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.
Last week none of us had ever heard of an Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajokull, and still even now, very few of us can actually pronounce its name. The volcanic dust spewn forth across Europe as a result of its spectacular eruption has had a remarkable effect, leading to, among other things, the total grounding of the UK’s aviation fleet for several days until this morning. The headline on Metro, the free newspaper the person next to me on the train is reading as I write this, is “Fly, fly again”. It will take days to clear the backlog and to get things back to normal, but let us not pass up this opportunity to meditate on vulnerability and resilience, which led to major disruption to the air freighting of produce from Kenya and other places, thousands of people stuck in their Easter holiday destinations, and Liverpool Football Club having to travel to its Europa League fixture with Athletico Madrid on public transport . But perhaps rather than seeing it as the ‘misery’ most news broadcasts labelled it as, we might see it as good practice for the near future.
Here’s a great short film about Transition Town Kingston, created for their Unleashing, which took place on Saturday. Wonderful when initiatives document their work like this. Not quite sure what’s going on with Shaun Chamberlin and the phone box… looks like he has wrestled it to the ground….
At a recent conference, organised by the Peninsula Public Health Teaching Network at Buckfast Abbey titled “Promoting Health: transforming lives – transforming communities”, Janet Richardson, Professor of Health Service Research, Faculty of Health of the University of Plymouth gave a talk about healthcare aspects of Transition. As someone active in Transition Town Totnes she gave an overview of current projects underway in the town, and asked the question “do healthier communities become Transition communities, or does becoming a Transition community lead to increasing health and wellbeing?” She also raises powerful questions about the tension between top down/ bottom up processes… You can see her presentation here (it’s not formatted in a way that can be embedded).
Recently I mentioned the Prince’s Foundation event ‘Building: a new green economy’ held in early February at St. James’s Palace, which looked at the role of green building, particularly focusing on the role local building materials might play, and the benefits they would bring. I mentioned that the talks were filmed, and they have now been posted online. So here they are, starting with my one (with thanks to Jeff Rubin for the ‘afford to burn’ line I used….), and followed by all the other speakers too….
Vandana Shiva was in Totnes recently, and gave a talk as part of an evening co-presented by TTT and Schumacher College. Those darlings from nu-project were there, and documented the evening for posterity. Vandana was on fine form, and these two short films below are a great record of her talk.
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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Last week none of us had ever heard of an Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajokull, and still even now, very few of us can actually pronounce its name. The volcanic dust spewn forth across Europe as a result of its spectacular eruption has had a remarkable effect, leading to, among other things, the total grounding of the UK’s aviation fleet for several days until this morning. The headline on Metro, the free newspaper the person next to me on the train is reading as I write this, is “Fly, fly again”. It will take days to clear the backlog and to get things back to normal, but let us not pass up this opportunity to meditate on vulnerability and resilience, which led to major disruption to the air freighting of produce from Kenya and other places, thousands of people stuck in their Easter holiday destinations, and Liverpool Football Club having to travel to its Europa League fixture with Athletico Madrid on public transport . But perhaps rather than seeing it as the ‘misery’ most news broadcasts labelled it as, we might see it as good practice for the near future.
