I am really pleased today to be able to share with you some of the key outputs from Transition Streets, which I have written about here before. Let’s start, for people who are new to the concept, with this short video which beautifully captures how Transition Streets worked in Totnes:
Our thanks to Gerd Wessling, co-ordinator of the German hub, for the following story from Germany:
“Sunday May 13th 2012 will be declared “In Transition 2.0 film and information day” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland! We kindly ask all German, Swiss & Austrian Transition initiatives to self-organize screenings of the movie at that date in their regions/towns/cities. More info for the organizers (in German) & about the coordination here.
A screening in Bielefeld is already fixed; see details here. We would love to generate a lot of broad, positive reviews and excitement about the movie and Transition in general at that date in the German-speaking region(s) of the world”.
The last leg of my week of dashing to various places (Dublin and London) took me to Glasgow for the Social Enterprise Exchange, the world’s biggest social enterprise event. It was huge, loads of events with speakers such as Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civic Society and Chuka Umunna, Shadow Business Secretary. There were over 150 stalls from various organisations, including Transition Network’s REconomy stand which proved very popular (see below), and all in all the day was a huge statement of intent about the scale and ambition of the social enterprise sector.
I couldn’t stay all day unfortunately, but after the opening session, I took part in one called “More, better, faster – how can social enterprise grow?” It was chaired by Susan Aktemel of Impact Arts, and featured myself along with Jim Mullan of KibbleWorks and Karen Lynch of Belu. It was a very interesting session, here is the talk I gave at it:
I wrote a while ago about a whistle-stop tour I did of Belgium and the Netherlands a few months ago. Transition Towns Nederland have just posted the film of the first talk I gave there, entitled ‘Where Transition comes from and where it’s going…’ which focused in particular on how Transition groups are working with local councils. After I tweeted yesterday that it was now online, a few people asked me for the slides that accompany it, so here they are.
This month’s round-up adds in a new dimension for the first time. Thanks to the newly established network of international Transition hubs, we have a number of international stories sent in especially for this roundup. We’ll start in Canada. Here, sent in by Jennifer Rice, is a speech by Lee Brain, a young man in the community of Prince Rupert, BC. He is one of the main coordinators for the Transition Prince Rupert initiative, still in the mulling stage about to become official. His speech is in regards to a 1200km pipeline project being built from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia. He delivers riveting testimony to a government Joint Review Panel that is holding community hearings. It has already been viewed nearly 37,500 times on YouTube.
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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