An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Well not quite, but en route to a gathering of Ashoka Fellows in Austria where I’ll be for the next couple of days, I by chance found myself in the Austrian town of Wörgl, famed for its alternative currency experiment in the 1930s. In order to mark the deep influence of what happened there, and how it continues to inspire local currency schemes around the world, here I am in front of the station, with some Totnes, Stroud, Brixton and Lewes Pounds. The Wörgl was introduced to the town in 1932, at the height of the Depression, when a third of the town was without work. It is an amazing story.
How We Used To Live – Food, energy, skills, and elbow-grease: memories of a pre-oil Totnes.
How did Totnes feed, heat and transport itself before the age of globalisation and cheap energy? What did a local food system look like to those who depended on it? Two generations have passed with no first-hand knowledge of living with much less energy than we expect today. This event, illustrated with images from Totnes and District Image Bank presented by Barrington Weekes, and introduced by Rob Hopkins of Transition Town Totnes, will introduce you to the first hand stories of life growing up in the 1940s and 50s, where central heating was unknown and most food was, by necessity, local, through the memories of those who were there. This fascinating and illuminating evening will leave you seeing the town in a very different way.
Hot on the heels of her excellent 2009 Transition Network survey, Gill Seyfang of UEA is back, this time with a similarly excellent and comprehensive survey of Transition Norwich. You can download the pdf. of her survey here. The findings Gill notes are very interesting, such as how a third of the members have not previously been engaged in local environmental groups, and a further sixth have been motivated to return to local activism by the Transition movement. The survey finds that members are attracted by the positive, hopeful message of Transition, emphasising grassroots empowerment, local solutions and constructive action rather than protesting or campaigning. Like yesterday’s report from Transition East, the section on troubleshooting is fascinating. The most alarming part of the survey was to hear that only 17% of people involved with Transition Norwich have ever read Transition Culture. Dear oh dear, what’s a man to do….
I was delighted to hear today that the Italian edition of The Transition Handbook, “Il Manuale Practico della Transizione”, has arrived and is now in print. Regular readers will know that I spent a few years living in Italy earlier in my life, and have a continued affection for the place. Cristiano Bottone, one of the initiators of Transition in Italy, wrote to tell me and asked me “to send us a few lines to present the book to Italian readers”. Allora, ciao tutti…..
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
Read more»
Well not quite, but en route to a gathering of Ashoka Fellows in Austria where I’ll be for the next couple of days, I by chance found myself in the Austrian town of Wörgl, famed for its alternative currency experiment in the 1930s. In order to mark the deep influence of what happened there, and how it continues to inspire local currency schemes around the world, here I am in front of the station, with some Totnes, Stroud, Brixton and Lewes Pounds. The Wörgl was introduced to the town in 1932, at the height of the Depression, when a third of the town was without work. It is an amazing story.
