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.
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?
Today’s guest post is from Fiona Ward of Transition Network’s REconomy Project:
The question in this post’s title was one of the challenging questions asked at the Solace South West Autumn Seminar, held at Dartington, Devon in early November. The event was called “Room to Think” and to that I would add “about the things we don’t really want to think about”. The event organiser for this year was Richard Sheard, CEO of South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council. He said:
“Within these 2 days, I wanted to raise some important questions about the difficulties we face in local government in these increasingly uncertain times. Besides questioning growth, should wellbeing rather than GDP be our measure of success? And what’s the role of communities in leading their own future and delivering local solutions? I wanted to provide some challenges to the status quo, and also look at some of the potential solutions that are emerging.”
… and so 25 CEOs and other senior figures from local government across the South West arrived in the beautiful setting of Dartington, to explore this unchartered territory.
Let’s start this month in Japan, and this wonderful article that appeared on Our World 2.0 called Transition Town Fujino goes for local energy independence. It included the gem that “as of July 2012, one transition town starts up every week”, and also this beautiful paragraph:
“Transition Towns in Japan identify themselves with the initials “TT”, which also stand for the Japanese words tanoshiku and tsunagaru, meaning “having fun” and “networking”. True to these words, people involved in Transition Fujino work towards transition while making it a point to enjoy life and avoid overworking. A resilient, secure and happy way of life is reinforced by the warm connections between local people that are nurtured by the Transition Town movement”.
In the context of the fascinating week of posts looking discussing Transition Network over at the Social Reporters’ blog, it was fascinating to read an important new study by Gill Seyfang, Jung Jin Park and Adrian Smith from University of East Anglia about community energy. ‘Community Energy in the UK’ is the first independent UK-wide survey of community energy projects (you can download it here). One of the most interesting things to emerge from the paper is the role Transition Network plays in the field, in spite of being a very small organisation, and it offers some insights into why that might be.
As mentioned previously, during the 2012 Transition Network conference I spoke at the TEDx Madrid event by Skype, being joined at the end by Juan del Rio. The film of that has now been posted online, and so here it is.
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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