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.
Welcome back to Transition Culture for 2013. It is a year fraught with dangers yet also rich with possibilities. I hope that Transition Network, and this blog, and all the other resources out there for people wanting to embrace these possibilities will continue to support and inspire you through 2013. Let’s kick this year off with a talk I gave last October at Communicate 2012: Breaking Boundaries, hosted by the Bristol Natural History Consortium. I was asked to speak about what was my vision for 10 years in the future. May 2013 bring more, and firmer, steps towards its realisation:
It didn’t start too auspiciously. My Eurostar train’s engine broke down at St. Pancras and sat there for 2 hours while engineers tried in vain to reattach the flange to the sprocket (or something). After several aborted attempts where we were told all was now well, only to grind to a halt again after moving forwards a few metres, we finally all bailed off onto another train and set off. I was travelling to Brussels to collect, on behalf of Transition Network, the 2012 EESC Civil Society Prize at a rather grand award ceremony in the European Parliament building. Would I make it in time?
Let’s start this month’s bumper round-up (which contains some of the finest short films about Transition among many many other things) with the news that Transition Network has just been named as the winner of the highly prestigious European Economic and Social Committee’s Civil Society Prize. This is great recognition for the work of the REconomy Project and so many people in hundreds of European local communities who are engaging their local civil society in developing low carbon futures and livelihoods which promote wellbeing for all in the community. There are more than 500 Transition initiative community groups in 23 European countries (more than 1000 groups worldwide) who are working on the “transition” to a low-carbon, socially-just future.
Last Friday I visited Brixton in south London to visit Brixton Energy. Brixton Energy had just closed its second share launch, Brixton Energy Solar 2, which had raised £70,000. Its first project, Brixton Energy Solar 1, was the UK’s first inner-city community-owned solar power station, a 37kW solar array on the roof of Elmore House on the Loughborough Estate. The second was a 45kW system spread over the roofs of the 4 housing blocks of Styles Gardens. I joined Agamemnon Otero of Brixton Energy on the roof of a neighbouring tower block on a crisp and clear winter day, with a clear view over the solar systems that Brixton Energy had already installed (see picture above), to ask him more about the project.
It’s Friday, been a long week, so here is something beautiful to inspire and soothe the soul. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, this video document of the recent Transition gathering in Marbella is just beautiful. Filipa Pimentel, who co-ordinates the network of Transition hubs was at the event and wrote “the video mirrors perfectly what you could feel there – it was magic… (I cried all day, of course). After this event, a new Transition Initiative was started – the first meeting with 60 people!”
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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