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.
As I trailed yesterday, ‘In Transition’ is now available to view in full on YouTube (apart from Part 3, following soon)… don’t forget that you can also buy copies of the DVD which feature the film itself as well as hours of wonderful Transitioney extras; find out more here. Anyway, sit back and enjoy. We love it.
Here’s an odd one for you. Liberation.fr, a French news site, recently ran an article called “A Totnes, la clé anglaise pour l’après-pétrole”, which my poor French would interpret as meaning “In Totnes, the English key to life after oil”, or somesuch. Looks like a good piece, but it contains the puzzling, and faintly alarming, sentence, “menés par Rob Hopkins, un ancien prof de permaculture”. Ancien? Ben Brangwyn very kindly (I hope) looked up meanings of the word ‘ancien’, and they are not, I have to share with you this morning dear readers, especially flattering.
You saw the online test screening, you’ve seen it shown at a Transition initiative near you, you may even be in it, but now it is properly released…. ‘In Transition’ is the first detailed film about the Transition movement filmed by those that know it best, those who are making it happen on the ground. The Transition movement is about communities around the world responding to peak oil and climate change with creativity, imagination and humour, setting about rebuilding their local economies and communities. It is positive, solutions focused, viral and fun.
Regular readers will know that I don’t fly, and that if I can’t get somewhere by train, we use other means of communicating. But should the same apply to everyone who works for Transition Network? Should the organisation make a commitment that anyone who represents it similarly seeks alternative ways to get around? This is a very live discussion within the organisation. In order to move it forward, Naresh Giangrande and myself had an email exchange on the subject (see below), and now we’d love to hear your thoughts. Should an organisation committed to modelling Transition also exemplify sustainable transport? As the Copenhagen talks kick off, with many thousands of climate activists flying there, this is a very pertinent question. Have a read of the debate so far, and then have your say too….
So what might it look like when a local authority really gets Transition? Earlier this week I received a very excitable email from Cristiano Bottone, one of the movers behind Transition Italia, and the Transition of his own town, Monteveglio, near Bologna. “Monteveglio‘s local authority signs a strategic partnership with “Monteveglio Città di Transizione”….This is a revolution for this country, believe me. Thank you for all your help. I love you ;-)”. So what did the Monteveglio authorities actually sign up to, why is Cristiano so excited about it, and what does it mean?
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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