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.
When I was in Lewes for their Official Unleashing, I was interviewed by Adrienne Campbell of TTL. The interview looked at the Transition concept in depth, as well as the practical manifestations in the various towns, in particular Totnes. Some of this interview has now been uploaded to YouTube, question by question. At the same time, Adrienne interviewed Dr Chris Johnstone, author of ‘Find Your Power’, I think some clips from that will be uploaded soon too.
Representatives from 35 communities up and down the UK crammed into the beautiful surroundings of Ruskin Mill, in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, on Thursday 31st May for the Inaugural Conference of the Transition Network. The event was both an opportunity to network the many Transition Initiatives springing up around the UK and also an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary momentum that the concept is generating. Despite the occasionally cramped nature of the space due to its being filled to its capacity (many more people were unable to come due to lack of spaces), it was an amazing day, full of energy, hope and possibility.
It’s not every day that Transition Towns stuff is translated into Italian, but with the recent coverage in the Guardian, foreign papers are getting in touch and running articles. Here is one, in Italian, and seemingly quite balanced. They aren’t all quite so rational. A few weeks ago a Mexican reporter rang me up, and the main thrust of her interview, in not very good English, was to what extent Transition Towns was like John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ (an exceptionally odd question). She sounded positively disappointed when I told her that I had grown up drawing far more inspiration from the Buzzcocks than ‘Imagine’. The final article turned up the other day, all in Spanish so I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but bizzarely the article’s lone illustration was of a caravan park, which we are positive is nowhere near Totnes. Ah, tis a wonderful world.
A couple of weeks ago in Totnes, as part of the Great Reskilling programme, we held a workshop with Keith Ellis from Transition Town Lewes called **A Hands-on Introduction to YouTube Video Activism**, which aimed to teach people how to make short films just using a digital camera and a laptop, and to transfer them onto sites such as YouTube and VideoGoogle, a cheap and very powerful way of communicating ideas of transition and energy descent. The course was a great success, with about 15 people with widely varying experience of making films spending the day filming and editing a number of short films.
I don’t read Building for a Future magazine anywhere near as often as I ought to, but recently I picked up a copy and read an excellent article by Simon Fairlie, drawing a new angle on the zero-energy buildings debate. I have been a huge admirer of Simon’s work for years, in particular his work on rural planning through the campaign group Chapter 7, and always enjoy reading his work. This article has a particularly important take, I think, on the dangers of blindly putting cutting carbon emissions above the creation of resilience and the rebuilding of a rural economy.
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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