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 end of Naomi Klein’s two-day visit to Totnes, which included a talk (film of which is still to come) and meetings with many of the key players in Transition Town Totnes, I managed to grab an hour with her for an interview. Here, in two parts (part two tomorrow), is the discussion we had.
You’ve spent two days here in Totnes and met lots of people, and I wondered what your reflections are? What will you take away with you from your time here?
I’m still processing it I guess, but it’s been an amazing two days. What’s most striking to me is just how decentralised this process is and the sense of ownership that so many people have over it. There isn’t that “no I can’t really talk about it”, there’s a tremendous amount of people that have enough confidence to talk about it.
The role of the arts in helping to inform and inspire people around the issues of peak oil and climate change is one we have explored here at Transition Culture before. It was fascinating to read about a recent project by ‘sonic artist’ Janek Schaefer, and his original installation produced as artist in residence for the IF:Milton Keynes International Festival 2010. ‘Asleep at the Wheel’ created a ‘ghost road’ of cars in an abandoned supermarket, and introduced people to thinking about peak oil and related issues in some intriguing ways (you can read more about it here). Here is a short film about the installation:
Transition in Action: From the Ground Up by Stephanie Hofielen.
From the Ground Up (FGU), a working group of Transition Town Kingston, is a volunteer run, not for profit, organic fresh fruit and vegetable box scheme. The box scheme was launched in March 2010 as a buying group for eight families in response to the high expense and inaccessibility of organic food. The group was very clear in its goal of sourcing organic fruit and vegetables at affordable prices whilst supporting sustainable food systems. The principles underpinning FGU are:
On Wednesday I handed the CD containing the first completed draft of ‘The Transition Companion’ over the Green Books for the editing process to begin. Phew! Been quite a mission (due out in September). Anyway, one of the things that runs through the books is ‘Transition in Action’ sections, drawing together inspiring stories from Transition groups of some of their projects. I’ll post a few of them, starting with this one, from Transition Taunton Deane, written by Chrissy Godfrey… have a good weekend.
“Taunton Transition Town ran an exemplary visioning exercise with their local borough council between July and September 2009, at the request of the council’s strategic director. It brought together almost all the council’s 375 employees, from senior management to plumbers, plus over half of the council’s elected members, to create a vision for a post-oil Taunton Deane.
Here’s a pilot for a TV programme called ‘Growing Communities’, produced and directed by Sara Proudfoot Clinch which “gives you a glimpse at how to grow your own community from meeting the Transition Town Lewes group who are learning to live without fossil fuels, to community allotments, to bee keeping in the church yard, to keeping chickens in a tiny back garden of a town house”.
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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At the end of Naomi Klein’s two-day visit to Totnes, which included a talk (film of which is still to come) and meetings with many of the key players in Transition Town Totnes, I managed to grab an hour with her for an interview. Here, in two parts (part two tomorrow), is the discussion we had. 
