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.
Jim and Mary Beth Heddle of the EON, the Ecological Options Network, have just posted on YouTube the film they made when they were in Totnes during the winter, which consists largely of the interviews we already posted the transcripts of, interspersed with little vignettes of me walking around the town. As a single film that covers the broad territory of the Transition concept, it is one of the best that we have. Have a look. It does fail to answer the question though, that why it is that every time a film crew or radio reporter comes to Totnes it pours with rain…. (as you might have noticed in the Radio Scotland piece posted yesterday).
I was fascinated to see that Totnes MP Anthony Steen raised both Transition Town Totnes and the Totnes Pound in a question in the House of Commons a couple of weeks ago. This is in the wake of the piece he wrote in the local papers, waxing lyrical about TTT. In Questions on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the subject of local food production, he managed, in one question, to cover peak oil, the fragility of import dependency, the role of local currencies and the Transition concept, not bad! The exchange ran as follows;
How’s about this? Anthony Steen is the Conservative MP for Totnes, and isn’t the first person you would necessarily think of when looking for a green leaning thinker. He has recently undergone what one might call a climate change conversion, and now, seems to have also really grasped the Transition Town thing in a big way. He helped with the launch of the Totnes Pound, and last Saturday, in his monthly column in the local paper, the Herald Express, wrote a piece which was staggering in its enthusiasm for the work that TTT is doing (see below). How this translates into other areas of policy and so on remains to be seen, but credit where it is due for openeness to new ideas.
You might like to hear a second, more detailed, and less sleepy interview with Andi Hazelwood at **Global Public Media** which I did last week. In it we explored in more depth the Transition concept, the Totnes experience and the ‘7 Buts’, the reasons why people can stop themselves from beginning Transition projects. You can hear the interview over at Global Public Media, where you can either stream it or download it as an mp3 file. I think it gives a good overview of where this is all going, I hope you find it useful.
The Totnes Pound project is now launched, and is, by all accounts, doing rather well. 10,000 notes have been printed and will be sold into circulation, and rather nice they are too. They have all kinds of security features, UV light, heat sensitive ink and so on, and it will be seen if and how they become truly adopted as the currency of choice in the town. Apart from some financial help with the printing of the notes, the Totnes Pound initiative is unfunded, and entirely dependent on volunteer input. For people outside the town who would like to get their hands on some of these historic notes, we have put together a **Presentation Pack**, comprising a Totnes Pound note and a copy of the detailed information leaflet about the scheme, which we can offer for sale here at **Transition Culture**. Simply click the Totnes Pound link to the right or click here. The funds generated will be well used maximising the potential of the scheme. For an insight into the potential of such a scheme, you might enjoy this short film about Berkshares in the US. Get your hands on a piece of history!
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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