Transition Culture

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.

Archive for “Food” category

Showing results 11 - 15 of 267 for the category: Food.


20 Feb 2013

Garden as catalyst: the story of Crystal Palace Transition Town’s prize-winning garden

The festival day where Crystal Palace Transition Town's Westow Park Community Garden was first unveiled to the public.

The festival day where Crystal Palace Transition Town’s Westow Park Community Garden was first unveiled to the public.

Here’s a great story about the power of just doing stuff, from Crystal Palace in London.  I heard recently that Crystal Palace Transition Town (CPTT) had won the People’s Food Garden Award in the Capital Growth Grow For Gold awards late last year, and I was intrigued to know more about their Westow Park Community Garden and how it came about.  I spoke to Rachel DeThample, who had kicked the project off.  She told me that the original impetus for the garden came from wanted to leave London and move to Dorset in order to grow food.  Unfortunately, as she put it, “my husband was having none of it”, so instead she set herself the challenge to grow her family’s Christmas dinner within London.

Read more»


7 Feb 2013

What Transition looks like in Brazil

Here is a beautiful short film, which will brighten any Thursday morning, about Transition in Brazil.  It looks at what Transition looks like in 2 different communities there, Brasilandia in Sao Paolo, and Granja Viana.  Made by the Permacyclists, it is an uplifting glimpse of how Transition is taking root there.  I love the quote at the end: “A movement which brings sadness and suffering isn’t sustainable”.

Read more»


29 Jan 2013

A January Round-up of What’s Happening out in the World of Transition

Like most things in the garden, Transition initiatives tend to be more reflective and dormant in January, as is reflected in this month’s roundup.  We’ll start this month’s Round-up with 3 articles from the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, created by their Paris office about Transition.  We appreciate that very few of you read Japanese, but we feel they are things of great beauty in their own right, and hope you enjoy looking at them.  One of them relates to a visit to Totnes, although we’re not sure which one.

08.01.2013 Banques de tempssm

Read more»


14 Jan 2013

The British bean is back: an interview with Josiah Meldrum of Hodmedod, and a Transition Culture competition

Great-British-peas-and-beans-1000x360

Transition initiatives have spawned a number of fascinating new enterprises, and in today’s post we’ll be  looking at one of them you may not have come across yet, Hodmedod’s Great British Beans, which has emerged from work of Transition City Norwich and East Anglia Food Link.  What follows is an interview with one of its founders, Josiah Meldrum.  The beans project was first mentioned in an interview I did with Josiah for a Transition Podcast a year ago, and is now at the commercial stage.  Below you will find the audio of our interview which you can either play or download to listen to while you are planting out your garlic, the transcript, and, at the end, a competition to win some, and a code to buy some at a discount.  What a treat.  You’re going to enjoy this.  I love the bit when Josiah says:

“we discovered was that there was an assumption that no-one would want to eat the beans, but no-one had bothered asking anyone whether they wanted to eat the beans”.

Read more»


11 Jan 2013

New research focuses on Haddenham in Transition

Haddenhampic

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.

Read more»