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.
We have reported here before about the spread of Transition in France, well here is something rather great from Fontainbleu near Paris where a Transition initiative is emerging. Judging by the amount of requests we get to use the drawing on the front cover of the Transition Handbook for posters, flyers, websites and so on, it’s fair to say people are rather fond of it. But have a look at this rather lovely animation the Fontainbleu group have done with it. Aw, isn’t that lovely…
Recently, the BBC did a great series called ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’, which used objects from the British Museum’s collection to highlight key stages in human history. As a way of capturing some of the stories contained in ‘The Transition Companion’ (available to pre-order now), we have made 10 short films that try to capture “A Story of Transition in 10 Objects” (you can see the various dates associated with the book’s release here). They present various items from different Transition initiatives as though they were precious museum artifacts, and tell their stories. Here’s the first.
Today is the 5th anniversary of the ‘Unleashing’ of Transition Town Totnes. Feels like quite a landmark to me. On Saturday, TTT held an event to celebrate and reflect on the journey so far and on where we might go from here. In spite of it starting at 9am on a Saturday, over 70 people came, and we had a fantastic day. The day was chaired by Chrissie Godfrey and Paul Birch from Taunton Transition Town, who beautifully facilitated a very energising day. In the forthcoming ‘The Transition Companion’, one of the ingredients is called ‘How are we doing?’ and it looks at how groups can pause and reflect. What I want to do here is to set out the process we did on Saturday, in the hope that your Transition initiative might find it useful for having similar reflections.
In July I did a ‘webinar’ thing with Richard Heinberg and Carolyne Stayton of Transition US, about how Transition is developing and about what will be contained in the ‘Transition Companion’. With deepest gratitude to Rani of Transition Palo Alto, the poor soul who bravely transcribed it and must be utterly sick of the sound of my voice, here is the transcript. We’ll be doing it all over again on September 12th, and you can hear the audio of the last one here. Maybe see you there.
Just a quick word to say you might enjoy this evening’s ‘Town’ programme on BBC2 at 9pm. The last in the series, it looks at Totnes, and features, among other things, Transition Town Totnes. Here’s what the programme’s website has to say about it. “A Saxon river town in South Devon, Totnes is one of the UK’s oldest towns. It has seen tough times through its long history, but adversity has taught it to innovate. Geographer and adventurer Nicholas Crane visits the home of one of the greatest social experiments of the 20th century, and uncovers the test bed for an ambitious new idea that aims to change our urban life forever”. If you happen to be in Totnes, there will be a public screening tonight at the Seven Stars Hotel, beginning at 8pm, which will also be attended by the producers. If you miss both, you’ll be able to see it on BBC iPlayer for the next 7 days.
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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