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.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Archive for “Natural Building” category
Showing results 46 - 50 of 61 for the category: Natural Building.
23 Aug 2006
The **Practical Sustainability** course in Kinsale broke (and continues to break) new ground in many ways. As well as being the world’s first two year full time permaculture course, one of its most fundamental breakthroughs was that new modules were added to the Vocational Education Committee’s (VEC) list of approved courses which can now be taught in any Irish VEC college. When I wrote the modules, no-one in the VEC had ever heard of permaculture, but as the course became more and more successful, they began to recognise the contribution it was making. A number of people have asked me where they can get hold of the modules that I wrote and taught, so I have made them available here on **Transition Culture**.
Read more»
14 Aug 2006
**Transition Town Totnes – Programme September – December 2006.**
We are delighted to announce the programme of events for the first 4 months of the Transition Town Totnes initiative. The project will develop, over the next 12 – 18 months, an Energy Descent Action Plan for Totnes, designing a positive way down from the oil peak, building on the work begun in Kinsale. It will strive to be inclusive, imaginative, practical and fun. We have put together a programme which combines inspirational speakers, many of whom will be visiting Totnes for the first time, film screenings, Open Space think tank days and much more.
Read more»
12 Jul 2006
My name is Rob and I’m addicted to cob building. My passion for cob is barely disguised, and has been a powerful force in my life in recent years. Once I got the bug I was hooked. The feeling of monolithic curved cob walls is something that no other material can provide, and it is such a gorgeous material to work with. To begin with I taught myself from books, from tips on websites, and by asking anyone I knew who had ever worked with it. Although I read many books in subsequent years, and worked with many cobbers, still the one who most fired my imagination with cob’s possibilities, and the life changing potential of natural building, is Ianto Evans of Cob Cottage Company,
Read more»
4 Jul 2006
There was a song in the charts when I was a kid called “You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties”, by Jona Lewie. Rather than being found in the kitchen, I tend to be found tending the clay pizza oven. Having built a few of the things, and also having arrived in places where a clay oven has been made but no-one quite knows what to do with it, I tend to end up being the one with the singed eyebrows. Having spent last Saturday making pizza at my kids school fair in their clay oven, I thought I might pass on my thoughts as to what ensures a successful firing and a good long baking session.
Read more»
25 May 2006
**Building With Hemp by Steve Allin – a Review (see bottom of review for a chance to win a copy of this book in our latest Transition Culture competition).**
Hemp is a plant with an extraordinary history and a list of uses that would gave most other plants a serious inferiority complex. Historically it provided the UK Navy’s ropes for centuries, the paper for the first US dollar bills, it can be made into a material called Hemp Plastic which was what the bodywork of the first Ford car was made from, and makes a wide range of papers and fabrics
Read more»
The **Practical Sustainability** course in Kinsale broke (and continues to break) new ground in many ways. As well as being the world’s first two year full time permaculture course, one of its most fundamental breakthroughs was that new modules were added to the Vocational Education Committee’s (VEC) list of approved courses which can now be taught in any Irish VEC college. When I wrote the modules, no-one in the VEC had ever heard of permaculture, but as the course became more and more successful, they began to recognise the contribution it was making. A number of people have asked me where they can get hold of the modules that I wrote and taught, so I have made them available here on **Transition Culture**.
