Transition Training has developed a new 2-day course for Transition initiatives who have been going for some time, called ‘Transition: Thrive’.  It had its first pilot a couple of weeks ago, and in this guest post, trainer Naresh Giangrande reflects on how it went, and what learnings  are helping to shape its further evolution.

How well is Transition going in the UK? Is it succeeding, failing or something in between? Is there anything we can do about it when it isn’t going well? How can we help functional Transition initiatives take their next steps in a training? Last weekend,  twenty six dedicated pioneers took the plunge, confronted their inner daemons and came along for a roller coaster ride of a weekend in Totnes, UK.  Along the way we shared our hopes and dreams -and nightmares doing this thing called Transition. I am curious how many reading this might identify with the feelings, and experiences described!

These brave souls were all doing Transition in their communities.  Those Transition initiatives (TIs) were, I suggest, in one of three places:

• Going well, and wondering what can we do next?
• Ticking over reasonably well, and needing some input on how to go to the next level, for instance how to get more people involved.
• Collapsed or confronting crisis and wanting to know how to recover from this.

Jenny McKewan  and I designed what we felt was a programme rich in both process and practical ways forward in order to address  the diverse needs listed above. We wrapped the training in an appreciative inquiry  (more on this below). We also encouraged the group to share their expertise and learn from each other. We had many very knowledgeable people who held sessions on:

• communicating about climate change to the most intractable audience
• another who took people though how to use social media like twitter and facebook, blogs etc, and
• one of our trainers, Mandy Dean  who stepped in with a session on Open Space as a community engagement tool.

Open Space Technology was mentioned, by one TI who used it many times, as over and over proving its worth in generating ideas and moving projects forward.  Jenny also taught a break out session on groups and the creative use of conflict, and I did one on our economic blueprint for a relocalised economy and the REconomy project.  We also created a Test your ability to respond to change game, and told our stories using the Transition Ingredients cards.

The feeling of this course was very different to our original training, Transition: Launch.  In Launch people are new to Transition and there is lots to do and participants go away generally happy having learned a lot. Our participants this weekend, most being Transition veterans, have been at the coal face of Transition for a while. I felt expressions of anger, distrust in the Transition method, personal pain at how hard Transition was sometimes, as well as being full of successes and the satisfaction of facilitating others to proactively engage with fundamental change. Participants also had more specific needs like help with social enterprise models and specific projects that they were undertaking. Sunday morning became particularly ‘hot’ as another issue surfaced that we commonly find amongst Transition groups as well as in our training; the inner/outer dilemma.

Some felt that we were placing too much emphasis on the process side of the weekend. We were introducing a method called Appreciative Inquiry, AI for short. It feels like a very good fit for Transition groups as it uses a process of ‘Discovery’ to find out what has been working well and then helps us to figure out how to do more of that. This is in contrast to a conventional change management approach that focuses on problems and finds ways to overcome them. Many groups and businesses have used this approach to great effect, Project Lyttleton in New Zealand is one of them,  who have built solid community resilience in a short period of time, and who places the AI approach at the heart of everything they do.

Appreciative Inquiry is a good example of an ‘inner’ transition method that helps achieve tangible, practical results. This weekend, and it commonly happens in Transition groups, some found the process side-  ‘navel gazing’, group building, and other such ‘new age’ tomfoolery- uncomfortable and pointless.

However it’s been my experience that  attention to how a group is working for instance, which is often hidden especially to those who are antithetical to this way of working, makes groups welcoming, effective, and convivial places to work. It also helps us to pay attention to our underlying feelings which can easily undermine our personal health and well being (as we become more aware of the un-sustainability of business as usual). Conversely, Visioning, Creating a space for Inner Transition,Running effective meetings, Personal resilience and many other ingredients of Transition testify to the importance of this side of the process.

We make an effort to weave both the inner and the outer into Transition Training, and are aware of the sensitivities of many who wouldn’t wish do process. However it is also our experience that the chance to explore the inner side of things in a spirit of cooperation and safety (we never make anyone in a training do anything they don’t want to do, it is always an invitation), can be deeply nourishing and life enhancing. It is one of the things that makes Transition such an effective process. We solved this inner/outer dilemma on the second day by facilitating different streams, and enabling people to focus on the stream they felt most important to them.

It is our intention that Transition: Thrive will be a valuable tool in enabling TIs to function as effectively as they can. It will also enable those who are having difficulty to find ways to overcome those difficulties and flourish. And it will continue to provide a platform for Transitioners to find their next steps and network with those facing similar challenges.

I was profoundly inspired by our participants this weekend who despite the difficulties in their TIs and the increasing desperation of our times, showed up ready move on. I honour their courage and determination, it touched me deeply.  Our purpose in Transition Training is to support those doing Transition. We will continue to stand beside transition folk and do all we can to enable learning, provide connection and communication, and inspire with transformative, experiential learning.

Naresh Giangrande

To see dates of all upcoming Transition trainings, including Transition: Thrive, click here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transition Training and Consulting has been very busy lately. This is the (strictly not-for-profit) part of the Transition Network specifically designed to engage businesses and organisations in the process of transition. Businesses of all sizes have significant influence on our communities, and are themselves communities that need to be engaged if the wider economic and social transition is to be successful.

Members of the TTandC team are currently working with ten transition initiatives in a pilot project known as REconomy which will identify and spread best practice in engaging existing businesses and stimulating the start up of new social enterprises, so both can thrive and prosper in low-carbon, re-localised markets. REconomy is also looking to develop an understanding of what a ‘Transition local economy’ may look like. A survey will shortly be published to solicit your input to help inform our work, all of which will be openly shared.

TTandC has already developed services that help existing businesses appreciate and explore the economic, social and environmental paradigms emerging in the low-carbon, high-energy/resource cost world.  These include an Energy Resilience Assessment tool which identifies specific  vulnerabilities, and points to possible changes to a business model. To help this tool reach more organisations, TTandC practitioners warmly welcome introductions to businesses from Transition groups or individuals.

In addition, this month TTandC has been training (and also learning from) new Energy Resilience Assessment practitioners in the Basque Country of Spain who are associated with the Mondragon group of coops. This is building on a visit by Pete Lipman and Ben Brangwyn last July, who are still spoken of with utter awe and admiration for having cycled there!

Mondragon coops (more than 100 of them in the group) form 8% of the Basque economy and up to 15% of the economy in the town of Mondragon. More than 50,000 are employed in the group coops with another 35,000 or so in other coops. The town of Mondragon was named after a myth similar to the St George and the dragon story. The difference is that in the Basque story, the dragon is killed not by one man, but by the collective action of the community. Very appropriate for the coop name – though the coop actually took the name because the first of today’s cooperatives just happened to be set up in that town!

Graham Truscott, who led the TTandC training session at Mondragon University,  commented, “I’m not sure who has learned more – the new Basque ERA practitioners, or me on behalf of the REconomy project. It has been humbling to see what has been achieved here with social enterprises over more than half a century – a level of experience to be very proud of. If some of our approaches can help them dynamically reinterpret their coop concept to tackle the big challenges of the 21^st century with optimism and vision, that’s fantastic for everyone. It has been a privilege to share the ERA tool with Larraitz, Mikel, Inigo and Virginia and we all look forward to further working and learning together.”

To find out more about Mondragon, read on…

The first modern coops were formed 50 years ago, largely at the instigation of a local priest, Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, who was seeking to alleviate post-war poverty in the region and to preserve Basque culture. The coops were set up with a strong social, educational and cultural emphasis: there was little environmental perspective at that time, but the intention was to create a coop to address any need that was identified.  Coops were established in a large variety of enterprise sectors and included educational institutions in the Basque language (not related to any other in the world). Education was and is seen as a continuous and total process, not just for the benefit of the individual but also to enhance the community’s capability. Recent examples of this have been special courses and training to increase the number of Basque-speaking teachers and engineers.

The coops were intended to be dynamic entities centred around sovereignty of labour rather than sovereignty of capital. Capital was seen as an instrument and a tool only.

Larraitz Altuna, one of the recent ERA trainees, points out that “Our coops were established with several common features like small differentials between least and highest paid employees and the ethos of shared risk and reward remains true today”.  Typically pay differentials  are no more than 1:7, but with the approval of the workers councils this can be extended in some circumstances in recent years to as much as 1:25 to attract essential skills. However,  90% of the members are still within a multiple of 4 from each other – ie, 1:4 ratio between lowest and highest paid in a given enterprise. Decision making structures involve layers of councils elected by the layer beneath and regular elections. The coops have a moderating influence on the society, with their social ethics extending to businesses that they do business with, which are not themselves coops, and into civil institutions and social groups’ decision making. The coops were always intended to be integrated with the society and the community.

