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.
Fiona Ward (far right) with members of Transition Town Lewes’ Enterprise group and a few visitors from Brighton.
Fiona Ward of the REconomy Project recently visited a number of Transition initiatives to find out how their work creating a new economy for their community is going. As the REconomy Day (on the Friday before the Transition Network conference) continues to fill up (over 100 people at last count), I spoke to her, and asked her about her trip:
She has also written a fantastic blog about the key learnings from the trip, as well as reports from each place she visited, which are essential reading in terms of the current state of play of emerging Transition social enterprises. She introduces her blog thus:
I was recently in Santander, a major port city on the northern Spanish coast. While my kids were waking up in the hotel, my wife and youngest son went out in search of breakfast. Bereft of a map, we wandered in search of some fruit, and some pastries perhaps? Eventually, glancing round a street corner, I spotted what looked like it might be the corner of a market stall. On closer inspection, it turned out we had stumbled across one of the most remarkable food markets I have ever had the pleasure to wander around, El Mercado de la Esperanza, or ‘The Market of Hope’.
Here is a great new film from Peterborough about a project called ‘The Green Backyard’, which is developing a Transitioney/permaculturey/community resource/educational type thing in urban Peterborough. Beautiful film, with talking bees and everything. The Transition Companion makes an appearance too near the end… thanks to Daryl Mulvihill, who made it, for letting me know about it.
Let’s start this month’s round-up in the UK, in Cheltenham. Transition Town Cheltenham have been making some gorgeous short films recently. In the last roundup we shared the one about Ken and his allotment. This month, firstly, Ivor, Remi and Leon talk us through the chickens in their garden, and their 8-person cargo bike:
… and secondly, a short film about In Stitches, who held their The Big Knit event at the Global Footsteps Cafe. A beautiful film about the power of knitting to build community:
The Centre for Alternative Technology has just published a new book called ‘The Home Energy Handbook: a guide to saving and generating energy in your home and community’. It is a great resource for Transition groups, and Transition features strongly through the book. It is available here. I spoke to Allan Shepherd, one of the book’s authors/editors, and asked him to tell us more about the book. Here is the audio, transcript below:
Can you tell us where the idea for the book came from?
It started from the Zero Carbon Britain 2030 project really, because that was aimed at policy makers and government. What we wanted to do was take the concept that was developed in ZCB, which was the ‘Power down’ and the ‘Power up’ concept.
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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