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 “Social enterprise” category

Showing results 16 - 20 of 132 for the category: Social enterprise.


5 Mar 2013

Three days in Germany

I am just back from 3 days in Germany, and great fun it was too. I spoke on Wednesday evening in Bonn at an event organised by Bonn im Wandel (Bonn in Transition) at the University there, and on Thursday evening I was the guest of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin.  I am currently teaching myself to make short films, and here is my first (I’m doing a proper course in 2 weeks).  Nothing fancy but hopefully it captures some of the spirit of both events.

Some additional information on what’s going on in the film might be useful…

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26 Feb 2013

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

tooting1

We start this month’s round-up in Tooting in London.  Transition Town Tooting recently posted this film about their Foodival last year.  Foodival is an annual event which celebrates what local food means in this diverse urban context:

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20 Feb 2013

Garden as catalyst: the story of Crystal Palace Transition Town’s prize-winning garden

The festival day where Crystal Palace Transition Town's Westow Park Community Garden was first unveiled to the public.

The festival day where Crystal Palace Transition Town’s Westow Park Community Garden was first unveiled to the public.

Here’s a great story about the power of just doing stuff, from Crystal Palace in London.  I heard recently that Crystal Palace Transition Town (CPTT) had won the People’s Food Garden Award in the Capital Growth Grow For Gold awards late last year, and I was intrigued to know more about their Westow Park Community Garden and how it came about.  I spoke to Rachel DeThample, who had kicked the project off.  She told me that the original impetus for the garden came from wanted to leave London and move to Dorset in order to grow food.  Unfortunately, as she put it, “my husband was having none of it”, so instead she set herself the challenge to grow her family’s Christmas dinner within London.

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18 Feb 2013

“To me it’s almost like magic”: The NE Seattle Tool Library opens for business

Susan Gregory (NE Seattle Tool Library), Pastor Lorraine Watson (North Seattle Friends Church), Signe Gilson (Cleanscapes), Dai Gorman (Lease Crutcher Lewis), Richard Conlin (Seattle City Council), and Tim Croll (Seattle Public Utilities)

Susan Gregory (NE Seattle Tool Library), Pastor Lorraine Watson (North Seattle Friends Church), Signe Gilson (Cleanscapes), Dai Gorman (Lease Crutcher Lewis), Richard Conlin (Seattle City Council), and Tim Croll (Seattle Public Utilities) at the opening day for the Library.

Here is a wonderful story from Seattle.  I am indebted to Susan Gregory and Leo Brodie for their time in telling me about it.  In North Ravenna, NE Seattle, a rather exciting project has emerged from Sustainable NE Seattle, the local Transition initiative.  Inspired by a similar project in West Seattle, the NE Seattle Tool Library opened to the public last month, and already has over 1,100 tools available for local people to hire.  Members pay an annual membership and can then borrow tools for a week at a time.  The Tool Library is housed in a building belonging to a local church which was renovated using a grant from a local recycling company.  I asked Susan to tell me about the Library, how it came about and how it works:

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Categories: Community Involvement, Culture, Economics, General, Great Reskilling, Localisation, Social enterprise, Storytelling, Technology, Transition Initiatives, Waste/Recycling


8 Feb 2013

REconomy’s Shane Hughes at TEDx Lausanne

Recently, Shane Hughes of the Transition Network’s REconomy Project gave a talk at TEDxLausanne (in Switzerland) called ‘Sleeping giants of economic shift’.  In it he explores what an alternative to our current global economic model could look like, and how REconomy, and a number of other approaches, are central to that. 

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