Both of the actual physical launches felt like really rewarding opportunities to introduce and unveil the book to people, and it now feels suitably launched.  Both also began with a Transition pub quiz, which I’ll put on the website in a couple of days to see how you would have done had you been able to make it.  It has to be said that most people did pretty well, I must have made it too easy!

At both launches the book was introduced in the context of how the Transition Handbook (now sadly out of print!), although a great summation of Transition at the time it was published, has since been rapidly overtaken by events and failed to capture what Transition has become, in particular the inadequacy of the ’12 Steps of Transition’ model to truly reflect the complexity and the breadth of what Transition has become.

The collaborative process that has run for the last 18 months of identifying and collaboratively building a collection of ‘ingredients’ has resulted in a book which is rich and far more reflective of the movement (these will also be made available online soon).  It is rich with stories, photos and anecdotes sent in from around the world.

The Totnes event wasn’t dependent on the weather, whereas the London event, on a rooftop 3 storeys up would have been a very different event had the heavens opened, or the wind picked up.  In the event, it started out cloudy and grew steadily brighter, by the end it was positively sun-drenched.  People from a range of London groups attended, and Transition Leytonstone event presented the event with a bottle of ‘Transition Ale’, brewed by their local brewery to mark their second birthday.

The London event also won in terms of music, the event being opened with a song from a Bangladeshi member of staff in the Budgens supermarket, who sang about a vegetable grown there which sometimes grows to such a size that it can be hollowed out and turned into a stringed instrument, which his song was written to be accompanied by!

Opening the London launch with a song from Bangladesh

At the Totnes launch, a few rows of the seats were taken up by people visiting the town as part of a ‘Transition Tour’, students from the US.  They had chosen to visit the town during an amazing Transition-filled week, one that included an event every night of the week, including the launch on the Tuesday evening, and Bill McKibben on the following night.  During my talk I waxed lyrical about community breweries, and the following day, Hal Gillmore, who hosted the tour, texted me to say that one of the students had said afterwards, “I don’t want to be an architect any more, I want to be a brewer”.  I’m expecting the irate letter from indignant parents from the US soon.

Although at the Totnes launch the place was well-stocked with books, which flew out of the door (metaphorically of course, not literally, that wouldn’t work at all), the London launch came very close to being bookless.  An arrangement had been made that a nearby bookshop would bring books to sell, but when, with an hour to go, they still hadn’t shown up, we felt a Plan B might be a plan, so the book’s distributors in London couriered a couple of boxes over which arrived half way through the event!  They weren’t enough, and we sold out pretty early on.

Signing books at Food from the Sky

The Totnes crowd didn’t have many questions, but at Food from the Sky there were loads, and the event finished with an opportunity for the different London groups to stand up and talk about things they have underway.  Both events were attended by lots of good friends, as well as by lots of new people, a perfect mixture.

We are also now shipping orders from Transition Culture, in spite of a slight delay in getting extra books to cope with the demand.  The kitchen table is now covered in books, wrapping, sticky tape and address labels.  If you have ordered a copy, stand by your post box, it should be with you soon!  My thanks to everyone at Green Books, Food from the Sky, Crouch End Budgens and Transition Network who made these events happen, and to everyone who turned out.  My thanks also to Stacey, Jo and Mike for use of their photos here.  You can see Mike’s collection of photos from the London launch here.

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

On Thursday 16th June Grand Designs TV guru, Kevin McCloud, presented the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy and Behaviour Change to the Transition Together project run by Transition Town Totnes (TTT).   The award, worth £10,000 plus support and mentoring from the Ashden Trust over the next 12 months, came just 18 months after TTT were awarded £625,000 as part of the previous government’s Low Carbon Community Challenge. This money made it possible to scale up the previous Transition Together programme and make grants available to install solar PV systems in participating households (you can read Ashden’s very thorough case study here). Here’s a short film about Transition Together (aka Transition Streets) produced by the Ashden Awards:

The local news also did an excellent piece about Transition Streets.  Other Ashden Award winners, four from the UK and five from Africa and Asia, are well worth looking at if only to remind us of the stark contrast between the environmental problems and solutions we see here in Britain and those in the Third World.   The other UK winners were Radian Housing Association whose investment in low carbon new homes and retrofits made them a worthy choice for this year’s Gold Prize; Midlands Wood Fuel, who provide locally sourced wood chips to power biomass boilers to replace oil and gas; the Centre for Alternative Technology which has trained thousands of people in renewable energy technologies and Severn Wye Energy Agency which has teamed up with over 30 schools to empower school students to track the carbon footprint of their schools and take action to reduce it.

International winners were Abellon Clean Energy in India, who turn crop waste into fuel pellets to replace fossil fuels; the Agha Khan Planning and Building Service in Pakistan, a project to improve health, save trees and make homes warmer by improving wood burning stoves in remote villages; Husk Power Systems which uses rice husks to power electricity production at the village scale in rural India: ToughStuffInternational, whose simple, affordable and robust solar kits are bringing electricity to rural locations in Africa and Gold Medal winners, Toyala Energy, whose fuel efficient charcoal stoves are already meeting the needs of over a million people in West Africa.

The previous day the finalists all met Prince Charles...

In tandem with the awards ceremony was a conference on sustainable energy with forthright speakers like Jonathan Porritt – “Why won’t the government fund a comparison between the cost effectiveness of energy efficiency and generating more power? Why all the lies suggesting nuclear power is cheaper than solar PV?” – and slightly less inspiring speakers such as Greg Barker, Minister of State for Climate Change and Stephen O’Brien, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development.

UK award winners were challenged to explain what they would say to David Cameron and Chris Huhne if trapped in a lift with them for two minutes. We can imagine the relief the award winners would have felt as the lift doors finally opened. However, the prospect of Porritt in the same situation would surely see Cameron and Huhne as by far the most uncomfortable travelers! No wonder that Porritt was kept well away from the ministers who spoke.  Here is a film of this event:

Not that they got off completely. Anna Ford and Kevin McCloud both challenged the government to do more by providing the legislative framework to make things happen.   Among the debates was a discussion about how to increase the uptake of energy saving solutions such as the Green Deal and other grants that are already available. The success of Transition Streets in achieving just this, particularly with low income households, may hold valuable lessons about the role of community involvement as the way forward.

One last thought? When we pat ourselves on the back for installing a kilowatt or two of solar PV, which might meet 25% or less of our needs, lets spare a thought for rural people without electricity. Among the stories told at the Ashden Awards were those of people who walk many hours to charge a mobile phone or children struggling to do their homework by the light of candles or smoking kerosene lamps. Just a few watts of power, costing $10 or less, can transform the lives of these people.

If you are interested in finding out more about Transition Together/Streets or want to start up your own version of the project then please see here.  Thanks to all of the Transition Together/Streets project team for their enthusiasm and dedication, and of course, to all of the households that have participated so far.

Chris Bird is author of ‘Local sustainable homes: how to make them happen in your community’ and is very active in the Transition Town Totnes Building and Housing Group and the Transition Homes initiative.

Receiving my certificate from Brian Harper, one of three Gasketeers who travelled to the Tagore Festival...

On Saturday I did a talk at the Tagore Festival which I hope to get a film of up soon.  Instead of using powerpoint, I told the story of Transition using different objects which different initiatives had sent me.  It went really well, and was a really enjoyable way of doing it.  One of the most substantial ‘props’ was a fully functioning Victorian gas lamp which the Malvern Gasketeers had brought all the way from Malvern that morning.  My thinking had been that the crescendo of my talk would be to invite them onstage and that they would light the lamp for all to see.  However, while setting up we were told that in order to light it we would have needed a licence from the local Council, so it remained unlit, albeit rather beautiful nonetheless. 

My talk at the Tagore Festival, with the gas lamp in pride of place...

After the talk, the three Gasketeers presented me with a beautiful certificate certifying that I will “henceforth be known as a Gasketeer”.  Very lovely of them.  It is an amazing initiative…  They have reduced the costs of maintaining 104 of Malvern’s historic gas lamps (the inspiration for the lamp post in C.S. Lewis’s ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’) from £580 each per year (£130 for gas, £450 for maintenance) to just £70 per year (£20 for gas and £50 for maintenance).  They have made them 10 times brighter than they were before, and they now produce no light pollution at all.  Here’s a short film about them…

The current expense of running the lamps brings them to costing the same as sodium or LED lamps, but they are now working on a scheme to power them with gas produced through anaerobic digestion, which would make them genuinely carbon neutral.  Also, sodium lamps last around 30 years before they need replacing, these last 100 years.  All repairs are done by Lynn Jones, the UK’s first female gas lamp technician, who does her maintenance rounds with everything she needs (including her ladder) on a bicycle trailer.  It really is a wonderful scheme, and my certificate now has pride of place in my house…

A recent Transition Training in Chile....

It’s the end of the month again, which means it’s time to bring you a taste of the wonderful Transitioney things that have been going on around the world. We’ll start in South America with some very exciting news from Colombia where they recently held their first three Transition Trainings, and here’s a report with a few pictures. And then there’s news of Chile’s first Transition Town at El Manzano in the BíoBío Region, started by three brothers who also established the Ecoescuela where they teach sustainable lifestyles.

Transition Town Fujino's logo....

Over in Japan, Transition Town Koganei recently held an awareness raising event for local leaders and stakeholders including the Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, local business owners, and people from various groups representing farmers, women, environment, local government, and non-profit organisations etc. They also held an Open Space session in Tsuru City, some mind map and timeline visioning exercises in Transition Town Koganei, and an all-Japan Transition Town meeting. They’ve started a bilingual wiki site called ‘Transition Town in Asia’, designed to help people in the ‘West’ find out about Transition activities in the Far East and will include an English page for each Transition Town in Japan, such as this one for TT Fujino. They’re also planning a big launch of the Japanese version of the Transition Handbook, which should be published soon. Thanks for the update Paul. They were to have an all-Japan meeting in the middle of March, but due to the very sad and unforeseen recent occurrences in Japan, the meeting has had to be postponed. You’ve been in our thoughts a lot.