There is a legal requirement for coops to put 20% of their profit to reserves. Coops are organizations of variable share capital and are not listed in the stock market.  Part of their credibility is based on the amount in the reserves – with legal requirements for minimum reserve levels. Once the profit and loss statement has been prepared and all taxes have been deducted, the net surplus or loss is divided into three sections: social funds, reserve fund and dividends. Coops are taxed at a lower level than other types of enterprise (28% for capital companies and 21% for cooperatives).

Originally profits were always ploughed into the company. Today, most of any dividend is still kept within the company on behalf of individuals, thus increasing the amount of capital each member has invested in the co-operative. Only a small part of the overall dividend or loss is paid/deducted from members at the end of the year. Employees receive the dividend benefit back when they retire – or die and leave it to a spouse, but there is increasing pressure from some workers to have more dividend returns paid more immediately – as social attitudes are influenced by material/consumerist “have it now” society. There is a tendency in all the coops to assume a “business as usual” macro-economic  context and many are involved in feeding consumer society activities like making parts for the automobile industry.

In other respects too, over time, the cooperatives have become more like other businesses that they compete with in global markets. The General Council of the Mondragon cooperatives therefore commissioned the Lanki group in the Humanities faculty of Mondragon University (itself a coop and part of the coop group)  to address the educational gap, and  the transmission of the cooperative culture.

The Bagara initiative, developed by the Lanki group with the help of other parts of the community, is helping to train/retrain workers and the wider community in the reasons for and benefits of cooperative enterprises, not just in the historical context, but specifically to understand the risks and opportunities in a 21^st century context of energy security, resource depletion and climate change.

This includes sub-projects in ecological knowledge, cultural understanding and ethics, youth-work, housing, and caring for the elderly  and is why, says Larraitz, “we find the systemic Transition approach so interesting and exciting,  as we explore a new relevant and practical strategic social narrative for the coop movement”.

For more information about why the TN set up TTandC, or about becoming an ERA practitioner see here

Training for Transition - Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: May 22-23 2010.

Thanks to everyone who contributed stories and comments that helped to shape this ingredient….

Context:

It has been found to be extremely useful for some, or all, of the initiating members of a Transition initiative to undertake Transition Training at the early stage of the project’s development. It offers insights into a range of necessary tools and skills, and is a two day immersion in the theory and practice of Transition.  Every training is also a regional gathering where participants can learn from (and meet) others as passionate as themselves about creating a resilient and relocalised place, learning about (among other things) RUNNING SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS and sustaining MOMENTUM, and many of the aspects of inner Transition 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:

Starting a Transition initiative can be a bewildering process. We can learn a certain amount from books such as this, but that is no substitute for spending time with other people also embarking on this work, and being able to draw from the pool of experience already out there. A movement of individual communities where everyone invents everything from scratch is going to be ineffective. Although there is a great deal to be said for knowledge generated by experience, not learning from each other leads to ineffectiveness.

Core Text:
Transition Training was developed by Transition Training and Consulting, and is designed to offer the perfect immersion in Transition for initiatives at their early stages, providing the fundamentals for setting up, running and maintaining a Transition initiative. Trainings are run regularly in a number of countries, and usually run over 2 days¹. Transition Training is designed to offer those participating the following:

• Experience Transition in action: every aspect of the training from how the training is offered and set up where every effort is made to make the course accessible to everyone regardless of income, to the atmosphere of mutual respect, welcoming diverse voices and ideas, and sharing of information, models the Transition process
• Focus on the early stages of Transition: focusing on the first 5 ‘Steps’ of Transition (Ingredients 2.1, 2.9, 2.11, 2.12, 3.14), including how to communicate Transition, the principles of resilience, how to set up an initiating group, and the importance of the inner aspects of Transition work
• Experience varied styles of learning, participation and facilitation: this offers participants first-hand experience of World Cafe, Open Space and other tools for running groups, presenting, and ways to engage people.
• Experience a personally deepening journey into the inner dimension of Transition: here the inner aspects of Transition are explored, looking at the emotional aspects of doing Transition work, how to create a culture that supports change, and how to deepen our understanding of change, both within ourselves and within our initiatives
• Meeting others: doing Transition Training gives you a sense of being part of a wider international cooperative, co-created movement, and a chance to ask all your questions and to get feedback and be inspired by others’ stories.

Other trainings have also been developed. These include Transition Talk Training, which aims to give people the tools and the confidence to give presentations about Transition, Energy Resilience Assessment Training (also see 4.5) and the Train the Trainers course, a 4 day course for people who would like to be able to run training courses.  So how does doing Transition Training affect those who do it?

Valerie, from Transition Omagh, found that organising a Transition Training was very helpful after they had started to feel that their initiative was running out of steam a bit.  She told me:

“I had no expectations of the gathering/training, but it was brilliant, and totally surprising in many ways. It was great to get a refresher myself, it was fantastic that 8 of our own members took part, also great others from Ireland came to Omagh, with the ensuing networking. It was great to be inspired with fresh ideas. But for me the best thing is that it really affirmed what we had spent that last two years doing. As the facilitators went through the steps / ingredients, I found myself thinking ,”oh, we did that”, “yes we did that” and “we did that too”!  It REALLY strengthened our group to have members attend the training, and have a much fuller understanding of the process in action”.

For Jo Homan of Transition Finsbury Park, she particularly benefitted from “lots of useful anecdotes about event organising and it was very reassuring [in terms of] the barriers we were already experiencing”.  Trish Knox of Transition Woodinville, in the US, found that the Transition Training her group organised had some unexpected spin-off benefits: “one woman said that she is off of her anti-depressants and now hopeful because she no longer feels alone. Another woman expressed gratitude for her dad, 90-years old, who taught her many of the skills on the list. She too has dealt with depression but is now more hopeful. Another woman expressed delight in having people in her home and that she is re-energised in all aspects of her daily life”.

John from Tring in Transition reflected:

“I think the Training was crucial – we could not have started without it. It gave us a vision and a pathway for achieving it; it allowed us to share our fears and worries with others on the same pathway; – and it armed us with facts to help us with our presentations.  The tips we had on awareness raising have been very helpful in the presentations we have made to other organisations and our first film evenings. They had to be good tips as everyone we asked to help has come on board, everyone we asked for expressions of support has given them – and everyone who attended a film has asked for more information!”

As well as being a rich experience for those doing the training, it is also a powerful process for those delivering the training.  One of the UK’s Transition trainers, Nick Osborne, reflects from the trainer’s perspective:

“One of the things which stands out for me about the Transition Training is how it can take people on a journey. I have seen a number of people start the training in a fairly desolate place, feeling despair, depression and a real lack of positivity about the situation we find ourselves in. I have seen these people go on a journey and emerge looking forward to next steps… and come to a much more positive place at the end of the weekend, feeling more connected, hopeful, motivated and inspired to take action. It is a very humbling thing to experience and be a part of people going through that kind of shift.  Another thing which stands out for me is how for some people, the penny drops about ‘Inner Transition’, and some seem to ‘get it’ that for Transition to be an effective form of social transformation, it requires more than change in our behaviour and us taking action in our communities, how it also requires inner work by each of us to transform our own (largely conditioned) assumptions, beliefs and emotional habits which so powerfully shape our behaviours and culture”.

You can either check the Transition Network’s website for dates and venues of upcoming trainings to see if there is one near you, or you could organise one in your community.  Some initiatives have successfully asked their local Council or other local groups or businesses to fund the training so as to make it available to the widest range of people.

The solution:

Ensure that at least two people from your Transition initiative have done Transition Training. It has been found to make a huge impact in terms of maximising the efficiency and successfulness of Transition initiatives in their earlier stages. Having some form of immersion in what Transition is, makes our work in defining what our own local Transitions are is much more meaningful. Keep the idea of bringing new training into the organisation always at the forefront of the mind, either drawing from the group itself if those skills exist, or bringing trainers in.

Connections to other patterns:

Your Transition initiative might choose to run a Transition Training, or a talk training, as part of its AWARENESS RAISING work, and as a way of sustaining MOMENTUM. Running a training that involves people from other local organisations can be a great way of ENGAGING THE COUNCIL and building NETWORKS AND PARTNERSHIPS who are similarly enthused and informed about Transition. Successful trainings can also be greatly facilitated by the provision of TRANSITION CAKES.

References:

1. For an up to date list of trainings, click here.

Please leave any comments here.

Training for Transition - Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN: May 22-23 2010.

