1 Nov 2014
I’m just back from two days in and around the beautiful city of Bologna in Italy, participating in a series of events that felt like they generated some real traction around Transition. Italy finds itself at an interesting moment, a fork in the road. Its government is proposing a new bill to open the country up to fracking, to offshore oil and gas extraction, arguing that this is what will enable the nation’s dreadful economic situation to revive. There is much opposition to this, so part of my hope for the trip was to be able to set out an alternative path, to show what Transition can offer to these discussions.
Given that Italy has no growth, and that situation is worsening, perhaps rather than opening the country up for exploitation by fracking companies and oil executives, could it be that it instead consciously becomes the world’s first post growth economy? It is arguably better suited to do that than many other European countries, with a great solar energy resource, and is already generating a lot of renewable energy. Its local food culture is possibly more intact than in most other European countries. It could model the future that we will inevitably have to move to.
But Italy, as everyone reminded me everywhere I went, “is very complicated”. Its political system is a bewildering mess, with coalition governments that change with alarming regularity, with deeply entrenched political parties happy to do anything to undermine each other, and a sense that, as Cristiano Bottone of Transition Italy told me, “whatever you want to do as a Transition group, somewhere there is a law against it”.
So people’s common experience is that making change happen is very difficult, and that the odds, and the system, are stacked against it. Yet the spread of Transition across Italy, and the skilful way they have been building connections with people in many of the places where some of those obstacles can be removed, is a real indicator that perhaps there is another way to make things happen.
That was the background to my trip to Bologna, to try and inspire and engage people in some of the key institutions that could help to really accelerate things in Bologna, which is possibly the most progressive city in Italy, and the most likely place where such an approach might take root.
Having arrived by train, I started on Tuesday morning at the Sala Centro Fiori in the city with a meeting for students and teachers from 5 different schools from in and around Bologna. Some were students of agriculture, but also of a range of other subjects. There were around 300 of them, and it proved to be a fascinating session.
I spoke particularly about Transition and food, and what a new food culture might look like. They were all very engaged, asked some great questions, and gave the idea of growing mushrooms on spent coffee grounds a round of applause! (I imagine Bologna generates a lot more coffee grounds than Exeter, where the example I used came from …). Here’s a video of that talk:
After the talk, lots of students gathered round wanting to know how they could start doing Transition in their school, now. Teachers talked about the things that were already happening, and how they loved the idea of drawing it all together into the idea of a Transition School. I was really touched by the level of enthusiasm among the young people there, very inspiring.
Then with Cristiano of Transition Italy, my wonderful translator Deborah and Glauco, our driver from San Lazzaro Citta’ di Transizione, we headed to the fabled Monteveglio, the birthplace of Transition in Italy. A beautiful small town on the edge of a national park, my first impression was how fresh and delicious the air smelt there.
After a delicious lunch containing a delicious array of local food, and my first experience of seeing actual truffles harvested that morning from the forest, we headed to Sala Consorzio Vini, a beautiful building on the edge of town, for an informal meeting with lots of Italian Mayors and local authority officials who are, at different levels, working to integrate Transition into their work. At that meeting they all agreed to meet again and stay in touch regularly, an important step up in their working together. Then we shifted into interview mode, doing a long interview with RAI TV (Italy’s BBC) for a documentary they will be doing about Transition, as well as with Italia Che Cambia (“Italy that changes”).
The last part of the day was, having headed back into Bologna, a Transition gathering of people doing Transition in and around the city. It was a celebratory party, with a delicious potluck meal, great wine and local beer, meeting some wonderful people. It also included some improvised Transition-themed theatre, music and other forms of collective silliness which were very entertaining. By about 10, having woken up at 5 that morning having not slept well on the sleeper train, the eyelids started to droop, and it was off back to the bed and breakfast I was staying in.
It was an amazing room to wake up in. Right at the top of a tall house, it looked out across the city, across the rooftops, the churches, and the towers for which the city is famous. On a beautiful clear morning it was quite a sight. Our first event of the day was at the Sala Farnese, Bologna’s City Hall, an incredible building. I love old buildings, and it was quite something.
You enter up a set of wide stairs with odd stone ridges across each step which, it was explained to me, was because it was designed in medieval times so people could ride their horses up and down the stairs. Amazing painted ceilings, ancient frescos. The event was called ‘Verso una societa low carbon’ and was held in a beautiful room with frescos and old paintings and a very high ceiling.
It was introduced by the Mayor of Bologna Virginio Merola, here is his talk:
Then there were some speakers from the University of Bologna who also helped to set the context: Dario Braga, Patrizia Brigidi and Alessandra Bonoli. Here is Dario Braga:
Cristiano gave an introduction and then I spoke for about 40 minutes followed by some great questions and answers. Here is the film of that talk:
There was a great buzz in the room, felt like people were very inspired and enthused. Met lots of people afterwards, and then once the rest of it had drawn to a close, headed off with various Transition Italy folks for pizza in Bologna’s organic and local restaurant, very fine indeed I must say.