Down in Australia, Transition Town Riddell recently launched their initiative at their first local food fare, which they’ll combine with a farmers’ market, tours of local food gardens, cooking demonstrations, tips on preserving foods…and…a bit of a treat…a lunch cooked by local chefs from local foods… Transition Town Perth is continuing its film screenings with the Economics of Happiness, while  Transition Town Maroondah’s ‘Organic Backyards Out East’ group is meeting regularly to help in each other’s gardens, go on excursions, share seeds and plants, and hold skills share workshops.

Transition continues to flourish in Europe where there have been more training events in Winterthur, Switzerland and another coming up in Freiburg, Germany. There has also been an open discussion evening in Winterthur, which generated much press coverage and awareness of Transition in Switzerland. There are about 40 Transition Initiatives at various stages of development in Germany with over 550 people registered on the German-speaking Transition website.  Transition Town Dordrecht in the Netherlands were recently out and about picking up rubbish in their area…

In the UK, Transition Town Oundle made an appearance at the Oundle Festival of Literature where a Transition Town Panel answered questions and gave advice on energy, recycling and transport for the ‘How Green is Our Oundle’ event at the festival. They also held a local produce recipe competition, with the recipes on display for sharing. Transition Town Grangemouth has got together with Recyke-a-Bike to sell refurbished bikes at cost price…Stocks are limited so don’t delay! Transition Town Finsbury Park recently met for a foodie event (see left) in the fantastic Blackstock Greenhouse where they cooked their foraged food, such as hogweed and nettles, and followed up with a discussion of what a food strategy should look like in N4. They also held an open space event ‘Show Me the Money’ to discuss support for local businesses, fair trade, ethical alternative banking systems and much more!  Well done Transition Town Tooting, whose Trashcatchers Carnival was shortlisted in the Best Event category of the national Climate Week Awards…

Here’s an article about some of the Transition Town Totnes peoples and their projects from Devon Life magazine, with some great pictures. Abbots Langley Transition Town Association held a very successful ‘Big Green Day’ (see right) to discuss how the community can work together to prepare for the effects of climate change, and all amidst an atmosphere of celebration and optimism.

South Ribble Transition Town held a clothes swapping party (see left) so that all those dedicated-followers-of-fashion could find some new outfits, while Transition Town Bromsgrove enjoyed their first local food fair where people could buy local food, participate in workshops and swap seeds, seedlings and plants… Transition Town Kingston took part in a ’Kingston Vision for 2020: A Green Energy Future’ event with people from the local community, local government, green industry and green business discussing this vision, the opportunities it could bring and how achievable it would be. Transition Town High Wycombe now has an energy group that’s part of the Community Carbon Task Force and will be organising community projects to share advice, information and examples and also provide funding to the local community.  Transition Town Marlow’s 100 solar project recently made the local news:

Sustainable Streatham recently held a meeting to decide whether to become a Transition Town or whether to put this on hold for a year…and you can find out here what they decided!… Chelmsford has now become a Transition Town, so we welcome them, and the group is inviting people to meet their members at the Big Green Bus… and we also welcome the new Basingstoke Transition Network.

As part of a Transition Town project and in celebration of living in Tottenham Road for 48 years, Fiona Green undertook a photography project to capture images of 45 people who live and work in her street…and you can see a few of Fiona’s pictures here. Taunton Transition Town has been very busy with their Transition Together project, and they’re inviting more people to join, so if you live in Taunton then why not get involved and save money on your energy, food and transport (see right). Transition Edinburgh South and Transition Herriot-Watt University have been awarded funding by the Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund, so congratulations to both. Transition Town West Kirby has lots of activities coming up, including songs on toast and forages for razor clams.

Colleges and universities are getting increasingly interested in Transition: on Plymouth University’s campus there’s a Slow Food project AND a farmers’ market! Wow! Bristol University has a student kitchen on campus that’s run by students for students where they teach each other about food and cooking, and Transition Southampton has set up a skillshare with Southampton University to share cooking skills. The University of Brighton is starting a food coop that’s expanding into the community, and they’re also working with a scheme called ‘Harvest the City’, while their Eastbourne College campus has set up a community allotment and is working towards a Garden Share scheme.  Transition Town Worthing have been busy making short films as part of their Energy Descent Action Plan process… the first asks “what is Transition Town Worthing?”:

… and then the following three films look in more depth at peoples’ visions for the future of Worthing:

Transition Town Shrewsbury recently held a Climate Action Think-Tank workshop to develop effective messages for encouraging people to reduce their carbon footprints. They also thought about different messages for different age groups and also about the easiest actions for the greatest impacts. Great idea! Transition Town Andover held a light bulb amnesty where people could take their old light bulbs and exchange them for free new low energy light bulbs…

Transition Town Totnes’s Business and Livelihoods group wants to help new business ideas become a reality and also create the right conditions for social enterprise to flourish in the town. They’ll also raise awareness amongst existing businesses about the dangers of continuing with business as usual, and help them minimise these risks so they thrive in the future. Transition Cambridge just celebrated their third birthday (here‘s Rob’s write up of the evening, and some pics taken on the night) and here’s a fab video of pictures to show what they’ve achieved so far…

In North America, Transition Town Putney helped organise a 2-day Putney Economic Summit, which explored practical ways of reviving and enriching the local economy and community. Transition Colorado held a conference (see left) to discuss the contribution of localised food systems in the Transition of their local economy, and there’s a useful report here. Transition Newton recently held a workshop to demonstrate and discuss methods of bio-intensive gardening and composting, while Transition Town Manchester showed ‘The Man Who Planted Trees’ to inspire people to plant hazelnut trees as part of their Hazelnut Planting Project.

Karen Lanphear and Richard Kuhnel were on the Prepper Broadcast talking about Sandpoint Transition Initiative and the wider Transition movement, and you can listen to the show here. Transition Mill Valley recently hosted a film screening with a talk, live music and discussions on strengthening the local economy and building community resilience, while Transition South Bay will soon be holding classes to learn all about their native plants, including which ones thrive best in the different ecosystems and how to care for them. In Transition New Port Richey, Eric Stewart recently gave a talk about Transition:

Transition Guelph, as part of their 'Resilience 2011' festival, celebrated Earth Hour by turning all the lights off in a local bar...

Haliburton County residents invited their neighbouring Barrie Transition Initiative to tell them all about Transition, and the meeting received a positive response with a commitment to make Haliburton a Transition community as well. Transition Victoria will be presenting the case for Transition Towns at a Regional Climate Action Forum in Quesnel being hosted by the Quesnel Climate Action group. Transition Guelph recently held its Resilience Festival combined with their Great Unleashing. The festival was a huge success and exceeded their expectations…see here for some fab pics. They had around 250 people attend the Friday evening keynote speech, and over 500 visitors to Saturday’s Eco-Market! The afternoon talks and discussions were well attended and in the evening there was a potluck, concert, drumming and dancing with around 300 people enjoying these Unleashing celebrations. Congratulations!  Here is a short film made by their local bookshop about their top 5 recommendations for books about resilience (!):

We have great news for French-speaking Transitioners…the French voice-over for ‘In Transition 1.0’ is now complete and on-line, with many thanks to Jean-Luc Henry of Très-Saint-Rédempteur en Transition and all his helpers… Here are some lovely pics of the team recording the voiceover… (see left for one of them…)  Prince Edward County residents brought seeds to exchange, attended workshops and enjoyed a Seedy Saturday event sponsored by Transition Prince Edward County. The exchange was well attended by gardeners and exhibitors. Here’s a short film about it…

Happy planting or happy harvesting…depending on which side of the world you live…and we look forward to hearing all about your wonderful Transition activities throughout the month of April.  Finally, don’t forget to put the dates of the 2011 Transition Network conference in your diary!  It’s going to be the best yet…

My thanks, as ever, to Helen, for creating this round-up.

This month we’re starting off with Brazil and some very exciting news for the New Year, because, as reported here at Transition Culture yesterday, the first ever Transition favela initiative has just held it’s Unleashing!… Wonderful news indeed! Here are some great pics of the event. The community has been very busy indeed. 85 community members have participated in Transition Training and they’ve implemented all sorts of wonderful activities. Community gardens are being created in seven abandoned spaces, and a ‘Become our own Media’ team has been created which has registered all their events and has just completed a film aimed at reviving the region’s oral tradition, which was screened at the Unleashing.

They’ve held visioning and back-casting exercises, and have seven working groups including Social Enterprises and Local Business, which has a new Community Owned Bakery; Market for Sustainable Health, which is promoting the wellbeing of slum dwellers; and Water & Preservation group. They are care-takers/neighbors of the largest urban forest in the world and one of their first actions is to clean the waterfalls and rivers. They have planted 228 native trees and their intention is to re-forest of 7.7 hectares of the Cantareira Park over the next 2 years. Big targets which we know they’ll achieve! We look forward to seeing and hearing more from Transition Brasilandia…

In Chile, Transition Town El Manzano is building a community centre and a campus to help with the ‘great re-skilling’ and they’ll also implement their ‘permaculture master plan’ and enjoy a summer of ‘bioconstruction’…it all sounds very exciting!

In the UK, first is a reminder about your initiative’s fabulous free DVD of Chris Martenson’s Crash Course. It’s just £2 to cover the costs of P&P, and it’ll be a really useful tool for your initiative’s work, so if you haven’t got your DVD yet then don’t delay or they’ll run out … .  You can also watch Part One of it here….

Just before Christmas, Transition Town Finsbury held a fantastic event at the South Bank Centre, London, with Polly Higgins, Michael Meacher and Rob Hopkins. It was a huge success and has ignited much discussion and grown some great ideas…you can read a report of the evening at here.