I am midway through doing one of final few remaining ‘ingredients of Transition’, this one on Transition Training, but it is all looking rather dry and boring and is rather bereft of your stories and anecdotes which are the things that bring them to life.  So, I would love to hear your stories: why did your initiative organise a Transition Training?  Why did you go on one?  How did it help your initiative?  What surprised you about it?  How did it change your understanding of Transition? (Thanks to Transition US’s Flickr set for this pic).

Michael’s work, and his proposal for a realignment of the Transition approach, clearly emerge out of a deep affection for the idea of Transition, and are based on much of his dedicated and committed work, doing Transition on the ground, as well as acting as a prolific Transition trainer.  What he is proposing is an evolution of Transition (a Transition 2.0. if you like) to what he calls ‘Deep Transition’, a version of Transition which is explicit about the central role of the ‘Sacred’ (although exactly what that actually means is never defined).  While there is much in his piece which is insightful and clearly builds on a rich understanding of Transition, it raises several points which concern me greatly and which, with the greatest respect, I would like to explore here.

Developing National Transition Identities

One of Michael’s key arguments is that Transition in the US needs to be different from Transition in the UK and to find its own identity and voice.  We agree entirely and Transition Network has taken this approach from the start, observing over these few short years in many countries around the world the self-organising emergence of Transition at the community level, and the emergence of national ‘hubs’ to support that effort (already in place in a number of countries).  In every place this looks different.  Every place develops its own distinctive ‘Transition culture’.  The role of Transition Network is to support that, not to control or dictate it, or, as Michael puts it, “bring Transition to the US” – or anywhere else for that matter.

In New Zealand for example, which is very grassroots driven, they decided not to sign the MoU we had suggested at all, and instead they developed their own model. And we wholeheartedly supported them in that.   In Brazil, Transition is emerging at the grassroots, translating both the model and the materials into the culture of the place – and we’re doing as much as we can to support that.  So, while we’re not trying to dictate the form or approach, we are absolutely  adamant that the emergence of Transition needs to be a collaborative process, built on the foundations of vibrant Transition initiatives at the local level, and that any new reframings of the Transition model emerge in the same way.

It is not, therefore, the case that being able to develop a “uniquely American approach to Transition” will “require that we once again declare our independence from England and establish our own independence”.  Every place where Transition emerges is encouraged to make it their own, but to do so collaboratively: we encourage that absolutely.  Talk of “declaring independence from England” runs directly counter to the spirit of collaboration that we have tried to foster from the beginning, and which most people involved in Transition seem to understand implicitly.

What we are up against – senses of urgency

Michael then goes on to set out what he sees as being the key challenges that should underpin the Transition approach.  These include, unsurprisingly, peak oil and climate change, as well as economics, which is, according to Michael:

“…precisely the area that the founders of the Transition movement in Totnes have been so skittish about taking on as a part of the context for Transition”.

I don’t see that Transition Network has, in any sense, been ‘skittish’ about economics as a possible third strand of Transition.  For example, we wrote a section on economics for the recent Dutch edition of the Transition Handbook. We gave Stoneleigh a prominent role at the last conference and have facilitated subsequent talks by her. We’ve collaborated with Chris Martenson to get his Crash Course material over here and facilitated meetings with government officials for him. We’ve blogged an “Economic crisis” event that involved Tim Jackson and Naresh Giangrande. None of us can think of any talk we’ve given in the last few years that didn’t include a reference to the economics of energy descent.   Rather, we have engaged with the issue in a variety of ways, and various events organised by the Network have explored the question of whether Transition should explicitly make economics a clear strand of its work.

For me personally, I have been reluctant to weave an explicit piece about economics into my own presentations, as I feel that with climate change there is a scientific consensus, peak oil is an issue I understand enough to be able to discuss and defend it, economics on the other hand is hugely complex with very contrasting takes on what is happening.  Is Stoneleigh right, that we are about to see the imminent collapse of the financial system? Is Herman Daly right, that a Steady State economy is possible?  Or is the Ellen McArthur Foundation right, that we could create a ‘cyclical economy’? Or perhaps Tim Jackson is right that we can create ‘prosperity without growth’?  I don’t know, and for me to put all my eggs into one of those baskets would be an act of faith, not one of a reasoned and informed evaluation of the information available.

I get a sense from how Michael builds his case in his article that he has drawn together all the very worst forecasts of everything and used that to underpin his case for ‘Deep Transition’.  I think all we can say for certain is that:

a) we are, at the least, very close to the peak in world oil production, that the impacts of this are uncertain

b) no-one has yet demonstrated that economic growth is possible without the availability of cheap energy to make it happen

c) the science on climate change is, frankly, terrifying.

However, to argue that within 2 years, peak oil will be an issue of “who lives” is a lazy way to describe it and an unhelpful sweeping generalisation. Some places won’t feel much of an impact at all for years. On the other hand, for people living where there’s very little energy and the hospitals can’t afford the diesel for the generators, it is, right now of course, a life or death issue.   In the US though, the subject of his piece, I would guess that within 2 years peak oil won’t be an issue of “who lives”.

Also, there are some elements of Michael’s analysis that don’t seem to stand up to historical analysis.  For example, he writes that “industrial civilisation destroys communities”.  While on the one level this could be argued to be the case from a Robert Puttnam/Happiness Index analysis, it is also important to note that at present, industrial civilisation is, for much of the world, the only thing that feeds, clothes, employs and heats and cools billions of people.  Yes it is deeply flawed, yes it is highly oil vulnerable, yes it is pushing the biosphere to the edge of collapse, yes it is grossly unequally distributed, but is Transition, at this point, in any position to take over and run an alternative infrastructure? To argue that ‘industrial civilisation destroys communities’ is hugely over-simplistic.

Then there is the question of urgency.  Michael writes:

“… there is a growing and indisputable recognition that our collective predicament is far more serious and more urgent than many of us had been willing to actively contemplate. This is being increasingly reflected in the larger Transition movement, sometimes to the apparent dismay of its founders”.

I have to say I have absolutely no idea what he means by this.  Does any of the above communicate a lack of a sense of urgency?  I sense in Transition initiatives, and in everyone I come across who is involved, a deep sense of urgency, of focused commitment.  I don’t think that one needs to exaggerate threats and try and terrify people into a sense of urgency.  The facts are motivating enough on their own. Indeed there is lots of research showing that bombarding people with terrifying information is far more likely to lead to a Flight/Fight/Freeze response than to constructive engagement.  It is rarely an effective approach to engaging people in my experience.

Pattern Language

Next Michael discusses the ‘Pattern Language’ approach I am using for in my next book as a tool for redefining the Transition approach and how it works.  I am not using the term ‘pattern language’ anymore, as it seemed to bewilder so many people, and therefore now refer to them as ‘ingredients’, which seem to resonate much better.  While Michael and I are both great admirers of Alexander’s work, I’m not sure I agree with Michael’s analysis of what Alexander is saying.  Michael argues that:

“… all this (the section Michael chose from Alexander’s writings) may seem rather mystical, even spiritual. Well, perhaps it is. We eventually discover that what Alexander is pointing to is that wholeness and connectedness and aliveness and sacredness and holiness are all one seamless unfolding evolutionary process”

I think this is a misreading of Alexander’s perspective.  I have never found anything in his writings that talks about “sacredness and holiness”.  Alexander talks about the ‘quality that has no name”, a quality of built environments that brings them to life, but it is not my understanding that he is referring to the ‘Sacred’ in the way that Michael is.  I will be meeting and interviewing Christopher in a couple of weeks for this website, so will explore this further with him.  Michael continues:

“In the UK, this bold re-conception is being delivered under the banner of “Assembling Transition” and Hopkins has taken to call the patterns he has identified as “Transition Ingredients”—as if Transition is some sort of recipe to follow, a kind of cake we can just cook up! Unwittingly, Hopkins may be condemning Transition to the same kind of fate that has befallen a mechanistic view of Nature and the Universe … as I delve deeper into all this, I find myself suspecting that Rob may be ignoring the deeper aspects of Christopher Alexander’s work”.

This is a matter of opinion on which we respectfully diverge.  What I am doing with this project is to reflect better the model of Transition that I see unfolding in countless Transition Initiatives.  It is not one necessarily underpinned by ‘the Sacred’, but then nor is Alexander’s.  It is not about teaching everyone to make the same cake, rather the observation that in doing Transition in a range of settings, there are certain stages or phases that most initiatives go through, and that there are certain ingredients people use, but everyone makes different cakes, cakes specific to culture and to place.  This approach doesn’t tell people how to do it, rather offers them useful pieces, ingredients they can use to create whatever they want to.

