20 Sep 2012
The theme of the first full day of ‘The Third International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity’ in Venice was ‘Commons’. For me there were a couple of key highlights of the day, so I will give a thumbnail of all the talks today, but more detail on the highlights. As with my notes from yesterday, the following is compiled from my notes, and so are entirely fallible. Apologies to any of the speakers if I have got their message wrong. The first speaker was Gianni Tamino of the University of Padova who argued that in the context of depleting resources, the commons are essential for living, we can’t postpone the end of growth.
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20 Sep 2012
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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19 Sep 2012
Transition folks from around the world gathered last weekend at Battersea Arts Centre for the 6th annual Transition Network conference. In a week when the Arctic ice reached its smallest ever extent, scientists warned that the world’s weather could be on the verge of running amok and it was suggested that Saudi Arabia, always meant to be the ‘swing producer’ on whom the rest of the world could depend for reliable oil supplies, may become a net importer of oil by 2030, the theme of the conference was, appropriately, ‘Building resilience in extraordinary times’. Unlike previous conferences which had spanned two, perhaps three days, this was, in effect, a 6 day ‘Festival of Transition’, and it turned out to be an extraordinary event which deeply affected those attending.
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17 Sep 2012
A few weeks ago I attended the West Country Storytelling Festival at Embercombe. A remarkable event, the highlight for me was hearing Dr Martin Shaw speaking at several events. Martin is a painter, mythologist and wilderness teacher, and author of ‘A Branch from the Lightening Tree”. Sometimes I hear someone speak and think “that person is holding an important part of all this”. I was especially touched by one thing he said in a workshop about the relationship between storytelling and sustainability:
“I have not a clue whether we humans will live for another 100 or 10,000 years. We can’t be sure. What matters to me is the fact we have fallen out of a very ancient love affair – a kind of dream tangle, with the earth itself. If, through our own mess, that relationship is about to end, then we need to scatter as much beauty around us as we possibly can, to send a voice, to attempt some kind of repair. I think of it as a kind of courting – a very old idea. This isn’t about statistical hysteria, it’s about personal style. Any other response is just not cool”.
Intrigued, I met him the following week for an interview that covered storytelling, myth, and what it might all mean for Transition. Here is the audio if you’d rather listen to it, or the transcript is below:
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13 Sep 2012
At the Transition Cabaret on Saturday evening, to be hosted by Matt Harvey, James Marriott from pioneering arts and activism organisation Platform will be one of the performers, telling stories from his recent experiences walking the oil pipeline that brings oil from the Caspian Sea to Northern Europe. We asked him, via the wonders of Skype, to tell us more:
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