Transition Malvern Hills are doing great stuff with their project to conserve the town’s historic gas lamps and to make them 84% more energy efficient, through their ‘Lighting Group’, more popularly known as the ‘Gasketeers’.  Here is a clip from their appearance on BBC News…

… and a bit on the BBC website giving more details about their work, and also more information on their own website.

Last month we included details of Transition Town Lewes’s fundraising event at the Glyndebourne Opera House (see pic left), and now here’s a bit more information about it. Transition Town Brockley have a great update of their London Orchard Project, a community orchard that they’re growing together with Friends of Hilly Fields and the London Orchard Project. And Northaw Area Transition Initiative has received some funding from Welwyn and Hatfield Borough Council for their community beehives project…congratulations!  Here is a short film (in German) from Arte TV which visited Brixton and Totnes among other places… and which enables you to virtually go shopping with Sophy Banks…

Transition Town Horncastle’s Green Baby project, which won a £140,000 grant from the British Gas Green Streets Project for energy saving and generating measures, has been busily installing solar PV panels for home electricity production. Fantastic! Transition Black Isle in Scotland recently held a festive food event, Our Local Larder, where Mike Small of the Fife Diet – the inspiration behind TT Black Isle’s local food campaign ‘The Highland Food Challenge – was guest speaker.

I like this…Transition Town Portobello, or PEDAL, recently held a winter warming wassailing solstice celebration in the Donkeyfield Community Orchard….hope they weren’t too snowed under. PEDAL also held a Local Food links event to look at how they might get more food grown and sold locally, and here’s a report with a lovely map and a food projects diagram too…

Here is a short film about Transition West Bridgford doing something Christmassy which has, for some reason, been subtitled in Spanish… no idea of the story of this film sorry, but it’s rather good fun… and features lots of Bridgford buskers….

In November, Transition Omagh in Northern Ireland held their ‘Sow the Seed’ cabaret evening… here is a short film of Catherine Brogan introducing the evening…

Congratulations to two new Transition Initiatives, one is a Transition Island at Transition Jersey, and the other is another London TT at Crystal Palace, so we welcome you both. And more good news because the Eco Explorers group at All Saints’ Church in Ascot is now discussing how Ascot can become a Transition Town… and Transition Town Sturminster Newton is now an official TT…congratulations! Some lovely news here about Transition Town Whitstable’s food group, which is one year old, and of their public raised beds growing project, and ideas for a new community food garden, so take a look! And Transition Town Wimbourne has been busily organsing Morsbags to give away from their Christmas float.

Last October Stanford Transition Town held a launch event, here’s a short film of STT’s Deborah Potter giving a walk round their exhibition…

Here’s a nice story on Totnes library’s Transition shelves, and news that Totnes Town Council has recently voted to become a Transition Council and work with Transition Town Totnes to make the town ever more energy efficient. Transition Edinburgh University has a little write up about the Transition Scotland’s Diverse Routes to Belonging conference, with useful comments from attendees on the conference and on the University’s own workshop. Here’s a little report of an evening discussion of the Big Society hosted by Transition Shipston and Voluntary Action Stratford on Avon. Congratulations to Transition Town Pershore for winning £150 from the Cooperative Group which it will use to further their awareness raising activities.

Transition Town Wivenhoe will be offering domestic energy assessments and install energy monitors in homes to check how much energy is being used, and advise people on how they can reduce energy use as well as their bills. Sounds great…why not get them round to help you save energy… and money too? Transition Town West Kirby has shared a summary of the wonderful projects the food group has been undertaking throughout 2010 including their community orchard, foraging, fungus foray and breadmaking, and followed by some of the activities planned for early next year.

In Europe, we have some wonderful news from Portugal… They recently held their first training course with 32 students from around the country, followed by a workshop facilitated by Miguel Leal (Paredes em Transição) and Jacqi Hodgson (TT Totnes) as part of the GLOCAL 2010 International Conference. Miguel talked about what they’ve been doing with Paredes em Transiçã and the number of hits on their blog went through the roof! The initiative has also had two Transition Tales published in a major local newspaper: one telling of the first farmers’ market (2011) and the other of the 3^rd anniversary of Paredes’s constellation of community allotments (2014). So there are lots of wonderful things happening in Portugal!

Transition Denmark has also been very busy. They now have 179 members on their website, with 12 local Transition Initiatives. Plans are being made in Frederiksberg for Transition groups to develop a community project on local lands…very exciting. They’ve also held community cafes with Transition talks in “the ecological inspiration house”, and a national meeting for Transitioners from all over the country. There’s now a more official core group called “En forening” with representatives from beyond Copenhagen, and they’ve held a 2-day Transition Training as part of a permaculture seminar in Friland. So they’re off to a fantastic start! And from Italy, we have a great piece from RaiTV about life beyond economic growth which features interviews with some Transition Network folks.

Over in North America, Transition Sandpoint has been in the news and you can catch up with their story in text and hear it on the radio, and there’s another interview to listen to here with Raven Gray, founder of Transition US. Transition Laguna Beach gave a presentation for the Mountain Communities of Resilience (M-COR), and there’s a nice report and some pictures here.  The picture to the right shows Max Isles of Transition Laguna Beach terrifying the local populus with a picture of Rob Hopkins leaning on a fence.

There’s also a radio program you can listen to discussing Transition Towns with Bill Sharp, co-ordinator of Transition Centre in Centre County, and have a look at Transition Victoria’s fantastic pics of their TT picnic, with lots of re-skilling action.  Transition Town Media are holding a potluck with local food and music, so if you’re around that way then try to get along for the fun, and they’re also holding a contest for artwork celebrating healthy food, deadline January 15^th. Why not have a go? Transition Town Montpelier, Vermont, have shared the activities of their working groups, including the Village-building Convergence, APPLE Corps and Permaculture groups, so have a look and see what they’re up to.  Transition US has a new Transition initiative – Transition Newton – so we welcome them as the 77^th initiative in the US. And here’s a nice story about one of the Transition Town Putney members…

Also, things are stirring in Pittsburgh, and here is a short film from our old friend Kevin May, (better known to Transition Culture readers as Phil Osophical, the Spongebob guy…) offering an introduction to Transition Pittsburgh…

… and here Kevin introduces one of their big new projects….

Transition Town Prince Edward County, Ontario, have shared lots of great pics for you to see here, and lots of interesting events going on too.

Finally, Transition Towns in Australia were at the Woodford Folk festival to discuss with people what’s worked with TTs and what hasn’t so far…so a bit of a lesson sharing experience, and a couple of pics, while Transition Blue Mountain recently held a seed sharing event. And in New Zealand, Transition Town Oamaru is holding a sustainable skills summer school teaching skills such as raised bed gardening, cheese making, bicycle maintenance, hand spinning, bread making, seed saving and so much more…it sounds fantastic!

Happy New Transition Year and see you next month!

Context:

Celebration is a great way of overcoming POST PETROLEUM STRESS DISORDER, for building PERSONAL RESILIENCE and providing EMOTIONAL SUPPORT/AVOIDING BURNOUT. It really should be considered a key feature of BECOMING A FORMAL ORGANISATION, key to maintaining the health and MOMENTUM of your work.

(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:

Transition work can be busy, stressful, tiring and can sometimes feel as though you are shouldering the hope of the community. When engulfed in this mindset, one’s very real achievements, from the great to the more subtle, can pass us by, unnoted. Events, relationships built, grants won, can all pass by in a culture which says that there simply isn’t time for anything so frivolous and self indulgent as celebration. Yet without celebration, the whole process can easily lose its spark, and feel burdensome and exhausting.

Core Text

Those of us active in Transition, and in community sustainability initiatives, tend to be rubbish at stopping and celebrating what we have achieved. We often feel so driven, with such an impending need to act, that we rarely pause to take it all in. John Croft, a specialist on community-led change processes, has developed an approach to community development called ‘Dragon Dreaming’. This argues that, based on his observation of hundreds of projects, that successful ones have four stages:

1. Dreaming or Visioning: the initial stage of asking “what would happen if…………?”, “what would this sort of project look like?”, “what do you think, does this sound like a good idea?”, “can you imagine our town with a …………?” and so on, an unfettered and bold look forward into the possibilities of the future
2. Planning: here the project leaves the world of concepts and steps into the realm of practicality. In this stage questions asked might include: “how do we make this happen?”, “who’s going to design it?”, “how many people in the team?”, “what skills are we missing, or do we have?”, and “how might we finance it?”
3. Doing: by the time you reach this stage you have signed your contracts, employed your workers, and installed the phone lines and your baby has come to life. The theory is now practice, and with time and familiarity it becomes so second nature that you forget that it was only a theory not so long ago. This is the time of birth
4. Celebrating and Evaluating: at this stage the emphasis is on celebrating the success of the project and looking at the failures and difficulties before starting the cycle again, asking, among other things: “has the project reached your expectations?”, “which phases of the project went well?”, “which phases were difficult?” and “was the project fun to work on?”

This emphasis on celebrating is something that can make a big difference to the success of Transition initiatives. It can take different forms. It might be as simple as people from your initiative going out for lunch together, or having a shared meal one evening. It can take the form of bigger events to celebrate key points in the evolution of your initiative, such as an Unleashing, or an anniversary of your first event. These things can be celebrated in a variety of ways. Singing, dancing, making things, a wide range of possibilities of celebrating where you have come from, what you have done, and where you are going. One of the most fascinating ingredients of celebrating that I see when I visit Transition initiatives in different places when they are holding celebratory events, is the role the food plays in celebrations.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this is the role food, in particular cakes, often play in Transition celebrations. When they held their Unleashing, Transition Town Brixton produced the most extraordinary cake, huge, and beautifully decorated with the name of every Transition initiative that existed at the time painted onto the icing with food colouring. It was topped with a huge sparkler, forming a beautiful and tasty centrepiece to the celebrations. Transition Town Kingston’s ‘Big Launch’ was graced by an exquisitely decorated cake with an allotment theme, complete with vegetables and a tiny table and chairs. Transition Town Totnes’s first birthday party featured three amazing cakes, each complete with a marzipan Totnes Pound. At the Unleashing of Transition Bro Ddyfi in Wales, guests were treated to not one cake but nine, all in a row, with a story of the town’s Transition running above the cakes, a kind of ‘Edible Transition Timeline”¹.