Further, criticism of the approach I’m taking, which mirrors Alexander’s pretty much to the letter is, by implication, a criticism of Alexander’s too. The only divergence between Transition’s use of “Pattern Language” and Alexander’s is that, based on feedback from transitioners, we’re choosing to call the discrete elements “ingredients” rather than “patterns”.

The Role of the ‘Sacred’

Now we get to the element that is the cause of the bulk of my disquiet (sorry to grumble so much folks, it’s not my usual style….).  Michael states unequivocally that:

“our preparation is likely to crumble unless we are able to connect with and cultivate the aliveness, the wholeness, the healing and the sacredness that underlies the Transition process”

… and later he states that, the way forward for the US is what he calls ‘Deep Transition’ – i.e.  a Transition that is “all about the sacred”.

His argument is that at the heart of the challenges facing us is a crisis of a culture that has become disconnected both from nature and also from a sense of connectedness to the rest of life. There’s some validity to this argument but the conclusion Michael reaches from it – i.e. you can’t successfully do Transition without engaging the ‘Sacred’ as a central part of the approach – seems to be the perfect recipe to alienate, bewilder and sideline Transition in the US or anywhere else, to condemn it to the back pages of Kindred Spirit magazine and restrict it to a very narrow slice of society.

For me, if Transition has done one thing well over the past 4 years, it has been the designing of an approach that comes uncluttered by much of the baggage that has encumbered environmental responses over the past 30 years. These responses have often been perceived as being smug, judgemental and against lots of stuff without a very clear idea of what it is for.  The Transition idea has spread into businesses, organisations, Councils, the media and so on, as an idea that is simple to understand and accessible to people from all manner of mindsets.  Making a central and explicit connection with the ‘Sacred’ would be a sure-fire way to consign Transition back to the left-field, far away from businesses and communities everywhere.

Michael writes that “when people hear the word ‘cosmology’ they sometimes automatically think it is somehow religious”.  I think he misses the point.  When people hear the word ‘Sacred’, they automatically think it is somehow religious.  To be talking about the ‘Sacred’ in Christian or Muslim communities which have their own very strong sense of what the sacred means, would be highly divisive. And we’d find a similar response if we used it to engage and work with agnostics, atheists and others who don’t share that world view.  The idea that such an approach would be a guaranteed way of deepening engagement in the US seems poorly judged to me.  In fact, I would argue that in the current economic climate, with unemployment running rife, a focus on, for example, social enterprise and economic localisation would be far more relevant and gain much deeper traction. We might also find that encouraging increasing levels of scientific literacy among Transition groups to better equip them in evaluating different options might also help gain more traction.

That is not to say that the ‘inner’ aspects of Transition have no place, they clearly have a vital role to play.  Offering tools to make people more personally resilient, better able to cope with rapid change, and better able to communicate with each other, are vital.  Much excellent work has been done by Transition trainers and others developing tools to strengthen the inner aspects of Transition, and it is one of the key things that distinguishes Transition from other approaches –  this is not purely an external process of creating CSAs and running Open Space events, it is also about supporting communities, and each other, through times of rapid and deeply challenging change.  Skilfully presented, this is an absolutely key aspect of Transition.

However, what Michael is writing about is something different.  Inner Transition is not necessarily about the ‘Sacred’, although for some people it might be.  It can be seriously misleading, in my opinion, to explicitly intertwine the two. There is a certainty to Michael’s writing that I am convinced others will find deeply alarming.  For example, his assertion that “it is our belief if you’re not spiritually connected to the Earth and understand the spiritual reality of how to live on Earth, it’s likely you will not make it” would permanently alienate a massive proportion of the people we’re trying to reach.

Closing Thoughts

As I mentioned at the beginning, Transition is often subject to critiques of its approach and its underlying thinking, and it is in these discussions that the evolving edge of Transition can be found.  It is here that ideas and challenges to a comfortable consensus emerge and shift the thinking out of its comfort zones.  For me, this is one of the areas where Transition feels most alive.  Michael is to be thanked, like others before him, for pushing Transition out of its comfort zone and asking it some testing questions.  In Transition, we have tried to support an approach where these things are debated and discussed openly, and that any moves forward or evolutions to the approach are based on what emerges from that.  I hope that Michael’s piece, and this response, will lead to a debate on these issues.

However, it is my sense that any new evolutions of the Transition approach should emerge from Transition initiatives on the ground, from the people themselves, from a wide background of beliefs, convictions, political backgrounds and class/racial backgrounds, who are out there, trying things out, dedicating their time to the idea that a more localised, more resilient, less-oil dependent future is the one they want to grow old in and see their grandchildren thrive in, rather than being developed in isolation.

There is something about how Transition is currently communicated that fires people, which leads to their putting their shoulder to bringing Transition into being.  Insisting on the idea that ‘Deep Transition’ is the future for Transition in the US context implies that what everyone else is doing, and has been doing for the past four years is, by implication, ‘Shallow Transition’.  For me, the future of Transition, in the US, or anywhere for that matter, would stand the greatest chance of being successful if it is based on a blend of practical action, community engagement, ‘inner Transition’, social entrepreneurship, social justice, paying careful attention to deep engagement, basing its choices on the best evidence available, creating new economic models for inward investment, and finding skilful ways to engage local businesses and local government.  Clearly Michael is passionate about what he has set out here, and feels it to be a valuable approach and an enriching model.  I wish him all the best with his work, but for me what he has set out here isn’t Transition, or rather it is one take on a small aspect of Transition developed by a small group of people, and should be seen in that context.

Today’s ingredient follows on nicely from last weekend’s ‘Diverse Routes to Belonging’ conference in Edinburgh….

Context

At the stages of FORMING A CORE TEAM (2.1) or BECOMING A FORMAL ORGANISATION (2.7), diversity and inclusion need to be designed into how the organisation functions.  Some of the tools that underpin this will influence how the group sets about RUNNING SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS (2.4), and ultimately, a more diverse and inclusive organisation will be of benefit to the PERSONAL RESILIENCE (1.5) of those involved.

(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 tends to appeal to what academics call the ‘post-consumerists’   i.e. those who have reached a level of sufficient wealth and education to feel comfortable in letting go of some of it, who are often, but not always, white and middle-class.   However, if Transition is serious about creating resilient communities but fails to create a process over which all sections of the community feel some sense of ownership, it will not truly be creating resilience.

Core Text

This ingredient looks at both inclusion and diversity.  The two are intertwined but are not the same thing.  If a Transition initiative brings down any barriers to participation that it might have, it in turn becomes more inclusive which should lead to it becoming more diverse.  At an event held in November 2010 by Transition Scotland Support called ‘Diverse Routes to Belonging’, Danielle Cohen of Transition Stoke Newington (TSN) held a workshop on diversity where, introducing herrecent research on Transition and diversity, she played a recording of an interview with a black woman, who had been one of the initiators of TSN, but who had recently left.  Here are some excerpts from that interview:[1]

“It’s quite hard being the only…um…like, not-white person or something sometimes and I kind of, as well, feel like a lot of people have more maybe experience of talking and stuff like that and I’m not always very eloquent in my speech or whatever. I have really good ideas but I’m not always that great at saying them and putting them forward and… so I definitely didn’t always feel that comfortable. And it wasn’t because of even specifically, you know, people, but it was just like… I didn’t feel like there were that many people like me.

Our meetings have often been quite formal and quite quiet and quite sit-downy and chaired and stuff, whereas in a lot of other cultures you don’t get that, you just get people talking in a really animated way and over each other and blah blah blah and…like…there is no right or wrong way of doing things and I felt like as well if I brought my family or something there it would be…they would be disapproved of and it would be looked at as if they’re not serious or they’re not doing things in the right way because they’re not taking notes and they’re not blah-di-blah. I don’t think Transition Town Stoke Newington was in a place to…would have welcomed a whole new way of doing things.

If you’re, say, working class and you’re around a lot of middle class people it makes you feel really stupid, you just do and especially when those people aren’t that aware as well, so often we just wouldn’t say anything. I remember being in meetings and there was someone just chatting complete shit for 15 minutes but thought they were saying amazing stuff and it’s like we kind of knew so much but were so quiet and often just found it really hard to talk.  We did the training as well and we really should – I mean there’s no point saying should have – but could have taken an initiative there and just structured it differently so everyone did talk. Even kind of doing that for me just felt really scary. I just feel quite, like, insignificant or something.”

