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.
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.
Here is a fascinating short film. It features Eric Stewart of Transition New Port Richey in Florida, US, giving a presentation to his local council about what the group are up to. Yet it is also one of the most stressful Transition films I have ever seen, like some surreal drama, the dramatic tension is almost unbearable. The clock, in bright red, is ticking down and it’s hard to take your eyes off it. Will he say everything he needs to in just 3 minutes? What happens if he is still talking after 3 minutes? Do they pull a handle so that he plunges into a tank of crocodiles? Will he stumble, get it all wrong and say the wrong things?
… and then… just when the tension becomes unbearable, the film stops with 1:07 left to go! Ah the suspense! The unanswered questions! The sheer drama! I don’t need The Wire, 24…. just I minute 53 seconds of Eric Stewart and I have no finger nails left and chances are I won’t sleep tonight. He does a great job, keeps his head, and presents what the group are doing really well. Worth having a think about what you would say in that situation…. what would be the key things to get across if that red clock were ticking? If anyone has any idea where the rest of this film can be found, you might just put me out of my misery…
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.
I did an interview a while ago for Spanish National Radio, which I am posting here, although clearly it is only of any use to you if you understand Spanish. Pretty pointless otherwise. Anyway, here it is... (I tried to embed it here but it didn’t work…).
Over the summer I went to Sunrise Off Grid festival near Cheddar in Somerset. It was very enjoyable, I did a talk which I hope to be able to bring you the film of soon, and also, along with Patrick Whitefield, Mark Heley and Claire Milne took part in a panel discussion about resilience. Thanks to the good people at PermanentCultureNow, here, in several parts, is a film of that discussion.
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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