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.
At the 2012 Degrowth conference in Venice one of the highlights for me was the talk by Arturo Escobar (my notes from which can be found here). He is the author of Encountering Development and Territories of Difference, among others. His talk looked at how Transition might look in the context of the Global South, and held many fascinating insights. Here is the interview I did with him, first as an audio file, and below as a transcript.
Sunday began early, going to meet around 25 members of Transition Italia and of different Italian groups on the harbourside on the outskirts of Venice. There we got on a boat that they had booked to take us all to Ferrara. The boat was called ‘Nena’, an original Venezian ‘vaporetto’, the boats particular to Venice that are used to ferry passengers and goods around the smaller waterways. It was owned by a family who had lovingly restored it and it was a beautiful boat, and they were our hosts for the day. It was to turn out to be one of the most beautiful Transition-related days I have ever had the fortune to experience.
Transition folks from around the world gathered last weekend at Battersea Arts Centre for the 6th annual Transition Network conference. In a week when the Arctic ice reached its smallest ever extent, scientists warned that the world’s weather could be on the verge of running amok and it was suggested that Saudi Arabia, always meant to be the ‘swing producer’ on whom the rest of the world could depend for reliable oil supplies, may become a net importer of oil by 2030, the theme of the conference was, appropriately, ‘Building resilience in extraordinary times’. Unlike previous conferences which had spanned two, perhaps three days, this was, in effect, a 6 day ‘Festival of Transition’, and it turned out to be an extraordinary event which deeply affected those attending.
At the World Student Environmental Summit at Université de Lausanne on Sep. 6th, 2012, a whole session was dedicated to Transition, and I beamed in for a Skype Q&A near the end. It’s a great overview and introduction to Transition:
The workshop called “What happens when Transition says no?” will bring together Joe Ryle and Rose Music from Transition Heathrow, Holly Tiffen from Totnes’ ‘NoToCosta’ campaign, and Michaela Richter and Rob McGhee (see above, Michaela couldn’t make the photo-taking) from Transition Cowbridge in South Wales to explore this important question. I asked Michaela and Rob to tell the story they’ll be bringing to the conference and what they hope people will get out of the workshop:
Discussion: Comments Off on Transition Network conference 2012 preview: No:17 – Michaela Richter and Rob McGhee on “What happens when Transition says no?’
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