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 “Resilience” category
Showing results 276 - 280 of 401 for the category: Resilience.
4 Jun 2010
Yesterday I posted a document which contained the first rough attempt at sketching out a new way of communicating Transition, using Christopher Alexander’s ‘pattern language’ approach. Over the coming weeks and months I will be blogging more about this, but in advance of the 2010 Transition Network conference (only a week to go!), I thought it might be helpful to give some more background on this. What is a ‘pattern language’ and why might it be a better way of communicating Transition? Here are some initial thoughts.
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3 Jun 2010
Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last 2 weeks! Everyone who comes to the 2010 Transition Network conference (starting in 8 days) will be given a 108 page booklet containing the programme of events, the complete guide to all the workshops, and the working draft of the ‘seeing Transition as a pattern language’ work I have been doing, and around which the conference, and the second edition of ‘The Transition Handbook’, is based (of which more in coming weeks). You can download the booklet in two parts, the main document here (it is a big file, 8.64MB) and the cover here. For those of you who are coming, here is an opportunity in advance to familiarise yourself with it. For those of you not coming, here’s what you’re missing, there is still time to book. If you find any typos, I don’t want to know, it has gone to the printers!
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31 May 2010
Here is the foreword I wrote for Pete North’s new book ‘Local Money’, which you can now order here. It really is rather fantastic (the book, that is). The book will have its formal launch at the 2010 Transition Network conference (yet another reason to be at 3 days that will blow your socks off). For now, here is my introduction to the book.
The power of holding your community’s own money.
September 2009, Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton. On a beautiful evening with just the first hint of autumn in the air, hundreds of people are packed into the large room for the launch of the Brixton Pound. In the days running up to the launch, the media was full of stories about the currency; it even made the front page of the BBC website on the day. Alongside explanations of how it is intended to work and interviews with advocates were mainstream economists who, somewhat patronisingly, assured readers that this could never really work and that it was all tremendously naive and foolish.
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28 May 2010
Now I’ve been to some Unleashings in my time, but last night’s Unleashing of Transition Malvern Hills (TMH) was a stunner. Unleashings are designed to be the launch event which, historically, people look back to as the point when a Transition process arrived, a celebration of a place and its culture, a big push for wider engagement, and a statement of collective intent. I have been to Unleashings before with music, but not one with three choirs, to Unleashings with input from young people, but not one with such inspiring young people speaking, and to Unleashings with input from other local organisations, but not one with the level of affirmation from a wide range of local organisations, including the local MP. In short, it was an extraordinary event.
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27 May 2010
So the Queen’s Speech has set out the policy priorities for the new government, but were the policies announced a cop-out or do they set out a wartime mobilisation scale of response to climate change and peak oil? These reflections are based on the article about the speech that appeared in yesterday’s Guardian. Plans include setting up a green investment bank, which will make loans available to households for energy efficiency measures and renewable energy installations, the ‘pay-as-you-save’ scheme initially proposed by Ed Miliband. The exact amount of the loans that will be available has not yet been stated, although the Guardian speculates that it could be as much as £15,000. This is a great development, but I wonder if it could yet be taken further? How would DECC respond, for example, if a Transition group were able to get 100 people to take out loans of £15,000 each and club it together as £1.5million in order to finance a community-owned ESCO, an energy company designed to be owned by and financially benefit the community?
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Yesterday I posted a document which contained the first rough attempt at sketching out a new way of communicating Transition, using Christopher Alexander’s ‘pattern language’ approach. Over the coming weeks and months I will be blogging more about this, but in advance of the 2010 Transition Network conference (only a week to go!), I thought it might be helpful to give some more background on this. What is a ‘pattern language’ and why might it be a better way of communicating Transition? Here are some initial thoughts. 
