’ll give you mine as an opener…

For me, permaculture is like glue, a ‘design glue’ if you like, which is used to stick together all the elements that will make up a truly sustainable and resilient culture. If you think of the ingredients that such a culture will depend on, such as local food production, energy generation, skilful management of water, meaningful employment as well as many other elements, what permaculture brings is the ability to assemble those things in the most skilful and beneficial way possible. It has also been described by someone else far more succinct than me as “the art of maximising beneficial relationships”. I rather like that.

Permaculture began during the times of the first oil shocks of the 1970s with a purely agricultural focus, as a contraction of ‘permanent agriculture’¹. It was, as first set out, an approach for the design, implementation and maintenance of agricultural systems modelled on natural systems, particularly taking climax forests as the model. If forests are able to function for thousands of years in a way that is highly diverse, highly productive in terms of biomass, yet requiring no fertiliser, no watering, no weeding and so on, then perhaps that might prove a better model for an agricultural system than monoculture.

Since then, permaculture has evolved to be seen as a contraction of ‘permanent’ and ‘culture’, that is it goes beyond agriculture, arguing that food production needs to be seen in its place as part of a wider culture of permanence, the creating of a culture with the capacity to endure. It is now seen as a design system which draws from observations of how natural systems function as well as insights from systems thinking and applies them to how we consciously and intentionally design the world around us.

The Ark Permaculture Project in Clones, Co. Monaghan, Ireland in about 1997, a good example of the house/pond/garden combination referred to in this 'Ingredient'.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you want to design a landscape which includes a house, a pond and a vegetable garden. You could, of course, position them randomly in the landscape based purely on aesthetics. They would do what they do well enough, but with some sensible linking up, our three elements can do far more. Let’s say we put the pond on the south side of the house with the vegetable garden between the two. Having the pond in front of the garden, and the heat sink the pond provides, means that the garden’s temperature is now 1-2° warmer than it would otherwise have been. The pond in front of the house means winter sun is reflected into the house, reducing its need for lighting. The garden being immediately in front of the house means that it is far less labour intensive to maintain. The silt from the pond can be used to fertilise the garden, and watering it becomes much easier. All of these additional benefits are only possible because of the conscious design of these elements. Imagine applying that kind of ‘joined-up thinking’ to a range of other challenges and you’ve got permaculture.

Permaculture is usually taught in two ways, either as a 2 day Introductory course, or as a 72 hour Permaculture Design Course, which is taught in a variety of forms, from 2 week intensives to evening classes that run over a year. There is an established network of permaculture teachers, local groups and also some excellent and well-established demonstration projects². In my experience, having at least one person in a Transition group who is steeped in permaculture can make a huge difference to the group. There are many potential overlaps between Transition and permaculture, and hopefully your initiative can be a part of deepening this relationship.

The solution:

Permaculture design is an excellent way of taking a crash course in designing for resilience. It has evolved over 40 years as a design system for the design of sustainable human settlements, and its principles and ethics form an excellent and easily understandable foundation for the design work that your initiative will undertake. Make sure that some members of your core group have done a Permaculture Design course, and try, where possible, to weave permaculture training and principles through the work of your Transition group.

Connections to other patterns:

Permaculture training ought to be a key aspect of your GREAT RESKILLING work. It can also be a key part of your work ENGAGING SCHOOLS and will greatly inform any VISIONING work that you do. There is plenty of room in permaculture for ARTS AND CREATIVITY, such as in the creation of MEANINGFUL MAPS. It is important though that permaculture design work is based on good CRITICAL THINKING, ensuring it is based on good research where it is available.

References:

1. As set out in the first permaculture book, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren’s ‘Permaculture One’ (Tagari Publishing).
2. The Permaculture Association (Britain)’s excellent website can be found at www.permaculture.org.uk and has a very thorough resources section.

(Please leave comments here).

…and here’s mine….