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.
This month’s podcast goes into more depth on three of the stories from the April round-up of what’s happening in Transition. We hear from the High School Joan Segura i Valls in Santa Coloma de Queralt (in Catalonia, Spain) who have just completed a big project about Transition, from Transition Oamaru and Waitaki District in New Zealand about their Sustainable Skills School, and we hear from Tooting about their Treasuring Tooting event that took place last weekend. Do note that you can embed it on your own website, and that it is also now available on iTunes.
What might we learn from the construction, between1438 and 1448 of the Hospital of St. John in Sherborne (see above) that might shape the way we think about construction in the 21st century? While the bulk of the building was built using local oolitic limestone, it was dressed with Lias stone from Ham Hill, some 12 miles from the building site. However, in those days, without the internal combustion engine, 12 miles was a long way to carry stone (you try it). The meticulous accounts kept of the project at the time show that the cost of transporting the stone by cart cost more than the stone itself. As Alec Clifton-Taylor says in his seminal ‘The Pattern of English Building’, “it was the great difficulty of transporting heavy materials which led all but the most affluent until the end of the eighteenth century to build with the materials that were most readily available near the site, even when not very durable”.
This was included in yesterday’s round up, but I think it deserves a post all to itself. The other day, through the marvel of Twitter, I received a message “Dear Robin. In the South of Chile, The Pucón Iniciative of Transition made a Film!!!” (my Twitter account is @robintransition). The link took me to this wonderful film. One of the great joys of Transition is hearing stories of it popping up in unexpected places. This film is a joy.
Our thanks to Gerd Wessling, co-ordinator of the German hub, for the following story from Germany:
“Sunday May 13th 2012 will be declared “In Transition 2.0 film and information day” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland! We kindly ask all German, Swiss & Austrian Transition initiatives to self-organize screenings of the movie at that date in their regions/towns/cities. More info for the organizers (in German) & about the coordination here.
A screening in Bielefeld is already fixed; see details here. We would love to generate a lot of broad, positive reviews and excitement about the movie and Transition in general at that date in the German-speaking region(s) of the world”.
I wrote last week about the fantastic Local Entrepreneurs Forum that we held in Totnes a couple of weeks ago. It brought together people with ideas for new enterprises, mentors and potential investors in an event designed for maximum cross-pollination and interaction. It’s a simple concept that could work really well in most places, especially where a Transition initiative wants to really step over into explicitly catalysing a new economy for the place. Emilio at nuproject has just made this rather fine film about the day:
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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