Of course, you don’t have to restrict yourself to the one whole cake, in the spirit of celebration, you could invite people to make and bring cakes and sweets from whichever part of the world they come from, from Banbury cakes in Oxfordshire to Middle Eastern baclava or Brazilian Brigadeiros. There is something though about the love and creativity that people pour into a landmark celebratory cake or other celebratory foods at key moments in the evolution of their Transition initiative which feels very important.

Transition Town Lewes’s launch of the Lewes Pound featured a mouth-watering and eye-catching spread of local food provided by a local restaurant, and the Unleashing of Transition Town Tooting had food provided by a local Indian restaurant. The message of this pattern is to celebrate the little things as much as the big things, to celebrate often, and that pausing to celebrate is very healthy for the initiative and all those involved in it. As they say, “all work and no play…”

The solution:

Celebrate and celebrate often. Celebrate the small things and celebrate the large things. Incorporate eating meals together into your meetings. Mark anniversaries. If this is truly to feel, as Richard Heinberg puts it, “more like a party than a protest march”, then it needs good parties and events that feel celebratory.

Connections to other patterns:

A well designed celebratory event can be a great opportunity to do lots of different things. It could be your UNLEASHING, or it could serve to support your AWARENESS RAISING work, it could be an opportunity for FINANCING YOUR WORK or for GATHERING FEEDBACK/HOW ARE WE DOING and for CELEBRATING FAILURE as much as success. At any celebratory occasion there is always space for THE ROLE OF STORYTELLING, as a way of looking back over the project’s recent past.

References:

1. Transition Network and Julia Ponsonby of Schumacher College have produced a guide to making Transition cakes, which can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Please leave any comments here.

Members of Transition Town Barcelona head off on their 'Caminata'

In Europe, exciting news from Ferney-Voltaire, which has decided to become a Transition Town and they’ve just started their awareness raising activities, so welcome to them. SQYenTransition in France have this great project with the lovely name of verger dans ma ville…an orchard in my city. And for an idea worth sharing, have a look at Transition Town Barcelona’s La Caminata, or Transition Walkabout…a nice idea that helps you get to know your town and community more, and helps them to get to know about you too. In Germany, Gerd Wessling made a presentation about Transition to 150 people from 34 countries at the Conference of the Emerging Commons, and updates are being added here. And then there’s been a wonderful Transition Conference in Germany, with participants from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France. Have a look at the Konferenz Blog to see what went on, and here are a couple of film clips from the conference.

.. and here is a short clip from Transition Town Deventer in the Netherlands.

We thought you might also like to know that subtitled versions of our film ‘In Transition 1.0’ are now available on Vimeo. Check the links on Transition Network’s movie webpage here.  As well as the conference in Hannover of course there was also the ‘Diverse Routes to Belonging’ conference in Edinburgh, so in case you missed the state-of-the-art conference blog, you can catch up on the whole event here.  Here is the group photo from that event (see right)…

In Ireland, at the Scariff Community Garden and Transition Town there are plans afoot for a fantastic project to convert a barn into a community kitchen space for local food businesses to use, ad enable local food producers and artisans to have space to develop their produce into goods for the market.

In the UK, Transition Scilly recently organised a local food producers and buyers meeting, which identified various constraints in food production, processing and distribution, as well as many possible solutions and untapped potential. They’ll be producing a report within the next couple of months as well as a Local Food Directory, Food Festival and Local Produce Shop, so keep a watch on their website for updates. They’re also having discussions with local schools about how Transition can be embedded into the educational curriculum, which will be fantastic. They’ll also be organising a Wassail (with a bit of work alongside) at their community orchard.

Transition Town Farnham are planning a community play, while Transition Town Lewes has been busy with their ‘All Star-All Lewes’ line-up, at Glynedbourne Opera House no less (!) as a celebration of Lewes’s rich history and experiences. There’s also news of a nice project between TT Lewes and a local school. Transition Taunton is continuing with its regular Transition Drop-in cafés with presentations and lots of Transition chat, and they’ve also shared their November events, so have a look and maybe you’ll get some new ideas. Transition Town Worcester has announced a new website to link Worcestershire’s Transition Towns together and enable them to easily see what’s going on in neighbouring Transition Initiatives around the county. There are seven initiatives listed on the site already…

Transition Network’s Ben Brangwyn gave a talk recently at Campaign Against Climate Change conference in London, here it is…

We’re hoping for a new Transition Initiative in Redditch where many people met to discuss the possibility of the town becoming a Transition Town. There was much enthusiasm for this and many people have signed up to be part of it.  If you live locally and you want to link up, then they also have a facebook page. And then it looks like we’re seeing the start of Transition Sutton too!

Transition Town West Kirby helped the Hoylake Community Centre to organise their local farmers’ market, and the first one attracted around 2,200 shoppers…fantastic news! Transition Town Dorchester has an update on their community orchard which is on Network Rail land and has just benefited from a generous donation of £1,000, while Transition Town Grangemouth have this wonderful project giving away ‘family trees’, so if you live that way then why not plant one too!

Marsden and Slaithwaite Transition Towns initiative (MASTT) is looking for volunteers to help out with all sorts of activities, so if you live around that way, then why not get involved. There’s great news from Transition Rhayader who obtained £30,000 to do an eco-refurbishment of a local school, and it’s now nearly complete and will be ready for the local community to use again. Transition Town Finsbury has an upcoming debate with Rob Hopkins, Alexis Rowell, Poly Higgins and Michael Meacher MP, so if you’re in London it would be a great event to attend. Rob was also in Derby recently and you can watch and movie and slides of his presentation here:

Transition Edinburgh University is the first Transition University to exist, and so has been the subject of much research. To learn about all this and discuss the research further, they organised a research evening to give the researchers a chance to showcase what they’re doing and enable others to find out more. Transition Town Totnes has been busy persuading the town council to be a Transition Council, which you can read about here and here. And they’ve also been on Radio 4 with Peter Day in a programme that questioned further economic growth as the panacea to the current economic problems we’re facing. Transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network also had a visit from Radio France, and the report is here.

After her 6 month Transition Tales walkabout, Steph has been in high demand to visit and talk about her Transition Town tour, including a trip to Transition Town Greenwich in November to tell more tales. Transition Belsize Energy group recently held an Energy Expo, while Transition Town Maidenhead have a clever idea of forming a solar energy co-op and Sustainable Merton/Transition Town Wimbledon have a ‘Juice From Your Roof’ solar power buyers’ club. Transition Town Stoke Newington organised a gathering for people involved in energy efficiency projects to share ideas and look at ways of supporting one another. Transition Stoke Newington and Hackney Bikes are holding a fundraising event in December to help keep their Hackney Bike Workshops running for free, so do support that if you’re around that way. Transition Town Kingston is preparing a Green Enterprise e-Directory (GED) and is looking for local green businesses and community enterprises to include in it, so if you’re one of those or know of any around that way then send them the details. London Transition groups have been up to loads of other activities too, and you can catch up with some of their fun by looking at their Year in Review.

A huge turnout for Transition Town Brooklyn's orchard planting event in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Transition Initiatives have been invited to join in some sustainable living sessions at a co-operative café, and those who made it along to the first session have been able to help decide which activities the three follow-up sessions will focus on. There’s a lovely story about Transition Town Brooklyn’s struggle and recently successful bid to make a Community Orchard in their town, and a must-see Planting Potion as the end note. Transition Town Oamaru is holding some Sustainable Skills Summer School events in January, so if you’re around that way, try to join the fun…it looks fantastic!

In Australia, Transition Town Kenmore is holding a re-skilling day…with bike repairs and wool spinning amongst the many activities set for the day.

Over in the US, Transition Town Chelsea recently held a conference with lots of activities to enjoy, and you can read about it in the local paper. Transition Snoqualmie Valley undertook a transport survey and also gathered useful ideas on how people thought the public transport could be improved. Transition Cotati has been in their local news, covering an interview with the founder and an overview of what they’ve been up to.  Franklin County has a Transition Town Film Project that’s being sponsored by local Transition Town groups and anyone in the county is invited to take part. It’s a local film project that’s making short films to envision how their local communities can become more sustainable by 2030, with video training workshops planned for early 2011, followed later by a film showing and film contest. It sounds great…so if you’re in Franklin County, why not get involved.

There’s a new initiative at Transition Town Hope…welcome to you! And then Jamaica Plain is currently discussing whether or not they should become a TT…so we hope they decide it’s a yes! Transition Putney has celebrated its one-year anniversary, congratulations! And they give us a helpful roundup of what they’ve been up to over the past year. And here are some useful ideas for anyone Transitioning in a large city… Transition Los Angeles has a city hub and a map to show all the Transition Initiatives across the city. Transition Town Manchester is hosting the Bread and Puppet Theatre, which sounds really wonderful. This year’s show is the Decapitalization Circus and will demonstrate, in “numerous death-defying stunts the phantastic effects of the capitalization of life in the U.S. and citizens’ courageous efforts of decapitalization”.

In Canada, Transition Victoria will soon be holding an Open Space event to discuss how they want their community to look in the future, and how they get there from where they are now. It’s designed to inspire people to start new projects or get involved in existing Transition Victoria ones. Finally, we’ll leave you with this great video review of the last year in the life of Transition Calgary, well done all…

Wishing you all a happy Transition-filled December!

