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.
TTT's Frances Northrop proudly displaying its new plaque...
Here’s a kind of half-formed thought that might possibly go somewhere if I start writing about it. This September sees the fifth anniversary of the Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes. We were deeply flattered the other day to receive a somewhat premature but very welcome plaque from the Town Council bearing the inscription “Transition Town Totnes: to celebrate their first 5 years of activity within the town”. I’ll probably write a more detailed ‘Totnes: some reflections after 5 years in Transition’ in September, but this post was prompted by an email from a friend in Totnes, who grew up here in the 1960s and is very much a pillar of the community. He had valiantly read my dissertation, ‘Localisation and Resilience‘, cover to cover and wrote with some reflections. In his email he makes a very interesting point:
The BBC film crew filming the Incredible Edible Totnes group planting food at Steamer Quay....
A few months ago, Paul Clarke of Incredible Edible Todmorden came to Totnes and gave a talk about their work. As a result, Incredible Edible Totnes was suggested and I am delighted to report that its first project is underway. Down at Steamer Quay they have taken over 8 unloved Council planters and filled them with peas, beans, rocket, lettuce, nasturtiums and much more. The food is there for anyone to help themselves to, and indeed I had some rather nice rocket from there the other day. Click here to hear an interview on the new Totnes FM radio station with Joy Hanson, one of the project’s founders. The BBC have been in Totnes for the past week filming for a series called ‘Towns’, which will be broadcast in September, and they filmed some sequences of work underway on the planters (see above). Here are some more pictures of the Steamer Quay planters… more projects are now being planned…
Members of Transition Edinburgh University do something interesting in some woods somewhere to celebrate 10:10:10...
Here is the very final additional ingredient for ‘The Transition Companion’. It is still in draft form, so I’d really appreciate your thoughts, comments, or interesting case studies of things your initiative is up to… Thanks. My thanks to Isabel Carlisle for her input with this ingredient…
How can education, at all levels, best contribute to the Transition process, building resilient individuals, resilient communities and resilient institutions?
“Sustainability is about the terms and conditions of human survival, and yet we still educate at all levels as if no such crisis existed”.
David Orr.
The future that young people and those in further education are currently being educated for is not the future that is, in reality, approaching. The failure of government, and of much of the education system , to put resilience and sustainability central to their planning and teaching means that a whole generation is being prepared for business as usual while deep down most young people, and their teachers, know that the reality will be very different. This is a woeful neglect of duty.
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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