Listening to the recording at that event was challenging and thought-provoking, as it represented a voice that is not often heard, and because it was referring to something I care very much about, the Transition movement, voicing a deep sense of disappointment with her experience of it.  There is a danger that people involved in Transition, as with many of those in the wider environmental movement, can sometimes see inclusion as being about bringing more people over to ‘our’ agenda, that it is about winning over those who don’t ‘get it’.  This somewhat smug and superior approach is not appropriate for the work Transition is doing.  As Danielle puts it:

“…people in Transition…. often talk about inclusion with a view to bringing different people into the movement.  I have argued that this view of inclusion can imply and perpetuate hierarchical power relationships underpinned by assumptions of assimilation and integration.  As one … participant (in Danielle’s research) put it, Transition should perhaps not be seeking to include others but should be seeking to be included by them”.

Transition, an approach designed to build resilience at the community level, needs to actively include the needs of everyone in that community in order to truly create resilience.  Also, inclusion is simply the right, fair and just thing to do.  In our society there are many truths held by many different people.  Certain versions of the truth tend to dominate groups and society, but there are many others, and Transition needs to create space for this wide diversity of truths.

A societal transformation such as that on the scale envisaged by Transition which imagines it can look at inclusion later in the process is deluding itself, it needs to be central from the start.  The British Trust for Conservation Volunteers took a decision a few years ago to stop preaching to the converted, and to actively work with those who, up to that point, they hadn’t engaged with much.  They intentionally sought to develop projects and initiatives in as inclusive a way as possible, by ensuring that those running the organisation asked themselves the following questions, all of which are just as relevant to Transition initiatives, offering a great checklist for Transition core groups to keep referring back to:

• Do we really mean it? (that is, do we really mean to address this issue?)
• Do we know where we want to get to?
• Do we know why we’re doing it?
• Does our leadership champion this?

There is a perception often in environmental groups that some sectors of society are ‘hard to reach’.  What is less often considered though is the possibility that it is actually we who are ‘hard to reach’, that for many people, due to how we work, communicate and position ourselves, we can be seen as remote, distant and irrelevant.  Sometimes the idea that some groups are ‘hard to reach’ and “harder to engage” than others are simply not the case.  For example, the environmental movement has traditionally viewed BME groups as ‘hard to reach, yet one recent study found that only 5% of white respondents were happy to engage with community voluntary projects, whereas 23% of black respondents were.

I asked Catrina Pickering, Transition Network’s Diversity Coordinator, who has been running trainings around the UK with Transition groups, for the main tips and insights she communicates in the training:

• Listen: seek out common ground and common language.  Work with people where they are at, for example if working with a faith group look at Transition from their point of view,  if working with low income groups, it may well be more useful to focus on the building of economic resilience.
• Language:  avoid jargon and imagery, language and approaches which may marginalise people
• Choose your medium: explore alternative means of communication, such as the arts, and try to make events fun and celebratory.  Traditional meetings or events with a speaker can be a real turnoff for lots of people, and many different sectors of society meet each other in very different ways to that
• Learn to Recognise Power Dynamics: this means that when coming to this work having honesty and a commitment to an ongoing inner dialogue with ourselves that explores our own feelings about prejudices, power and being taken out of our  comfort zone.  Being mindful that this will be a process of being open to the discomfort and questioning of assumptions that may well arise. How do we feel about letting go of ways of thinking?

Transition Town Tooting (TTT) in London have, since the group’s inception, seen diversity as ‘a way of operating’ rather than an optional add-on.  Tooting is one of the most diverse areas of London, and the group has striven to reflect that.  In the summer of 2010 it held the Trashcatchers’ Carnival, which involved about 30 groups in creating a street carnival around the theme of caring for the Earth, using nearly 1 million plastic bags in creating the amazing floats for the event.  Over 1,000 people took part in the parade, and many thousands turned out to watch it.  They also hold an annual ‘Earth Talk Walk’, which visits all the main centres of worship in the area to share thoughts on caring for the Earth, and also the Foodival, an annual event which brings surplus produce from allotments to chefs from different ethnic restaurants in the area who cook them in their tradition.  AsHillary, a member of TTT, and an organiser of the Carnival, put it, “I’ve lived in Tooting for 22 years, but I think I’ve lived more in Tooting in the past 2 years since I’ve been involved in Transition than I have in the last 20 years”.

Whether we are talking about Totnes, Manchester, Forres or Los Angeles, inclusion will look different in each place, but it is equally as important.  Every community has a diversity of political opinion, incomes, backgrounds, gender and sexuality and so on, as well as of dominant and non-dominant people.  In practice Transition initiatives need to start out from a position of recognising that everyone is important and has a role, regardless of the above, and should seek to acquire the necessary tools to make diversity and inclusion central to their work.

In conclusion, Alastair Macintosh put it beautifully when I spoke to him, and to return to the food analogies that run through this book, he suggested that in terms of diversity, the challenge for Transition is to move from being the oil on top of the gravy to being like salt which is able to dissolve quickly into the gravy.  A very clear assessment of that challenge this ingredient is addressing.

The Solution

Building an Initiative that integrates all the strengths and concerns in your community means starting with everyone in that community and interweaving diversity into everything you do.  In practise, it’s about a lot more than putting up posters in a few carefully chosen places.   Rather than inviting people to your meetings and expecting them to come along, it’s about going out to other people and listening. It means finding out about the strengths, concerns and the passions that fuel the fire of everyone in your community and then together with your own ideas, using that as the building blocks for creating an inclusive vision that informs everything you do.  The result will be a just, fair and infinitely more resilient Transition.

Connections to Other Ingredients

Inclusion and diversity can strengthen greatly many aspects of your initiative’s work.  AWARENESS RAISING (2.9) will be much stronger if it involves BUILDING STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS  (2.12) with a diversity of organisations.  ORAL HISTORIES (4.7) can be a great way of hearing the stories not just of those whose roots in that community go back generations, but also those who arrived into that community from elsewhere, and the difficulties they faced.  When you are considering HAVING AN OFFICE OR NOT (3.1), it is good to remember how where you choose to have an office comes across in terms of inclusion.  In many cultures, the ROLE OF STORYTELLING (4.13) is much stronger, and it is good to weave this into events.  In terms of how the initiative functions internally, it is important to be mindful that those in the minority in a group often feel uncomfortable and find it hard to find their voice in meetings.  RESPECTFUL COMMUNICATION (1.7) and considering HOW OTHERS SEE US/HOW WE COMMUNICATE (1.6) are important, as is the possibility that some people may need some support with STANDING UP TO SPEAK (1.8).  For the initiative to design in regular SELF REFLECTION (3.8) is important on this topic.

[1] Cohen, D.M.K.  (2010 Reaching out for resilience: Exploring approaches to inclusion and diversity in the Transition movement.  A MSc Dissertation. University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

Please leave any comments here.

Context:

Feeling confident in speaking about Transition to audiences, or ensuring that as many people as possible in your initiatives can do it, will be key to your success. It will be a vital element your AWARENESS RAISING process and to ENGAGING THE COUNCIL. As interest in your initiative grows, having confident speakers will also be a key element of COMMUNICATING WITH THE MEDIA . If your initiative delivers TRANSITION TRAINING, good presentation skills will also be key to this.

(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:

Many of us have lost our voices. We are afraid to stand up and speak in public, indeed surveys shown that many people fear public speaking more than death! We fear humiliation, derision, and the mythical smart so-and-so who has spent 5 months honing the killer question that will humiliate you in public. He (or she) doesn’t exist, but for many people, public speaking is an utterly terrifying proposition.

The Core Text

It is said that the human brain is a fantastic thing. It is capable of incredible wonders, great poetry, mathematics and Sudoku, yet it stops when you stand up to speak in public. It need not be like that. Public speaking, like riding a bicycle, is a learnable skill. What follows is an attempt at a crash course in public speaking, although there is nothing like practice. Firstly, know your audience. You cannot expect to give exactly the same talk to wildly different audiences. Who are you speaking to? What makes them tick? What might engage and enthuse them, and what is guaranteed to turn them off? Secondly, dress the part. You don’t want to give a talk to a group of allotment growers in a suit, and turning up to present to the local Council in a t-shirt and shorts might not be the best approach either. Think carefully about who you are presenting to and how to get off to the best initial start.

Then, you need to know your material. This doesn’t mean you need to learn your whole speech by heart, but you need to know what you’re going to tell them, and have some kind of structure to what you are going to say. You need a beginning (what you’re going to talk about, how long you will take, whether or not there will be time for questions and so on), a middle (the main presentation) and an end (summarising your talk and an inspiring conclusion). There are a few ways you can be sure that you’ll get it right:

• Write the main points out onto cards you can glance as you give your talk
• Use Powerpoint slides to trigger you to talk on different subjects you feel comfortable with
• Write a talk, and then summarise it into points that you can refer to as you speak

Few things are duller than a talk read entirely from sheets of paper, interminable slide shows with endless incomprehensible graphs, a standard talk given with no reference to the audience. Make it lively, engaged, entertaining. Tell your own story, or stories of projects you have been involved with. Hearing someone talking honestly about their own experiences is worth a thousand slides, and really brings talks to life.