Copies of the report were distributed to the Town Council and last week I attended a meeting where I gave a brief presentation about it, following which the Councillors talked about how proud they were of TTT, and then unanimously passed a resolution supporting our work (here is a report from the local press).  The resultant report can be downloaded here (it’s a big file, about 5.5MB).  As TTT is a community organisation with no core funding, we are offering this report for free, but we hope that having read it you might feel inspired to make a donation to support our vital work:

My favourite bit of the report, the Executive Summary, sets out in numbers the impacts of TTT thus far:

People visiting Totnes to find out about Transition have brought an estimated £122,000 to the local economy • over 300 people have visited the town to undertake Transition Training • TTT raised the funding for the 74 solar panels on Totnes Civic Hall which will generate around 13,000kWh (a third of its demand, leading to the Council saving over £5,500) • 186 hybrid nut trees have been planted throughout the town • over 4000 Local Food Guides (in 2 editions) have been distributed • our Garden Share scheme means that now 30 gardeners in 13 gardens are able to grow food, providing food to over 50 families • over 70 businesses now accept the Totnes Pound • organised over 140 public events • more than 1,000 students at King Edward VI Community College have now participated in our ‘Transition Tales’ programme • over 75% of people in Totnes and Dartington are aware of TTT’s work • more than 600 people attended 4 workshops on renewable energy • there are now 59 ‘Transition Together’ groups in and around the town, who will each reduce their carbon emissions by 1.2 tonnes, each saving £601 per year • over 50% of those households are low-income • ‘Transition Tours’, a structured tour designed for those who want to visit the town to learn about Transition has, so far, had a local impact of £52,166 • The work of TTT  has inspired an international network of thousands of Transition initiatives • TTT has formed partnerships with 25 other organisations • the creation of the Energy Descent Action Plan engaged over 800 local people, gave talks to 35 local organisations and held 27 public meetings • 50 people have learnt to garden through our basic gardening course • over 400 people attended ‘Winterfest’, a one-day celebration of the work of TTT • 3 annual ‘Edible Garden Crawls’ have been attended by over 500 people • the 2010 ‘Energy Fair’ was attended by over 400 people • TTT’s email newsletter is received by over 2,000 people • TTT’s Garden Share scheme was the inspiration for Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall’s national ‘Landshare’ campaign • Produced 10 short films about various TTT events • ‘Estates in Transition’, a day conference co-organised with Dartington, brought 65 local landowners and managers together to explore the impacts of peak oil and climate change • 57.2% of local people feel TTT’s work is either ‘highly relevant’ or ‘relevant’ to their lives • the Heart and Soul group provides support to 15 people working in TTT so as to minimise incidents of burn-out • TTT’s website has over 4,500 registered users • our annual Seedy Sunday events each attract at least 200 people • a recent grant of £75,000 from Community Builders is supporting our efforts to bring the derelict Dairy Crest site back into community ownership • TTT has generated a great deal of media coverage, including BBC’s The One Show, Al Jazeera TV, ‘In Business’ on Radio 4, and pieces in most daily papers, as well as regularly attracting international media attention….

Transition Cakes (clockwise from top left): Kingston, Brixton, Bro Ddyfi, Totnes.

Context

At key points of your AWARENESS RAISING (2.9) programme, such as your UNLEASHING (3.14) or times especially worthy of CELEBRATING (3.4), someone often makes an amazing cake…

(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

Big Transition events (Unleashings, anniversaries, celebrations) can feel a bit flat if they don’t have a centrepiece.  At the same time, some people involved in Transition can feel a bit flat if they don’t have something to pour their love and creativity into.  Big landmark events benefit greatly from incorporating ritual, rituals familiar to as many people as possible.

Core Text

When they held their Unleashing, Transition Town Brixton produced the most extraordinary cake, huge, and beautifully decorated with the name of every Transition initiative that existed at the time painted onto the icing with food colouring.  It was topped with a huge sparkler, forming a beautiful and tasty centrepiece to the celebrations.  Transition Town Kingston’s ‘Big Launch’ was graced by an exquisitely decorated cake with an allotment theme, complete with vegetables and a tiny table and chairs.  Transition Town Totnes’s first birthday party featured three amazing cakes, each complete with a marzipan Totnes Pound.  At the Unleashing of Transition Bro Ddyfi in Wales, guests were treated to not one cake but nine, all in a row, with a story of the town’s Transition running above the cakes, a kind of ‘Edible Transition Timeline”.

Of course, you don’t have to restrict yourself to the one whole cake, in the spirit of celebration, you could invite people to make and bring cakes and sweets from whichever part of the world they come from, from Banbury cakes in Oxfordshire to Middle Eastern baclava or Brazilian Brigadeiros.  There is something though about the love and creativity that people pour into a landmark celebratory cake or other celebratory foods at key moments in the evolution of their Transition initiative which feels very important.

I asked Julia Ponsonby, cook at Schumacher College, author of ‘Gaia’s Kitchen’ and creator of the amazing Totnes first birthday cake, for her favourite cake recipe, and for some tips for suitably creative topping options.  She suggested a basic Victoria sponge cake recipe:

For 1x18cm (7”) sandwich cake                                       For a larger ‘roasting tin’ size cake

(use 2-3 tins with at least 2cm/ ¾” depth)                   (e.g.2-3, 25cm x 35cm/10”x14” tins)

160g (6 oz) butter                                                                    500g (1 lb 2 oz)

160g (6 oz) sugar                                                                     500g (1 lb 2 oz)

3 eggs                                                                                             9 eggs

200g (7 ½ oz) plain or self-raising white flour           600g (1 ½ lb)

(+ 1 level tbsp baking powder if plain flour)               (+3 tbsp)

A pinch of salt                                                                            ½ tsp

50ml (3-4 tbsp) milk approx                                              150-200 ml approx

¼ tsp vanilla essence (optional)                                        1 tsp (optional)

For Chocolate cake, substitute 25g/1 oz.(small) or 100g/4 oz (large) of the flour with cocoa powder and use only 175g/6 ½ oz (small) or 500g/ 1 lb 4 oz (large) of flour.

Method

1. A few hours before you start baking, or indeed the night before, take your butter out of the fridge and leave on a plate in a warm place to soften a few hours.
2. Prepare your cake tins, greasing with butter or sunflower oil and lining the base of the tins with siliconized baking parchment.  If using old-fashioned greaseproof paper, butter/oil the top of this.
3. Measure the flour and set aside in a bowl with the baking powder and salt.  Also add the cocoa powder to this if you are making a chocolate cake.
4. Measure the butter and sugar into a mixing bowl.  Break up the lump of butter with your wooden spoon and then mix it with the sugar until you have a soft creamy, dropping consistency.  The more you mix the lighter and creamier the blend will become.  (If you have not taken your butter out in advance, or if the weather is cold, you may want to warm the butter and sugar in a low oven for a few minutes until it starts to melt slightly.)  The creamed mixture is ready once it becomes a few shades paler than when you started blending it.
5. Turn the oven on to pre-heat and make sure your oven trays are placed fairly centrally, ready to receive the cake.  You will need a moderate oven – 180.c     (gas mark 5/ 350.f).
6. Beat in the eggs one at a time (or two by two if you are making the large cake).
7. If you want to add any flavourings such as vanilla essence, or lemon or orange zest stir these in now.
8. Sift half the flour into the bowl and fold it in.  Add the milk, then sift in the rest of the flour and fold again (sift in the cocoa powder with the flour if using – it is even more important to sieve cocoa than flour since it tends to arrive lumpier).  You should now have a deliciously soft, dropping cake batter, one that is not too runny or too stiff: it will drop as opposed to dribble from you spoon when you give it a little shake, a bit like whipped cream.  Add a little more milk if you think it necessary.
9. Pour the cake mixture into the cake tins and spread it out a little – doesn’t have to be too perfectly spread as it will find its own level as it first melts and then rises up and sets.    Put the cake tins into the oven – ideally there should be a good area of hot air all around the cakes, with nothing else cooking immediately above them.  Close the oven door and time twenty minutes before you take a peak.
10. When ready the cakes should have risen well and be a light golden brown in the middle with a narrow ring of caramel brown around the edge. The cake should be coming away from the edge of the tin, revealing a gap of a couple of millimeters between cake and tin.  With a hand placed gently on top you should be able to feel if the cake is set or still a bit wobbly underneath – test with a small knife or skewer if you’re not sure.  Push it into the middle of the cake until it hits the base and then pull it out to inspect.  If ready the skewer/knife should be moist and clean with no cake mixture sticking to it.  Leave the cakes to cool in their tins for five minutes before turning out and leaving to air fully on wire trays.  I usually tip the round cakes first onto plates and then immediately invert them back on to airing trays, so they cool flat side down.  With larger rectangular cakes you may need to cool them for longer in the tins and then tip them first onto trays or chopping boards and then back on to wire racks.

The cake can be filled with jam, whipped cream, fruit, butter cream, honey, whatever you fancy.  In terms of toppings, space does not permit me here to offer recipes for hand-made marzipan (much nicer than the stuff from the shops), or for a range of different icings.  However, you might decorate your cake with marzipan figures, use food colourings, crystallised flowers (you can make these yourself), chocolate leaves (put melted chocolate onto the back of leaves and once cool, peel away the leaf, hey presto, a chocolate leaf!), almonds, sparklers, or even a Transition stencil dusted with cocoa powder.  The Transition Town Kingston Unleashing cake’s topping featured chocolate flakes for the soil, marzipan for the vegetables and dolls house furniture!  Once you bring the sculptable medium of marzipan into the equation, there is no limit to what you could create!

The Solution

Mark major landmarks and developments in the life of your Transition initiative with spectacular cakes which symbolise the love that people pour into the Transition initiative.  This is a pattern which has emerged from observing what Transition initiatives do, and the extraordinary diversity of quite stunning cakes that have been produced by Transition initiatives. The ritual involved in “and now we shall cut the cake” has a power and a universal cultural relevance which cannot be underestimated.  Also, everyone gets to take pieces home with them, small physical parcels of the magic of the event that they can now share with others.

