Transition Culture

23 Jul 2007

The Transition Town Totnes International Youth Music Festival.

A wonderful event took place at Bowden House near Totnes last Friday, bringing together about 150 teenagers together to make music and to party together, but also to be introduced to some of the ideas around Transition Town Totnes. The event was organised by a group within TTT and by the Totnes School of English. About half of the kids there were on foreign exchange trips to Totnes, the majority of them from Spain, and the rest were from Totnes itself, often from their host families. The weather just about behaved itself, despite the occasional rumble of thunder from over the hills… The whole evening was a real celebration of music, culture and of the energy the Transion Town approach has unleashed.

There was a big top tent, decorated with dayglo banners made by the kids, including a wonderful rendition of the TTT logo (see above), which was where the entertainment took place. The PA was powered by photovoltaic panels, outside there food, juices and smoothies, and fire-related circus skills (and, of course, football). The whole thing was brilliantly organised, and had a lovely atmosphere.

Some of the kids had prepared little sketches, which they called “TTT Adverts”, the first called “Before the Oil” (see right), the second “The Discovery of Oil” and the third called “The Museum of the Future”. These had been devised by the kids in the days preceding the event. There were also some songs and some samba percussion on bits of rubbish.

After a short interval, my son Rowan gave a talk about TTT. We had been asked to provide a speaker but with one caveat, they had to be under 16! Although initially reluctant, he got really into it, and spoke very eloquently about the Totnes Pound and about the work TTT is doing (I was very proud). He concluded by saying that there are plans afoot for a TTT Youth Group, to start sometime after the summer break. We are very keen to make this a central feature of our work, and hope that this evening has begin to catalyse this.

Then the rest of the evening was music, circus skills, singers and the headlining band, Rebel Kartel. It was really wonderful to see the amount of dedicated commitment that had gone into making it happen, and it was lovely to be around an event where all the performance, music and entertainment had been created by under 16s. Thanks so much to everyone who made it happen, in particular Steph, Lizi, Poppy and everyone at Bowden House.