Don’t pace up and down, and make sure you engage as much of the audience as possible in eye contact. Use your hands but don’t flap them about excessively. Also, keep an eye on the clock. Saying you are going to talk for 20 minutes, and to still be there after 40 is very disrespectful of your audience. Most people have an attention span of 6-8 minutes: change the pace, change the medium, to sustain interest.

In relation to giving specifically Transition talks, remember that doom and gloom are not good tools for engaging people. You will lose people quickly. Also don’t give people too much in the way of graphs and stats, use them judiciously and then move on. What appeals to people, and what stays with them, is the emotion of what you are talking about. Why does Transition excite you? Tell your story, tell your initiative’s story. Use positive language. Is Transition about avoiding the most disastrous and nightmarish scenarios of peak oil and climate catastrophe, or is it about unleashing enterprise, creativity and community to seize the moment of this historic opportunity to rethink how our communities work? What you are trying to do is, with humour, compassion and kindness, to create, as George Marshall of COIN puts it, a new social norm, one in which Transition comes across as the most logical, and the most satisfying thing to do in these times.

Like riding a horse, public speaking needs practice. If your first one bombs, get back in the saddle and try again. Accept any invitation to speak, it is all good practice. In time, your confidence will grow, and when you take to the stage you will find that that space is yours, and that you are in command. And always be open to feedback, it may be uncomfortable, but it will help you to improve hugely.

The solution:

Like riding a bicycle or pruning apple trees, public speaking is a learnable skill. What matters is that you speak from what you are passionate about and have mastered a few basic skills. Make sure that from an early stage, training is offered in public speaking, mentoring is offered by other, more experienced public speakers, and that a diversity of people are sent to give talks for the group, thus enabling the group to build up a team of gifted speakers. Keep this training available as the initiative proceeds, and encourage people to be open with their constructive feedback about other peoples’ talks.

Connections to other patterns:

When giving talks for your group, try and be mindful of HOW OTHERS SEE US and of INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY. Avoid having one standard talk, but tailor your presentation to your audience. Including an element of ARTS AND CREATIVITY can bring life to a talk, as can STORYTELLING. You may find that overcoming your fear of public speaking can contribute to your PERSONAL RESILIENCE, with knock-on benefits elsewhere in your life. Your Transition group could use its AWARENESS RAISING programme, and in particular its UNLEASHING event to give fledgling public speakers some practice…

Please leave any comments here.

**A Guest Post by Naresh Giangrande**

It was with some fear and trepidation that Alexis Rowell, a Camden Borough councillor and the author of the upcoming Transition Guide to Local Authorities (LA), and I arrived in a deeply conservative part of the country, Norfolk, to do a day with them on peak oil, climate change and the Transition town model and practice. For those that don’t know it, Norfolk is a stunningly beautiful part of the country which is partly comprised of two areas, the Norfolk Broads, a large inland waterway system and the Fens (see pics below) which is partly wild and very intensively farmed, it being one of the UKs most productive farmland. It is also largely at sea level therefore at the hard edge of climate change policy. As the Helen and Newton Harrison’s work, Green House Britain makes clear, a 5 metre rise in sea levels will mean a significant part of East Anglia would be under water.

Despite being a Conservative Council, the Members have endorsed a climate change strategy & carbon management programme, although it would be fair to say there is a fair amount of sceptism. There are also some green Councillors who are vociferously supportive of the climate change agenda. Norfolk is an interesting mix of Conservative and green with Norwich being the only Labour stronghold.

This fear was confirmed by our first view of County Hall, with this Tornado fighter jet installed at the front entrance.  We joked with a member of Traffic and Transport who we walked with and wondered out loud if instead of a bike stand Norfolk CC offered a fighter jet stand, although he assured us there were several bike stands. The RAF has a number of bases in Norfolk, a legacy of the Battle of Britain and the strategic importance of this part of the country, which explains this interesting cultural statement!

Our fears were largely allayed as the make up the of two ½ day workshops was largely made up of officers and strategic partners who were largely aligned with a Transition Town message and environmentally literate; although peak oil was for many a new concept. We were asked to do a detailed peak oil presentation, which I did, drawing out the many implications of peak oil rather than dwell on the ins and outs of OPEC phantom reserves, and advanced oil recovery technology. I used the UK predicament as a close to home illustration of what happens when an oil province goes from exporter to importer and made the point that rather than see the declining North sea oil and gas production as a problem, that you can look on them as a great opportunity. The gap between supply and demand both emphasises the energy security aspect of peak oil (a point I find goes down well in conservative quarters) and the tremendous opportunity for risk takers and entrepreneurs that this holds for low carbon and renewable businesses and infrastructure.

I also drew on the latest Feasta and Resilience/Risk Alliance report Tipping point; Near term systemic Implications of a Global Peak in Oil Production, which makes an extremely compelling case for the end of a debt based financial system when investors realise that peak oil means peak energy, and that means peak money- or no more debt. The rush for the exits in the global casino to exchange paper assets for an order of magnitude less real assets will create a tipping point, this report argues, into a new social/financial/economic regime. No need to argue for ‘regime change’ Mr Market will do it for us is the rather scary conclusion.

The effect of, for some, hearing about peak oil for the first time and laying out some of the implications, especially in financial terms scared the bejesus out of some. You could hear a pin drop in the room for both morning and afternoon sessions. However it also led to some interesting outcomes. Not least of which was the reaction of two Norfolk Resilience Forum members in the room and their realisation that they had none of this information and felt it caused a gap in their planning.  As a result of the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) every local authority in the UK has a UK Resilience section that deals with emergencies and risks to business continuity amongst other things. Although Resilience Forums take a narrow view of resilience, mainly focussing on the ability to withstand shocks and maintain function, it is none the less an important function of government and interesting that the UK government is starting to use resilience in this way.

The rest of the work shop had two main focuses. The first was to initiate some strategic scenario planning thinking, and the second was a nuts and bolts look at the synergies between LA’s and Transition Initiatives and what might a Transition LA look like.

We have found that one of the main reasons why LAs and other organisations (and maybe individuals) have not taken up the Transition model is the lack of belief or understanding that the future might not be like the present, and that there is compelling evidence for the next 20 years not being anything like the last 20 years. For this work we used David Holmgren’s Future Scenarios; and the work of Royal Dutch Shell’s pioneering work on scenario planning.  There is a certain irony in this which I am sure will titivate peak oil conspiracy theorists no end.

These future scenarios we used were Business as Usual, Green Technology, Transition/ Energy Descent, and Collapse. We devised a game that centred around matching cards that each had on them an event or a technology with these 4 potential stories of what our future might hold. This exercise enabled participants to think clearly about say electric cars and whether they ‘described’ a green technology or a collapse scenario. I saw many people for the first time questioning what kind of future we might have and what might that look like, in very concrete terms (no pun intended). I wish to emphasis that this exercise was not about getting participants to agree to or sign up to a particular scenario as the right one, but rather to think about the world we are creating and the pathways to one scenario or the other, and how we might start to plan for or design a future we actually want.

Lastly Alexis ran a session on what other LAs are doing around the country and how a LA can use the Transition initiatives in their area to cost effectively deliver services. There are dozens of National Performance Indicators (NPI) that Transition can help their Authority to deliver, and there are now some good examples of them doing that. There are also many ways in which a council can lead the way by, amongst other suggestions:

• Setting up Revolving Water Efficiency Funds; when an efficiency is created by water recycling or rain water capture the money saved in put into a fund that finances further efficiencies and savings.
• Creating mini food chains; linking local food producers and consumers.
• Greening Council transport fleets by creating bio methane using anaerobic digestion
• Building using Passivhaus standards

Our participants were very complimentary, some of the feedback:

• Keep it up, you’ve inspired me
• It was great to see such a range of people and Norfolk County Council departments represented – very encouraging that a momentum can be built up.
• Very enjoyable with passionate enthusiastic presenters. Thanks.
• Very thought provoking!
• All relevant, an excellent session
• Very well delivered, engaging and spot on in terms of the information, content and style.

We all had an enjoyable day discussing and exchanging views and ideas on significant issues. We are looking forward to the work the many Transition groups in the area will be doing with their Council. My only regret for the day is that I didn’t get a ride on the Tornado, but maybe that would have been against the spirit of the day.