Connections to Other Patterns

Creating a beautiful cake is a great outlet for ARTS AND CREATIVITY (2.8), and can also offer an intriguing canvas for some icing-based, marzipan underpinned, edible VISIONING (2.6).

Please leave any comments here.

Owing to its size (475 pages) and to printing costs, it is being made available only in PDF format (3.7MB) which will be sent out by email.  Some tasters from this thesis have already been posted here at Transition Culture, such as Local Food and Relocalisation, and Localism or Localisation?.  More will be posted over the coming weeks.  Personally speaking, I am delighted to have completed it, and even more delighted to be able to make it available, as I think it is something that explores Transition in a depth which people will find really useful.  I tried very hard to write something un-dusty and un-overacademic, and had a wonderful compliment the other day, when a local historian who had contributed to it, told me that he was two-thirds of the way through the book and that he found it ‘rivetting’.  Not many PhDs out there that find themselves attached to that particular adjective.

Here is the Abstract, which gives a more detailed overview of what to expect:

“This thesis provides a critical review of the Transition movement, a grassroots response to peak oil and climate change, co-founded by this author. It focuses on two key aspects of the Transition approach, resilience and economic relocalisation, with the aim of analysing whether and how they can be implemented in a locality based on the Transition approach, and assessing what socio-economic and community-related structures would be necessary to implement such a process. The focus of the research is Totnes, Devon, which because of its status as the UK’s first Transition initiative and the longer history of various initiatives to promote local resilience, offers a valuable case study of attempts to practically implement resilience and localisation. A variety of research methods were employed, including surveys, focus groups, oral history and in-depth interviews, as well less conventional public participation methods such as Open Space and World Café.

The first major finding was that Transition Town Totnes (TTT) has become a significant organisation in the town, with a high level of popular support. It was also found that the obstacles to resilience and relocalisation lie not, as was hypothesised, in a lack of skills or an absence of community cohesion, but in issues of governance and the need for increased social entrepreneurship. It was found that what researchers call the ‘Value Action Gap’ (i.e. the gap between people’s declared sympathies and intentions and their actions) exists in Totnes as much as anywhere else, but that some of TTT’s projects, such as Transition Together, are working imaginatively to overcome this and to reduce emissions.

From this evidence is it concluded that Transition’s approach towards relocalisation and reducing carbon emissions can be argued to be effective in, generating engagement and initiating new enterprises. Like other ‘green’ initiatives, it struggles to engage those from more disadvantaged backgrounds, but some of its initiatives are showing promise for overcoming this. Its primary contribution is in suggesting a redefining of resilience, not as a state of preparedness for disaster, but as a desired characteristic of a sustainable society. A more resilient community, it is argued, would be one more in control of its food and energy production, as well as being one that enables inward financial investment. It also argues that the government focus on ‘localism’, the devolving of political power to the local level, ought to be expanded to include ‘localisation’, the strengthening of local production to meet local needs, a shift which would financially benefit local communities. It argues that the key challenge for Transition initiatives such as TTT is going to be scaling up from being ‘niche’ organisations to become economically viable organisations with a broad appeal and engagement, and also articulates the need for ‘Resilience Indicators’ which would allow communities to measure the degree to which their levels of resilience are increasing”.

This week sees the launch of Alexis Rowell’s Transition Book, “Communities, councils and carbon – what we can do if governments won’t”, which will be available here at Transition Culture from early next week.  It’s a blood, sweat and tears account of life as an elected eco warrior trying to encourage local government to work with communities to make the world a greener place, packed with great case studies and tips for Transition initiatives and Councils alike.   The book is being launched next week, at 7pm on Wednesday 13th October at Caponata, 3-7 Delancy Street, Camden Town (www.caponatacamden.co.uk) and speakers include: the Home Office Minister, Lynne Featherstone MP; the Chair of the Transition Network and Director of Sustrans, Pete Lipman; Author and Co-Founder of Transition Belsize, John-Paul Flintoff; and the Deputy Leader of the Local Government Association, Richard Kemp. The event is open to all interested Transitioners, although you’ll need to contact Stacey at Green Books (stacey (at) greenbooks.co.uk) for an invite.  In the meantime, and to whet your appetite,  here is my foreword for the book.  Congratulations to Alexis on the publication of this landmark publication…

“In late July 2008, the Transition Network office had a phone call from Somerset to tell us that the previous night Somerset County Council (SCC) had passed a remarkable resolution pledging its support to its local Transition Initiatives. It acknowledged the work of Transition Initiatives in Somerset, subscribed the  Council to supporting the ethos of Transition, committed the Council to offering ‘support and assistance’ to those Initiatives, and committed SCC to becoming the ‘first Transition Local Authority in the UK’. The caller asked, in the light of the resolution, whether we could tell them what a ‘Transition Local Authority’ actually is. We said we had no idea, but that we would be fascinated to explore it with them.

As Alexis points out so ably in this book, there are countless examples around Britain of councils taking bold and practical steps in response to climate change.  Councils such as Woking and Kirklees have gone way beyond what is demanded by central government and shown bold leadership, making carbon reduction central to their policymaking. Some are taking inspirational initiatives in terms of energy efficiency in buildings, others are promoting cycling, and some are starting to give urban food production the importance it deserves. Yet there is not, as yet, anything that might actually be confidently termed ‘A Transition Local Authority’ – no one authority that has begun to base all of its activities on climate change and peak oil, and on the need to strengthen local economies – although a resolution such as Somerset’s is clearly a promising start.

From an early stage in the evolution of the Transition approach, we made it clear to anyone who asked that Transition is a process that ‘local councils support but don’t drive’. Our intention was to stress the point that Transition is intended to be a grassroots-led process that communities themselves feel in charge of, and this has been one of the keys to the viral spread of the Transition concept. More recently, however, the discussion has moved on to what would happen if a community embracing the Transition approach, and vibrantly initiating a wide range of projects, engaged meaningfully with a local authority that has likewise begun to base its thinking and policymaking on responding to peak oil and climate change, and is seeking to make the area more resilient. What would it look like? That is one of the key questions addressed by this book. And what matters, as this book demonstrates, is that there are many people out there actually working to answer this question.

Much is said these days, especially as part of the new government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda, about the concept of ‘localism’. Localism, David Cameron’s big idea, is the concept that political power needs to be returned to the local level, that government needs to be smaller and less omnipresent, and that any power that can be devolved to the community level is actually devolved. 

Transition goes beyond this, to focus on localisation.  Localisation is the idea that we try to shorten the distances between production and consumption as much as possible; that we strengthen local economies by striving to meet their needs from their local area.  This is a key aspect of making communities more resilient to volatile oil prices and potential interruptions to supply, as important as actually reducing our carbon emissions sufficiently – and in the current economic climate, I would argue, makes it more likely that communities will be able to weather future economic storms. Michael Shuman1 describes localisation thus:

“. . . it means nurturing locally owned businesses which use local resources sustainably, employ local workers at decent wages and serve primarily local consumers. It means becoming more self-sufficient, and less dependent on imports. Control moves from the boardrooms of distant corporations and back to the community where it belongs.”

Government commitment to localism evokes cynicism in some. Lancaster City Councillor John Whitelegg told me in an interview that he is suspicious of politicians who use the term localism. “Britain is grossly overcentralised and I think that whenever a national politician starts talking about ‘localism’ their nose starts going into Pinnochio mode”. However, the current focus on all things local offers a dynamic context for discussing many of the concepts and proposed projects that emerge from Transition Initiatives.

Alongside the work that some of our more innovative local authorities are doing, there is also some great work emerging from Transition Initiatives, as well as from the relationships that they are forming with their local councils. In May 2010 I went to the ‘Unleashing’ of Transition Malvern Hills. It was an amazing event.  The group had taken a huge gamble and had booked the largest venue in the town, the local theatre, which seats over 400 people. With a week to go they had sold 100 tickets, and they were starting to sweat. In the end, the event was a sell-out, and a remarkable evening, with three choirs, a range of speakers and a palpable buzz of excitement and of possibility.

The highlight for me, though, was a section called ‘Transition Endorsements’. Transition Malvern Hills’ Will Tooby invited on to the stage 11 people representing key local organisations, who were invited to give a very short endorsement of Transition, or a reflection on the event. It was a dazzling assembly of the town’s movers and shakers. The speakers included the leader of the local council, the principal of the local college, the Assistant Director of the local NHS Trust, the local police inspector, the head of the local Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and the newly elected MP for the area, Harriet Baldwin.

The County Councillor spoke of how Transition Malvern Hills (TMH) had supported their work in changing their catering arrangement: their food is now “not only edible, but it is all local!” Dave Armitage of the AONB, which has been supporting TMH’s work, spoke of TMH’s “great foresight and great energy”, and urged the audience to “give them some of your energy and some of your time”. The depth of support shown from such a diversity of key local organisations bodes very well for TMH’s future, and Harriet Baldwin offered her support to the Initiative in whichever way she could help. This was a very strong foundation on which to build a well-linked and effective Transition Initiative.

Some councils are now starting to see the work of Transition Initiatives as representing a level of engagement with a potential that needs to be harnessed rather than brushed aside. Some Initiatives are working with their councils on very specific projects, and some are being supported with meeting-room space, grants, the support of council staff and so on. 

Alexis Rowell came to Transition quite early in its emergence, and saw its potential from an early stage.  He noted that Transition Initiatives needed to form meaningful relationships with local authorities and, in addition, needed people involved in Transition to put themselves forward for election. Alexis himself is a great example of the potential of doing so. What he managed to push through and to change within the Camden Council during his time as a councillor is quite extraordinary. The experience he draws on from that time, as described in this book, are rich from the blood, sweat and tears he poured into this work. I can think of no one better than Alexis to draw together the many strands of the debates and discussions about how local authorities and Transition Initiatives can and do work together.

