Transition Culture

An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent

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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.

Archive for “Resilience” category

Showing results 41 - 45 of 401 for the category: Resilience.


3 Oct 2012

A September Round-up of What’s Happening out in the World of Transition

Let’s start this month’s round up in Australia.  Transition Sydney also recently held an event about social enterprise and reviving local economies through resilience-building, entitled the ‘Living Economies Forum’, with a great range of speakers.  Here is the poster.  One of them was Michael Shuman, and here is his excellent talk, called “Building Resilient Local Economies through Local Investment”:

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2 Oct 2012

An interview with Silke Helfrich: “We have to reformulate the role of the state as enabler of the commons”

The other interview I did at the Degrowth conference in Venice recently was with Silke Helfrich, one of the editors (along with David Bollier) of the excellent recently-published book The Wealth of the Commons:  A World Beyond Market and State‘, a collection of 73 articles by activists, academics and project leaders (I wrote one on resilience) on the theme of the commons.  I recommend it.  Silke gave a fascinating presentation at Degrowth 2012, so one day, after lunch, I caught up with her and asked to her to tell me more.  Here, as usual, is the audio should you wish to listen to it, followed by the transcript.

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Discussion: Comments Off on An interview with Silke Helfrich: “We have to reformulate the role of the state as enabler of the commons”

Categories: Climate Change, Community Involvement, Culture, Degrowth2012, Economics, Localisation, Politics, Resilience, Transition Initiatives


28 Sep 2012

‘Alternatives to development’: an interview with Arturo Escobar

At the 2012 Degrowth conference in Venice one of the highlights for me was the talk by Arturo Escobar (my notes from which can be found here). He is the author of Encountering Development and Territories of Difference, among others.  His talk looked at how Transition might look in the context of the Global South, and held many fascinating insights.  Here is the interview I did with him, first as an audio file, and below as a transcript.

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27 Sep 2012

Dave Chapman’s ‘No-Nonsense Guide to Localism’

One of my highlights of the 2012 Transition Network conference was Dave Chapman’s presentation on the new powers that the recent Localism Act and the changes to the planning system in England and Wales potentially give to Transition initiatives.  I mentioned it in my conference round-up, but Dave has since sent me his slides, so you can download them (Locality No Nonsense Guide to Localism) and listen to the audio below, which Dave has re-recorded since the conference to get the most up-to-date version possible.   If you live outside England and Wales this probably won’t be that interesting, but if you do, this is pretty much essential listening. My thanks to Dave for his slides.

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20 Sep 2012

Day one at the Degrowth conference in Venice: “When we reach the bottom of this current crisis, the things that at the moment seem like a Utopia will in fact seem very realistic”

I’m in Venice at the 2012 Degrowth conference.  I’ve never been to Venice before, it is really quite an extraordinary place.  Even in the rain.  It took me 17 bleary hours on various trains, but that was time well spent.  This is the third Degrowth conference, and it has brought together people from far and wide, with its theme of ‘The Great Transition: degrowth as a passage of civilisation’.  The conference started this afternoon, in the Teatro Malibran, a beautiful old theatre. 

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