Our sincere thanks to the Gaia Trust for their generous support in helping us create and pilot this workshop, and to Esme Holtom, Climate change officer for Norfolk County Council, for her vision and hard work in making this happen.

………………………………………………………

Naresh Giangrande for Transition Training and Consulting.

There is a workshop day planned for the 23rd of June in London designed for Local Authority and NGO officers on Peak oil and Climate change strategies and engagement using the Transition Town model and practice. Email Cliona O’Conaill <cliona (at) transitionnetwork.org> for more information.

A biomass boiler in Sala, Sweden.

(Naresh Giangrande recently returned from a Transition Training tour of Sweden, here is a short report about his trip).

I spent a intensely satisfying afternoon with the students of a Folks school in Gotenberg exploring how to tell positive stories of the future especially around climate change. We explored topics like how to tell stories that changed peoples heart and mind, how to tell stories about systems, resilience, and my favourite ‘how do you tell stories about the future’. They invited me to join them because the course tutor had heard of my visit and she thought that having someone from a positive movement about climate action would stimulate and inspire students. It certainly inspired me to work with switched on and passionate teenagers!

The Folk School system –incredibly- is part of and paid for by the state (as are many of the ‘alternative school like Steiner schools).  There are 160 pre-university Folk schools, Folkhögskola, in Sweden formed over 150 years ago; some are run by the church and other by labour unions and other by environmental organisations with an extraordinary level of choice of what and how is studied. Coming from the UK where just about every area of education is codified and predetermined, sans serendipity it felt bewildering!

Similarly I gave an evening talk to over 80 in Jarna to a class studying environmental issues at a Steiner school (and members of the public). I threw away the script and had an uncomfortable start but an ultimately equally satisfying evening exploring the concept of Transition with them. I hope they understood that Transition is a process of ‘throwing away the script’!  I was hosted by Peter and his community on a small farm who are of course putting in place many pieces of a resilient small holding, and I was introduced to the wonderful Swedish clay stove, one of many on my trip (see right).

Cemus has been developing for over 10 years a new and challenging model for universities. Formed by students who design the courses and curriculum in response to the lack of environmental modules at Uppsala University – the biggest in Sweden- we had an afternoon discussing Transition and how Cemus might be a model for starting Transition Universities. Rather than having to start something new this is a way to create courses in environmental subjects that can bolt onto any university curriculum, a self organising piece of the university.

The first Training for Transition in Sweden, was held at Sätra Brunn (see left), an ancient healing centre founded amongst 9 wells which have purported healing qualities. This weekend was attended my most of the founding members of the Transition Sweden initiating group and 17 others from a wide area of Sweden. Myself and Paul Hendriksen from the Transition Netherlands coordinating group facilitated the weekend in this beautiful and historic place. I was surprised at the range of people attending, many of whom had never done this sort of work before. Almost all commented on the ‘Inner Transition’ and our Joanna Macy structures. It is the fusion of inner personal development work and outer social change and environmental issues that constantly delights participants on our training. It seems to ‘fill in a blank’ that for most seems compelling, strengthening, and surprising.

In a short period of time we find away to connect an individual to the earth, and to his or her social and political world; a frightening but deeply moving prospect in a world undergoing such tectonic shifts ! We can be ourselves in this movement , finally we don’t have to leave any of ourselves out in Transition; which  is I think part of what is so exciting and compelling. I think this ancient healing site also helped us conduct our 2 day journey in Transition.  We were also helped by the indoor swimming pool, sauna, and a troop of outrageous women acappella singers who performed for us on Sunday over another sumptuous feast.

Transition Sweden also took advantage of my trip to promote their ideas, hosting a number of press interviews with P1 the Swedish national radio, and local radio, a blogger named Johan, and several newspapers who turned up to a press conference at the headquarters of Hela Sverige Ska Leva, an association of rural communities that hosts Transition Sweden, at their headquarters in the old square in Stockholm (see left).

I also did talks for the newly formed Transition Initiatives in Uppsalla, Jarna, and Gotenberg. I also talked to the SNF the largest nature conservation society in Sweden and Effekt – a new magazine dedicated to climate issues with the Transition movement featured on their inaugural front cover.

Sweden is way ahead of anything we are doing in the UK in terms of putting in place the physical infrastructure that will make us resilient as we lose our fossil fuels. This is because they have no fossil fuels, but rather lots of natural resources, and a small population. They are the only European country, despite living a high energy and consumption lifestyle, that is within its ecological footprint. A visit to SHE, the local energy company of Sala (see right) showed why.

This is an 100% locally owned energy company who delivers not only electricity but hot water, central heating, and broadband to their customers who are more than 60% of the people of Sala and Heby. All of their energy production is renewable, mostly combined heat and power burning biomass, but with a bit of bio fuels and solar pv (see left).  Most of the electricity generated in Sweden is from non fossil fuels, with a mix of renewable, hydro and nuclear, and with many small scale community owned power companies like the one I saw in Sala. The cost of energy is less then 50% of what it would cost from fossil fuels so it makes economic sense. Any Transition Initiative that wants to see how to do it should come to Sweden- it works!

My final reflection is that Sweden has many wonderful pieces of the Transition to a sustainable society. However these pieces are spliced onto an industrial growth society which makes the whole thing, of course, unsustainable. Take out the industrial growth beliefs and processes and you would have much of what we need to live well. Perhaps Transition Towns can stimulate this missing piece and enable Sweden to make the turn, the transition, rather quickly by stimulating the national debate about where we are headed. Maybe.

Naresh Giangrande

The Transition Initiative: Changing the scale of change
by Jay Griffiths
Published in the July/August 2009 issue of Orion magazine

A WHILE AGO, I heard an American scientist address an audience in Oxford, England, about his work on the climate crisis. He was precise, unemotional, rigorous, and impersonal: all strengths of a scientist. The next day, talking informally to a small group, he pulled out of his wallet a much-loved photo of his thirteen-year-old son. He spoke as carefully as he had before, but this time his voice was sad, worried, and fatherly. His son, he said, had become so frightened about climate change that he was debilitated, depressed, and disturbed. Some might have suggested therapy, Prozac, or baseball for the child. But in this group one voice said gently, “What about the Transition Initiative?”

Read More.

If you enjoyed that, you’re going to love the rest of them… The Powerdown Show is now available in its entirety here at Transition Culture.  Click here for more information.  It is a brilliant resource for groups.  Each episode is a standalone programme, illustrated with examples.  The series also contains lots of excellent animated sequences, which make it very accessible.  Highly, highly recommended.

Manawatu Gorge Windfarm with Naresh and interested looking sheep

We are staying up the Pohangina river valley with my sister and family. They live in the rich, rural heartland of the North Island of New Zealand. They have a small holding; 5 acres and run a few lambs and a couple of beef cattle and have a small vege garden and horses for the kids. It’s potentially very resilient and has the makings of a sustainable lifestyle if the rest of their lives weren’t so resource hungry. Like most Kiwis they live a normal unsustainable life amidst a potentially easily sustainable and resilient land, a real contradiction to my eyes.

A New Zealand fern

Gas (petrol) is cheap here and people use it like in America with no regard, and the country itself has such a small population that it’s probably within its eco footprint. According to a recent World Wildlife Fund report- Europe 2005 The Ecological Footprint NZ ranks as 14th highest footprint in the world, with a per capita footprint of just under 6 hectares. I suspect there is more than 24 million hectares of productive land in NZ, so they are within their countries footprint, but way over the world sustainable footprint of 1.8 hectares.

As they are living on between 3 and 4 planets, but within their own countries sustainable limits – this will explain the widespread complacency ecologically speaking. There are ample resources and rich land, and lots of water and loads of unused potential for RE generation. There is a wind farm on the horizon near my sister’s place and that’s new. Australia and the USA know that they are coming up against big problems, but here the rest of the world and its problems are far away and the land is rich so why worry?

There was a article in the paper today pointing out that peak oil was 2020 and mentioning the recent report by the IEA and George Monbiot’s grilling of Faith Birol, the chief economist of the IEA, who admitted (for the first time) that 2020 is the peak, and padded that with lots of wishful thinking. The author of the article went on to mention that there will be great solar electric cars shortly and then second generation bio fuels in the form of algae which will solve all of our problem, so no worries. I suspect that it’s a way to avoid engaging with the obvious problem NZ faces with peak oil; a dispersed population, a heavy dependence on long distance tourism, and a farming sector that is heavily oil dependent.

