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.
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:
“We’re on a mission here now with this group. We all are co-ordinated and there’s something powerful about having fifteen people completely dedicated to the degree where we all know we’re going to do absolutely what it takes to make this happen in our community”.
Transition Prince Rupert, in British Columbia, Canada, launches its website today. Nothing extraordinary about that you might say. But the process that led to it, and its contents, are a story worth telling. The interview I did recently with Lee Brain, a young man who is one of the group’s founders, was one of the most inspiring I have yet published here at Transition Culture. So inspiring in fact that it is, in effect, this month’s Transition podcast. In today’s installment, he gives a fascinating taste of what it looks like when an emerging Transition group gives over some time to getting the foundations of its work as solid as possible before proceeding any further. Here is the interview:
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:
A few weeks ago I travelled to Brockwood Park, a very progressive school in Hampshire, to give a talk about Transition. It was the first talk I have given that included clips from ‘In Transition 2.0’, which went down very well. I had a great time there, thanks to everyone who made it such an enjoyable visit. A few days after I went, they held their first Open Space to explore what becoming a Transition school would entail.
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.
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
Read more»
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:
