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.
Looby Macnamara is a permaculture teacher and author of ‘People and Permaculture: caring and designing for ourselves, each other, and the planet‘. According to the publishers, it is “the first book to explore how to use permaculture design and principles for people – to restore personal, social and planetary well-being. People & Permaculture widens the definition of permaculture from being mainly about land-based systems to taking it right into the heart of our own lives, relationships and society”. I caught up with Looby via. Skype, and started by asking her how she came to the work that led to her writing the book (you can either listen to this podcast, or the transcript is below):
Mallika Bhattacharya, a student at Oxford Brookes University, has recently published a research paper called “An Investigation of the Transition Movement as a Model for Sustainable Development: ‘Haddenham in Transition’” (click on the link to download). Haddenham is a village in Buckinghamshire of about 8,000 residents, about 16 miles from Oxford. The research looked at the group’s work, and the level of awareness of its work across the community. The study aims to find out how aware and involved Haddenham residents are with Transition activities, what their priorities are for the village and what changes they would like to see, the Transition group’s current and planned activities and successes and issues within the initiative. It’s a very useful piece of research with some useful insights for other initiatives.
December is one of the quieter times for Transition initiatives, but even so, we’ve quite a packed December round-up for you. We start, seasonally, with two Winterfests, a seasonal opportunity to celebrate and reflect on what a Transition group is up to. We’ll start in Stroud, with this short film of the Transition Stroud Winterfest:
Welcome back to Transition Culture for 2013. It is a year fraught with dangers yet also rich with possibilities. I hope that Transition Network, and this blog, and all the other resources out there for people wanting to embrace these possibilities will continue to support and inspire you through 2013. Let’s kick this year off with a talk I gave last October at Communicate 2012: Breaking Boundaries, hosted by the Bristol Natural History Consortium. I was asked to speak about what was my vision for 10 years in the future. May 2013 bring more, and firmer, steps towards its realisation:
It didn’t start too auspiciously. My Eurostar train’s engine broke down at St. Pancras and sat there for 2 hours while engineers tried in vain to reattach the flange to the sprocket (or something). After several aborted attempts where we were told all was now well, only to grind to a halt again after moving forwards a few metres, we finally all bailed off onto another train and set off. I was travelling to Brussels to collect, on behalf of Transition Network, the 2012 EESC Civil Society Prize at a rather grand award ceremony in the European Parliament building. Would I make it in time?
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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