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.
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:
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.
This month’s round-up adds in a new dimension for the first time. Thanks to the newly established network of international Transition hubs, we have a number of international stories sent in especially for this roundup. We’ll start in Canada. Here, sent in by Jennifer Rice, is a speech by Lee Brain, a young man in the community of Prince Rupert, BC. He is one of the main coordinators for the Transition Prince Rupert initiative, still in the mulling stage about to become official. His speech is in regards to a 1200km pipeline project being built from Alberta to the coast of British Columbia. He delivers riveting testimony to a government Joint Review Panel that is holding community hearings. It has already been viewed nearly 37,500 times on YouTube.
So today we have some good news, and some bad news. First the good news. We are delighted to announce four events that Transition Network is involved in at the Guardian’s Open Weekend, which is coming up 24-25th March at the Guardian’s new offices in London. On Saturday 24th, we are presenting, at 1.45pm, a workshop called “How to start a community business” which looks at how to create a community-supported food business. The presenters are Greg Pilley of Stroud Brewery (as mentioned in yesterday’s post), and Dan McTiernan of The Handmade Bakery (one of the stars of ‘In Transition 2.0’).
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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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.