Interest in Transition from local councils continues to grow as the dynamism and visible impacts of Transition Initiatives similarly expands. I think that in many ways the work of Transition Initiatives is breaking new ground, asking questions that local authorities still struggle to address, and working with a freedom to experiment and to take risks that is rare in our current highly risk-averse culture. As the urgency to deal with climate change and peak oil becomes more widely understood, and as the realisation grows that a more resilient future lies not in the far-flung sourcing of globalisation but in the reskilling and revaluing of local economies, it can’t be too long before genuinely Transition local authorities start to emerge. The inspiration for their work, and the tools they utilise, will owe a great deal to this book, which makes a very welcome new addition to the Transition literature.

Rob Hopkins, September 2010

It’s October already, so it’s time to share September’s Transition activities from across the world…  we have lots of news from Transition groups in the Netherlands. Their Renewable Energy Project has 75 households involved in it, which between them will have about 800 solar panels on their roofs in the coming spring. Also their first Local and Interest Free money project was launched at the end of September, and they also recently held a Post-fossil Festival, with lots of interesting activities going on. Their ‘Share your stuff – with people you trust’ social website, launched in August, has seen 688 people share 832 goods…wow! They’ve also been making ‘eatable façade gardens’ in the heart of the old city of Deventer, and there’s a great video too:

The big neighbourhood garden in Rotterdam is also now open, with a video about that too:

…and Transition Town Houten have been doing interesting things with apples:

The Italian Transition Translations network have done excellent work and translated Daniel Lerch’s Post Carbon Cities to make it accessible in Italy (see right). The Transition groups plan to give a copy to each Mayor in Italy to raise their awareness about how they can address the challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change. And we have news from Sweden about how Transition is growing there. Already they’ve undertaken about 30 of the 50 planned seminars, and interest in the 2-day training course is growing. In one region, where the training is about to take place, the local paper offers a free page every month to Transition, all communities in that region have had presentations with their politicians, and their ‘Week for the Future’ involved 150 events…so things are really taking off there too. Other regions are also gathering momentum in a similar way.

This month we have news from Japan too! You’ll see news of new Japanese Transition Towns and all their names, a lovely logo and a list of their achievements so far… and here’s their website too.  Over in Canada, Transition Barrie just held its Great Unleashing, with a family Harvest Festival and loads of wonderful activities and here’s an article in the local paper about it. The Alberni Valley Transition Town Society is hoping to showcase the local farming community and the fruits of its labour with their ‘Promote Our Local Agriculture for 65 Years’ theme for this year’s Alberni District Fall Fair, taking it back to the festival’s roots in the past.

In the USA, Transition Town Minneapolis/St Paul is hosting the Twin Cities Transition Towns and Neighbourhood Sustainability Networking Fair in November, so if you’re around that way, then go along and join in the fun…there’ll be loads going on. TT Honesdale, a relatively new TT (welcome!) is holding a ‘Creating Community’ Potluck Dinner, while a small group of subsistence farmers at Tallassee are calling for their town to become a Transition Town, so if you’re around there, get in there quick! Transition Centre County in Pennsylvania has lots of news for us about what they’ve been up to. The fledgling group TT York Region have been in their local paper, with news of past and up-coming activities, as well as a great pic and some discussions from the group’s founder. T Houston has been busy, including a no-impact project, permablitzs, a solar tour and more. Transition Los Angeles are making rainwater harvesting systems for their community garden and digging infiltration pits, and they’re asking for your help if you’re around that way. Transition Los Angeles hosted a one day mini conference to discuss life after oil in LA, and there’s a report with some pics available here.  The recent Transition Cascadia Regional Summit was already discussed here at Transition Culture, but here is a short film about it too:

Some good news from New Zealand where Transition Nelson has secured a yes vote from the Council to support their Transition activities…fantastic news! Transition Grey Lynn held a Spring Fling, and there’s a lovely picture of one beautiful young lady with flowers in her bonnet and posing for the camera. Fantastic news from Auckland where the Ooooby website just went live to help enable distribution of local food to local people, and there’s a wonderful video to watch that shows a little about Ooooby’s history:

In Australia, Transition Town Eudlo is busy checking the viability of seeds in their seed bank and the project’s organisers are asking people who have planted these seeds to let them know how they’re growing so they can update their records (see left). Transition Town Maitland has given us an update of their activities, with some permablitzs and movie nights and lots more.  West Hobart Environment Network (WHEN) held a Solar Hot Water Forum, and you can read about that and some of the great offers available here. And there’s a new Transition group in Perth, so congratulations to them, and if you live in Perth, then why not join in the fun!Here’s Andrew Lucas giving a Transition talk for the Melbourne groups, which felt the need for something more local…

Transition Town Kenmore and District is just launching its Growing Food and Landshare Initiative which will match people without land but who want to grow food with those who have land to spare. Here’s some news about an upcoming Sustainable Living Skills Festival you might like to get along to at Devonport, if you’re around that way… Transition Town Whangarei had some really useful job ideas emerge from their community job summit. Transition Darebin is organising a series of events to encourage people to grow their own food or purchase local produce, and top of the list is a tour through key local food production, preparation and retail sites.

In the UK, Transition Heathrow have taken over former Berkley Nurseries site, also the site of the defeated third runway, and developed a thriving community garden and social space, called ‘Grow Heathrow’, with loads of activities, and a really neat video. They’ve been rightly celebrating the adjournment of the court case that is seeking to evict their squatter community project. As the evenings close in and winter approaches, TT groups are turning to film screenings.

The everso-new Transition Town Wanstead (welcome!) will kick off their activities with a film night, so go and join the fun if you live around that way. TT Cheltenham’s winter line-up is here and TT Totnes’s is here.  TT Horncastle is hosting a skills share day very soon, with loads of really useful skills being demonstrated, while TT Grangemouth will be doing some awareness raising and having lots of fun (bike energy demonstrator…Eco-driving simulator…see right) at their first ever open day. Here’s a great piece in ‘Scotland on Sunday’ about lots of the Transition Towns in Scotland and what they’re up to. TT Bromsgrove has a lot of activities coming up, so try to get along if you’re around that way.

In Transition Worthing, they have been having a reskilling session in a garage, teaching people to sharpen their knives (Part 3 seems to have mysteriously disappeared)….

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

TT Taunton is busy with their Transition Together project, and I just love these little clay peeps…which were for a procession of clay peeps…ahhhh! They’ve also held apple gathering days where they’ve harvested local apple trees and shared the produce amongst the helpers and may also distribute to local charities. And have a look at their FANTASTIC wild food, free food map! And if you’re around, why not go along to the Abundant Taunton event, with more foraging and some skills demonstrations (see left).  And there’s another fab map from Southend in Transition…and an interview and the story behind Southend’s community fruit-mapping activities. Oh no, your secret stashes of wild whortleberries and plums won’t be so secret anymore! From TT Forres, Kim explains in a very short Youtube clip about how the TT Forres Environmental Placement Programme was delivered, which is a Green Business Partnership initiative sponsored by the Scottish Government, FSB and Teradata.

TT Brixton has been in the news recently, with an article one year on from the launch of the Brixton £, and another one asking ‘will stick around’? Transition Bristol has been everso busy with their Green Door’s Project and a wonderful just-launched website with a 2-month programme of activities across Bristol, and here’s an update two-weeks on from the launch…and T Bristol has been in the newspapers here. TT Montpelier, Bristol, held a Bean Feast and, although it’s over now, there’s some great info about the history of the event and some ideas for you to try yourselves… Here’s a report of TT Forest Fields and Area open space event and talk by Rob while he was up that way to present at the Development Trust’s Association conference. Transition Maidenhead is happy to have been selected as a pilot project area for the ‘Bringing Diversity Pilot Project’, and they outline the activities and training they’re undertaking. TT Totnes Transition Streets project has featured in the local BBC news, and they’ve also got this wonderful youtube film:

They’ve also been in the media with their ideas for a wind-powered ferry between the UK and France.  Also in Totnes, we were so happy to welcome our Steph back home after her 2000 mile walk around the UK in flip-flops. Transition Town Horncastle has begun its heating makeover of the town’s community buildings, thanks to the £140,000 award they won from the British Gas Green Streets programme.

Lush has made a little video during their Lush Managers conference where they invited Anna from Transition Cambridge (which had already received a grant of £1900, well done!) to demonstrate running a charity party in a Lush store. They had a lot of fun and many people showed lots of interest in Transition and asked if there were groups in their own cities they could support:

Transition Cambridge also has news of their 2010 story-telling competition. Join Transition Town Kensal to Kilburn at their Harvest Festival and ceileigh for some swishing, music, workshops, dancing and a chance to be flamboyant.  Transition Norwich will be mapping sustainable food patterns in local communities with their One Planet Community Kitchen, and are also organising workshops and other activities as part of the preparations for their Low Carbon Cookbook and guide.  TT Shrewsbury invites you to their World Food Day event, with lots of activities and a pie competition, while TT Exmouth recently held a Potluck feast, and the food looks delicious! Portobello TT group PEDAL is helping local people get more fruit trees with their Fruitful Porty project, and they’re also looking at the feasibility of starting a community farm, which they need people to help out with so why not get involved if you’re around that way.

TT Sturminster Newton have got permission to care for some land and create a community Transition garden which they’re now in the process of designing. And congratulations to Transition Norwich and East Anglia Food Link for securing £137,000 of funding for various local food projects, including a Community Supported Agriculture scheme…fantastic! Transition Town High Wycombe is about to launch its local food guide (see right), and there’s a lovely website for it too, illustrated with children’s colourful pictures… Slaithewaite Transition Towns (MASTT) helped the Green Valley Grocery and the Handmade Bakery to organise the Colne Valley Food Festival, with loads of activities and a bit of food swapping.

