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.
“One of my first experiences of currencies along the lines of the Brixton pound was in Ithaca in upstate New York, where they have had an amazing printed currency for the last 15 years. You can get loans in it. The biggest loan was for $36,000. Not bad for a local currency. Some of the notes are printed on paper made from Angora rabbit fur, which is an innovative solution to the problem of counterfeiting which has not yet struck the Bank of England.
There really was nowhere else to be last night. Given the amazing amount of press coverage and the fact that this was the first urban complementary currency specific to an urban neighbourhood, Lambeth Town Hall was the place to be for the launch of the Brixton Pound. I arrived after a day of giving a talk at Google’s London offices, visiting Transition Tooting for a chat and a look around the place (thanks folks), and made it to the Hall for 6.30pm. The event started at about 7.40, having been warmed up by some singing local teenagers and a small steel band. Then, with the hall full to capacity, and hundreds of people crammed in around the walls, the event was underway.
Was in London yesterday for the conference of the Development Trust Association (conference programme here), a fantastic event. I was speaking in the first plenary session, but due to overall time overrun, I had to give a 20 minute talk in 10 minutes! A bit hectic but seemed to go down alright. Highlight for me though was a workshop I attended following my talk. It was chosen from a mouth-watering smorgasbord of great workshops (community food production and distribution, community sector trading, community land trusts, community energy initiatives, setting up community development trusts.. imagine… I felt like a child in a sweetshop…), and was called “Community Bonds and Shares”. It was brilliant, very thought provoking.
A couple of months ago we published the paper we’d been working on for a while, ‘Can Totnes and District Feed Itself?’ We had hoped to stimulate a lot of discussion on its contents, but most of the comments ended up talking about human sewage and it potential use in agriculture. Interesting, but not quite what we had been hoping for. Over the last few weeks, two excellent analyses of the report have emerged. The first is by Colin Tudge, author of, among other things, “Feeding People is Easy”, and it can be read here. It is a fascinating take on the paper, in spite of suggesting that the whole exercise was largely a waste of time! The second is a review by Patrick Whitefield, to appear in the next issue of Permaculture Magazine (see below). Be interesting to hear what you think.
Here is a great short film from the Unleashing of Transition Town Langport on April 4th 2009. As many of you will know, an Unleashing is a big public event which launches the Transition initiatives in question. Langport chose a different route to the big-public-event-with-speakers model that most places have used so far. The film provides a very useful document of day. Thanks to Transition Town Langport for making this, and for making it available, we need more like this. Transition Langport also benefit from having the best graphic designer of any Transition initiative that I have yet seen!
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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“One of my first experiences of currencies along the lines of the Brixton pound was in Ithaca in upstate New York, where they have had an amazing printed currency for the last 15 years. You can get loans in it. The biggest loan was for $36,000. Not bad for a local currency. Some of the notes are printed on paper made from Angora rabbit fur, which is an innovative solution to the problem of counterfeiting which has not yet struck the Bank of England. 
Here is a great short film from the Unleashing of Transition Town Langport on April 4th 2009. As many of you will know, an Unleashing is a big public event which launches the Transition initiatives in question. Langport chose a different route to the big-public-event-with-speakers model that most places have used so far. The film provides a very useful document of day. Thanks to 
