28 Mar 2012
The last leg of my week of dashing to various places (Dublin and London) took me to Glasgow for the Social Enterprise Exchange, the world’s biggest social enterprise event. It was huge, loads of events with speakers such as Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civic Society and Chuka Umunna, Shadow Business Secretary. There were over 150 stalls from various organisations, including Transition Network’s REconomy stand which proved very popular (see below), and all in all the day was a huge statement of intent about the scale and ambition of the social enterprise sector.
I couldn’t stay all day unfortunately, but after the opening session, I took part in one called “More, better, faster – how can social enterprise grow?” It was chaired by Susan Aktemel of Impact Arts, and featured myself along with Jim Mullan of KibbleWorks and Karen Lynch of Belu. It was a very interesting session, here is the talk I gave at it:
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27 Mar 2012
A few weeks ago I travelled to Brockwood Park, a very progressive school in Hampshire, to give a talk about Transition. It was the first talk I have given that included clips from ‘In Transition 2.0’, which went down very well. I had a great time there, thanks to everyone who made it such an enjoyable visit. A few days after I went, they held their first Open Space to explore what becoming a Transition school would entail.
https://youtu.be/yBZ206SjA6A
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26 Mar 2012
I spent Saturday evening and Sunday at the Guardian’s Open Weekend festival at King’s Place, the Guardian’s headquarters, where Transition Network was involved in a number of events. The Open Weekend was 2 days of a wide range of events designed to bring the paper’s readership into the heart of the organisation to help shape its future in the fast-moving world of social media and publishing.
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22 Mar 2012
The shift towards seeing Transition in terms of the rebuilding of local, resilient economies continues apace. One of the key evolutions in this, a step change in thinking about what Transition looks like in practice, took place in Totnes yesterday. Called the ‘Local Entrepreneur Forum’, it was introduced in the promotional material thus:
“There’s never been a greater need to rethink our economy, especially at the local level. Social and sustainable enterprise represents the future, and here in Totnes, we’re not just waiting for the future to happen. We’re inventing it”.
The idea was to bring entrepreneurs, investors and experts together, inspire them with possibilities, mix them up and see what happens. It was to prove a heady brew.
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21 Mar 2012
Here’s a great short film about ‘A Little Patch of Ground’, a wonderful project run by Encounters Arts in Hackney, London and in Dartington, Devon. A very heartwarming way to spend 8 minutes on a Wednesday morning.
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