And Sophy pointed out that NZ could conceive solutions to the problems facing it that would include remaining within the current paradigm. Their problem is essentially a liquid fuels problem. However they would have to assume that they are truly isolated from the rest of the world, which they aren’t, that long distance tourism would continue which it won’t, and that they could go running a hugely energy inefficient farming sector which will be impossible. [???] And there are a myriad of other problems and challenges. And what happens when climate refugees start arriving en mass from places like Bangladesh?

Many people from all over the world are buying up New Zealand real estate and several people in the USA mentioned to me that if things got really bad in the US they would hop it to guess where?? NZ. A country many are seeing as the place to be post peak oil over run with refugees rich or otherwise is no longer a bolt hole.

Makara Windfarm near Wellington New Zealand

We stayed with a friend and her partner who were also at the centre of the campaign to stop Meridian putting up windmills outside Wellington, in one of the windiest land based wind resources in the world. I can understand the frustration and the desire to keep a pristine and very beautiful and wild place just that. And she proposed that they didn’t need big windmills to convert to a low carbon society, small scale local solutions and off grid seemed to her the way forward. And it makes some sense.

Big business wants big solution like large scale wind because that’s its way of keeping control of the energy sector. It doesn’t like solar panels because once you have sold someone a panel then you give them energy independence. A utility would much rather going on selling you wind power forever, it make more money and business sense. Her assertion was that wind is being pushed by the government and no doubt driven by big corporate interests.

However the part that she and most people (anti wind mills or otherwise) don’t get is that small scale, re-localised, and local energy independence is the route to a Transitioned, powerdown future. It is also the route to a no growth or steady state economy. If that’s what you want then small scale off grid, local energy independence is the answer. But her lifestyle is not a powerdown one. If you want the present arrangement; economic growth and all the goodies that come with it, then you have to have large scale solutions to large scale problems. It’s a choice, and that’s the choice facing us. I suspect we will see lots more large scale wind and large scale attempts at ‘solving’ our ‘multiple collisions with reality’.

Many of them will fail and many will be seen to be a step in the wrong direction. But maybe this is part of the transition process and maybe that where we will need to go, or try to go, as the energy crunch intensifies and we clutch at solutions. But how do you explain that simply? Opposing large windmills, big business and large scale attempts at keeping it all going is commendable- but not if we want our comforts and our high energy lifestyle (which in any event is by in large destined for the scrap heap). How do you get across to the anti wind brigade that forgoing large scale wind means living frugally, giving up your cars and foreign holidays?

(Rob’s Note: Below is a talk that Sophy gave as part of their tour in New Zealand, filmed and posted online by Infectious Films)

Part Two | Part Three

This model use gives elegant and far reaching explanations of some of the insanity that our society creates, such as that expression of authentic feeling are taboo in many situations, that raising children has less value than making money, and all of our institutions that have a responsibility for the truth have at least one paramount reason for distorting it.

It explains the particular addictive or dysfunctional patterns we collectively engage in – pursuit of excessive wealth, longevity, entertainment, romance, sex, work and reality altering substances. It explains why we make films about future disasters, machines taking over the world, horror movies and romance but not a single film about a positive, earth based, socially just and spiritually grounded human future. And it warns of what can happen in environmental projects if the power of the unconscious – both positive and negative – is not understood and worked with. So for now the talk stays in, until someone comes up with a better idea!

The inner worlds presentation got a good going over with the Training for Trainers group, as well as useful suggestions on how to deliver it. An interesting corollary of understanding what is out of consciousness at a personal level is to look at the collective unconscious – and following the model we use, including both the painful wounding from past and present, and the potential for true healthy being. The avoidance of engaging with healthy potential is part of what stops us from making films and telling stories about the positive future we could create; it keeps positive information and images from featuring in our news programmes and newspapers.

And avoiding the wounding means for example the continuing difficulty of telling the full truth of the violence in which America is founded – first towards the Native Americans, and then of Africans forced into slavery. Transition is very good at addressing the former, with positive visioning so core to the model. And we need to make sure we keep creating safe spaces for the difficult feelings, whether relating to personal or collective issues.

Here in New Zealand someone asked me if we had looked into what helps addicts recover when their fix is withdrawn suddenly – one way of viewing economic collapse and the absence of money, resulting in a quick end to consumer / work / external status driven fixes. The opportunity that such a crisis forces on the addict is to start to feel the pain which initially drives the addiction, and then start to recover some of the positives which the addiction keeps out of reach. The risk is that the addict will immediately reach for some other fix – or become increasingly desperate and potentially violent in their determination to restore the fix as it was, believing that their life does indeed depend absolutely on that. So a useful thing for Transition projects to be thinking about is how we can create support structures which catch people as they fall out of their old patterns. I have heard of a real application of the 12 step process to consumer related addiction, and would be interested to explore this idea more.

I am fascinated that the three countries that we will spend most time in are all ex-colonies of England; mainly because they are now English speaking, and so have picked up the model. But also they are “developed” – so India and ex-colonial African countries have not picked the model up – and therefore share some aspects of culture, psyche and relative global wealth.

Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande

We are about to leave the States, having done our last training in Los Angeles. It felt like a different thing to SF and the other American trainings. There feels like there is an added degree of difficulty to Transition in LA.  But maybe this is not real maybe the scale of things in the US is hitting me, I don’t know. Having been built with the car as an integral part of the system, car and freeways and wide boulevards scream out at me, and seem to have a life of their own.

The LA training was a very heartful affair, I felt really touched. There were so many really committed people doing so much to make a difference. Joanne Poyourow, who organised the training. did an amazing job organising a training the week before Christmas during the middle of the week, something we wouldn’t even consider. But she and others were determined to persuade us to fit in the LA group, and that was the only time available. So it happened, with the generous support of Reverend Peter Hood the rector of the Anglican Church in West LA who hosted us in his church hall. He co authored Environmental Change Making – How to Cultivate Lasting Change in Your Local Community with Joanne, which is a manual based on their experience of relocalising their community. It has many of the elements of Transition and lots of other good ideas and ways to make change.

The church has a permaculture garden with herbs and vegetables growing at the front, and nearby is a much larger food growing garden project which we didn’t have time to see. Attending the course were members of several Transition Initiating Groups from Tucson Arizona, Palm Springs, Ca, Laguna Beach Ca, and many from LA itself.

Joanne said this after the training :

“It felt like the whole idea of cities was addressed well in open space, and it’s something that comes up frequently in cities trainings. It’s great to have so many who are putting their weight behind this issue and prepared to tackle it.

I can’t finish this post without mentioning Joanne’s other book, “Legacy” which is  a novel that takes place in LA over generations. It is a tale of positive change and the creation of a positive permaculture based future. It doesn’t include Peak Oil (Joanne said that it was because no one had heard of it four years ago when she was writing so it would make it seem too way out) and it may be a tad optimistic in terms of what parts of the system will keep going. But it’s a positive vision and one to get your teeth into, and well worth reading. It stirred me and had me in tears sometimes, and here we have again a positive vision of the Transition written by a woman, a task men have yet to embrace. My favourite quote: “We are the Transition generation not because we will accomplished it, but because we have dared to begin it.”

Our last days in the USA were spent having some time to relax before in a place called Borrego Springs –a very beautiful spot in the desert SE of Los Angeles. Like many places here it’s a tiny town but sprawls out across the desert – 3 miles from where we stayed to the small shopping mall and few restaurants. So you have to get in a car to do everything. We got a cheap special in the one of the hotels there.  It’s a big complex; 3 nine hole golf courses, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and hot tub. It was nearly deserted, I felt like Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shinning’ going slowly mad in this resort in the off season. Only it wasn’t off season. We chatted to a local who was using the hot tub the last night and he said the resort was owned by some rich people who bought up a failed resort 12 years ago, rebuilt it but it is still mostly empty. Looking through Transition eyes it’s a dead duck as far as I can see. The resource use is phenomenal;  the grass was as green as can be and regularly watered as we observed one day (in the middle of the day!!) and then there is the golf course with lakes – all in a desert!

Can this part of the system adapt in a powerdown future? I found it painful. Pain and anger at what I perceived to be a ‘fuck you to the planet’ attitude in the desert and in southern California in general. Is there a wilful resistance – the American way of life is non negotiable? Just in the size of the cars and the whole way life is organised, and resorts like the one we were staying pointed in that direction. It’s prepared to carry on regardless until it can’t. There is an alternative, it only has to want to change and to want to embrace change. That’s all and then so much is possible. The only thing that can throw a spanner in the works is to take a stance of we are not changing!  And it’s painful to feel the disregard and the likely collision to come. I can really understand why James Howard Kunstler writes the way he does, in such shocking and provocative terms; to wake up the slumbering amongst us.

Naresh Giangrande & Sophy Banks