* * *

Our thanks, as ever, to Helen for compiling this exhaustive (and exhausting!) list of what’s what out there…  if you would like anything your initiative is doing to be included, do let us know…. and don’t forget to enter any projects you have going in the Projects Directory…

Transition in Germany is going on well, with another successful training and a further one coming up on 9 October in Bielefeld, so if you’re interested do get in touch with them. There are also lots of new registered users for their German-speaking Transition Network, as well as meetings with key players in German peak oil organisations, and increasing interest from the media as more articles appear in German publications. And congratulations to TT Bielefeld as they celebrate their first year! Thanks to Gerd for this update.  Here is a film of him giving a presentation about Transition (understanding German will help considerably.)….

Down to New Zealand and Australia, TT Invercargill will be holding a Spring Festival in September, which will bring people, organisations and businesses together that are working on sustainability and environmental issues so they can be show-cased and celebrated, so get involved if you’re down that way. TTs in Northland, where unemployment rates are higher than elsewhere in New Zealand, will be holding two community-led job summits to discuss ways of creating new jobs and rebuilding local economies. This is a wonderful idea and hope it will be very successful… There are celebrations as Australia gains new TTs in Transition Yarra and TT Wallan! So if you live locally, try to get along and join. TT Cambridge is planning a World Café workshop where they’ll be developing a shared vision for their community, and also form working groups for further action. They’ll also be seeking commitment to become an official group in the coming months.

In the UK there’s an offer to learn new skills in eco-building in return for your labour… sounds like a great opportunity to learn new useful skills. And more skills sharing as Transition Worcester organises a series of 2 hour bicycle maintenance courses throughout August and September. Portabello’s TT, PEDAL, will be participating in a Community Energy Conference to speak about Community Energy Possibilities. They’re well placed to talk on this subject as they’ve just been awarded a large grant for their community energy project. It should be a very worthwhile day. PEDAL is also celebrating Portobello’s very first organic market! TT Alness is helping its local community save energy, reduce its carbon footprint and save money by offering free home energy checks. Here’s a call to get Transition Shetland started, so if you’re up that way then please get involved! And if you can, go to visit TT Linlithgow and join their mini Transition gathering and harvest celebration. They’re very keen to meet other TTs around Scotland and share ideas and activities.

The soon-to-be-official Transition Saltash, together with Saltash Environmental Action Group, will be holding a Transition Fortnight of festivalling, freebooting (not the piracy kind) and doubtless some feasting. They were awarded a grant of £3250 by the town council for their green festival, so congratulations T Saltash! And then they’ll also hold their Unleashing – very exciting – so try to get along and celebrate with them. More festivities as T Finsbury Park organises its ‘Well Oiled Festival’ focusing on communicating the Peak Oil message, as well as celebrating their existing relocalisation activities. TT Bellinge and Orrell have a wonderful download called ’12 things you can do to move towards a lower energy lifestyle’. It’s great…have a look! TT Kingston has launched its own food co-op called ‘From the Ground Up’, which delivers organic fruit and vegetables each week together with a selection of other goodies…right to your door. If you live close-by, then make the most of it!

TT Louth is busily creating community food gardens (see left) and is asking anyone living locally to volunteer their time, and there are some lovely pics of a garden that’s already producing food. TT Wandsworth also has a community garden, designed and created in partnership with Wandsworth Council and has just been launched. Congratulations!

Maps are wonderful things! So here is an explanation of how to make a fruit map of your town on googlemaps…fantastic! And here’s one that was made earlier…Thank you TT Brixton for getting this started. And now for a little video of T Bro Gwaun’s float at the recent local carnival….

Making pedal-powered smoothies in Halesworth...

TT Halesworth got people exercising on their pedal-for-your-smoothie day to help raise awareness of energy use (see right), and there’s also news of their Bike Aid Scheme which distributes emergency repair kits around the town. TT Horncastle have lots of exciting events going on including a nature trail for kids and, together with Horncastle Now, a chill-out day to help raise funds for solar panels in Mali. TT Stoke Newington is also being very busy with events from bike maintenance workshops to harvesting Hackney… and here’s a lovely report of an urban fruit harvesting day around London…

Transition Homes's community consultation event.

TT Totnes held an exhibition and consultation day on the low cost low impact Transition Homes project to explain to people all about it, answer questions, and ask for feedback on possible locations. TT Tooting together with the Energy Saving Trust is organising a free training day so you can learn how to carryout basic energy audits on home and community building. And have a look at Steph’s blog to see where our flip-flop-footed wanderer has got to now and whether she could be heading your way!  She was recently spotted back in Devon, co-presenting a workshop with Rob H. at the West Country Storytelling Festival…

Across in the US, Dallas is celebrating as it becomes TT Dallas…welcome and congratulations! And here’s Nils to chat to you about Transitioning Lake County in a little video he’s called ‘An Invitation to Imagine: part 1’…

The New Eden Collaborative and Transition Newburyport together held a Local Flavour Community Potluck Picnic, and here’s a nice commentary and some lovely pics. Transition in Colarado has been the focus of an hour-long TV show on PBS in Denver for a programme entitled Transition Cities, fascinating viewing, which you can see below…

Transition Cheltenham will be hosting a local food banquet, and has also produced an on-line local food directory.  In Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, at the Victoria Region Transition initiative picnic, they built a model ecohome out of cardboard (complete with wind turbine), filmed it, and put it on YouTube….

… you can also see a great selection of photos of the picnic here.  And now to South America for a report on a well-attended weekend workshop in Chile. This is great news!  Finally, here is a repeat performance by our young American friend who closed last month’s roundup with his Spongebob piece.. here is again with some ‘Transition Town Floetry’ filmed in a back garden somewhere….

The evening was opened by Jacqi Hodgson, and then I gave an opening talk.  You can read my full talk here, but here are a few bits of what I said…

“….in TTT, we do not look at this as a time for gloom and doom, rather as an opportunity for creativity, optimism, entrepreneurship … Rebuilding an economy that can support us here, vibrant local agriculture, renewable energy systems that we own and benefit from, energy efficient housing that utilises local materials, more local and meaningful employment, these are not the things of some Luddite retreat to the caves, but the foundations of a resilient economy more adapted to the times.  Totnes is uniquely placed to achieve this.  We are big enough for it to work, but small enough to be able to do it quickly, and as TTT has shown, what we start here can spread elsewhere incredibly rapidly and virally.  Totnes emerges from the survey as a skilled, optimistic and adaptable community.  Totnes as model that inspires the future direction of humanity?  Why not?”.

Jacqi Hodgson (left) then took the audience on a walk-through of the EDAP, introducing its layout, how it moves from introducing the underlying assumptions, peak oil and climate change, moves into the role stories play, both traditionally, oral histories, and the story of TTT.  The main section of Plan is the different aspects of Transition, food, energy and so on, and also includes two vital pieces of research, the Energy Budget for Totnes, and ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’.  Having given people a sense of the structure of the Plan, she then introduced Paul Wesley (below right), Chair of the Totnes Chamber of Commerce.

He started his talk saying that he was exhausted, so his talk would be rather short.  He said that he had started the evening wanting to watch the election on TV, but gave up and sat down to read the EDAP instead.  While he hadn’t read it all, he had read it into the early hours, and in spite of not having much expertise in the subjects covered in the plan, he does have a lot of expertise in books (he runs Totnes’s largest second-hand bookshop).  With that in mind, he said, he had to say that the Totnes EDAP is the single most important book about Totnes that has ever been published.  He said he was very impressed with it, the language, the accessibility and the layout.

With Jacqi Hodgson and a copy of 'our baby'!

His conclusion, having read it, was that it is much more important than what happens in the election.  Totnes is developing an important lesson for central government.  One of the cultures we are developing in Totnes is that or co-operation, working and communicating together.  The community, he said, is lucky to be working with Totnes Town Council, South Hams District Council and, hopefully, Devon County Council.  This effort, rather than traditional oppositional politics, is paying dividends.  A core theme of the EDAP is about economics, of the importance of the commercial sector of the town.  Paul stated that the least he can do is to make sure that every business in Totnes gets to read the EDAP.  It is full of relevant stuff he told the audience, it is very accessible.  Transition Town Totnes is, he said, already having an economic impact on the town, and an increasing economic impact.  It is now a tangible reality economically, which while not being the sole purpose of TTT, is nonetheless important.  The Chamber of Commerce, he said, will play its part in bringing the EDAP’s vision into being.

Then Totnes Mayor, Cllr Jean Harrop (see right), then formally launched the plan.  You can read her full speech here. It included the following…

“Climate change and the running out of oil and gas are urgent issues that we all need to address.  The EDAP has been written to help us to just that.  It has been written in a very easy-to-follow way, and is full of ideas of how to reduce our dependence on oil in our daily lives: in our homes, workplaces, schools, and so on.  We can all do something and more importantly, we can do these things together…

…I am pleased to be Mayor of Totnes, a town where there are so many interesting things happening.  Transition in this town as attracted many visitors and much attention from the media, and I’d like to thank all those involved in TTT for the work they are doing for the community.  I would now like to officially launch Transition in Action, Totnes and District 2030, and to cut the cake.  May everyone enjoy the journey”.

And cut the cake she did (see left).  Then three members of TTT read out sections from the EDAP that they had chosen.  One looked at the opening of the Transportation section, another took a part from the Heart and Soul section, and the final reading was from the Health and Wellbeing section, and took samples from across the timeline to show how Totnes’s health improved…

Then, to close the evening I read out the poem written by the audience at last year’s Wondermentalist Cabaret evening where, in the interval, the audience were invited to write a couple of lines on the theme ’2030, What are You Like?’, and Matt Harvey then spliced them together to make a poem.  You can read the final poem here.  Then the EDAP cake was cut and that was that.  People then milled around chatting, getting their EDAPs signed and visiting the stalls in the hall.