Last week Bill McKibben was in town, and I was lucky enough to get to interview him for half an hour before his talk to a packed St. John’s Church in Totnes (which Jay Tompt reflected on here). I had asked for some questions for Bill on Twitter, and apart from the frankly bizarre “will I ever play the piano again?”, tried to weave most of the questions people sent into the interview. My thanks to Bill for finding time in his hectic schedule:
Hi Bill… great to see you… what brings you to Totnes?
The two things that bring me to Totnes are wanting to get back to Schumacher College for a little while, which is a remarkable place, especially on this 100th year of Schumacher, and wanting to get back to Totnes and see the ‘Mother Church of Transition’! (laughs).
Transition Toronto recently held a film competition for people to use film as a way of communicating Transition. The winner was Mariko Uda with her film ‘The People in my Neighbourhood’. Rather lovely it is too. Here it is:
The judge, Gregory Greene, producer of ‘The End of Suburbia’, said of why he chose this film as the winner:
Here is the second in the ‘Story of Transition in 10 Objects’ films, which tell some of the stories from the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion‘. It tells the story of Bertie and Gertie from Tooting.
Today is the 5th anniversary of the ‘Unleashing’ of Transition Town Totnes. Feels like quite a landmark to me. On Saturday, TTT held an event to celebrate and reflect on the journey so far and on where we might go from here. In spite of it starting at 9am on a Saturday, over 70 people came, and we had a fantastic day. The day was chaired by Chrissie Godfrey and Paul Birch from Taunton Transition Town, who beautifully facilitated a very energising day. In the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion’, one of the ingredients is called ‘How are we doing?’ and it looks at how groups can pause and reflect. What I want to do here is to set out the process we did on Saturday, in the hope that your Transition initiative might find it useful for having similar reflections.
A Fishbowl conversation at the 2011 Transition Network conference, Liverpool.
The ingredients in the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion’ are nearly done, but a few have spaces we need to fill, such as this one called ‘How are we doing?’ and I’d love to add your stories to it. It looks at the value of initiatives stopping to evaluate what they are doing, reflecting honestly before adjusting what they are doing and continuing. They might use Open Space, World Cafe, Appreciative Inquity, Fishbowl, or any range of other things. I’d love to hear your stories, in no more than 300 -350 words. about your Transition initiative’s experience of doing that. How many people came? What did you do? What did you learn from it? You could either post below or email me at rob (at) transitionculture.org. To get your thoughts flowing thus far, here is the main text for that ingredient. Thanks!
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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