The afternoon’s event was at the University of Bologna, the world’s oldest university. They have recently started an ‘Alma Low Carbon’ initiative, an “integrated research team” bringing together different departments for, as they put it, “the exchange and integration of expertise of our University in the fields of the reduction of CO2 emissions and climate-changing gases”.
My talk focused on “what a Transition University might look like?” I reflected on the university I went to, and how its campus, where were studying sustainability, featured only grass and concrete and didn’t model in any way what we were learning about. What would it look like, I asked, if a university was a showcase, embedding at all levels, Transition approaches?
It would teach differently, engage the community differently, use its procurement differently, generate its own energy, and so on. Some great questions and answers followed. Once it was all over, we headed off out into the early evening air, past a statue in a corridor at the University that looked just like Billy Connolly, and then to start the long journey home.
I’ll leave the last reflection to this quote from a blog posted by Italia Che Cambia on their reflections on the trip:
How to sum up this experience? A growing network of relations, interest in Transition being expressed by high-level institutions, the idea warmly welcomed by university students and high-schoolers … all these features confirm the effectiveness of the process so far, and set the scene for scaling up so that we may see the work of so many “agents of change” in Italy evolve into a coherent system. Having said that, what we are left with today is the heartening and envigorating feeling of having found in Rob Hopkins an optimistic, friendly and humble person whose visit made felt, beyond the importance of all the research and projects showcased, the true essence of Transition.
My thanks to everyone who came, who organised it, to Deborah the Transition Translator, to Glauco for driving, to Cristiano for all his organising work, to my host, to all the wonderful Transition folks I met for all the great work they are doing, to the University for the invitation.
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28 Oct 2014
At the age of 17, I resolved never to use a particular phrase, which sadly, it seems to me, is once again increasingly common in everyday English usage. I can’t stand it. It’s a term the Global Warming Policy Foundation were quoted as using in a lamentable piece of climate activist-bashing in last weekend’s ‘Mail on Sunday’. “At the end of the day”, they said, “someone will have to be held accountable for us committing economic suicide”.
No, it’s not the “someone will have to be held accountable for us committing economic suicide” bit, awesomely stupid and sodden with irony though it is. It is, the article would have you believe, climate change activists who are responsible for high energy bills, not privatisation, big energy companies and the demands of their shareholders, and the possibility that it might actually be a good idea to do something to prevent runaway climate change. Rather, what has me reaching for the Rant Button this morning is the “at the end of the day” part of that sentence.
In my mid teens I spent many hours engrossed in a phone in radio show on my local radio station, the since-re-branded-as-something-else GWR Radio. The Dave Barrett Phone-In, like most late night phone-ins since, offered a haven for a wide range of views, from the enlightened (rare) to the bigoted and uninformed (very common).
Dave’s show would alternate between his Problems Night where people would ring in to discuss their intimate relationship and sexual health issues with him (I mean, why would you?), shows that discussed UFOs, crop circles, ghosts and so on, and then the more general, anything-goes phone in, usually with a theme. Sometimes just as entertaining were the people who would ring in just to be rude to him, or to wind him up in various creative ways.
To this day I wonder if the tale of “Simon” and his brother-in-law was for real. Apparently, he had gone round to see his sister, who, it turned out, was going out, so he had decided to stay and watch TV with her husband instead.
“Anyway Dave, one thing lead to another”, and before long, he and his brother-in-law were having passionate, full-on sex on the living room floor, at which point the sister returned home. She was, as one might imagine, more than just a little upset. I’ll always remember his plaintive “but Dave, she won’t speak to me any more!”, the response to which was Dave’s rather shocked “I think she might need a little bit of time”…
But Dave’s trump card, wheeled out with alarming regularity, was “at the end of the day”. He was a master at it. Whenever an argument was going against him, he’d wheel out an “at the end of the day” to kill the discussion. It was shorthand for “at the end of the day I’m right, and it’s my show, so I’m drawing this conversation to a close”. It was a powerful weapon in his skilled hands.
I remember ringing him one time to debate nuclear weapons, and his using “at the end of the day, the world’s a dangerous place” to close down and therefore brush aside everything I had said up to that point before cutting me off to go to an ad break. I fumed.
It is one step beyond the less offensive but still irritating “yes, but”. “Yes, but” is used in conversations to mean “I realise you’ve been talking for the last little while, and I completely don’t agree but now I want to tell you what I think and need some sort of sound as recognition that you’ve said some things, but I couldn’t tell you what they were”. But “at the end of the day” goes beyond that.
When you are losing an argument, your “at the end of the day” needs to be a big one. “At the end of the day”-type arguments carry the absolutist gravitas of points such as “you basically can’t really trust people”, “the world’s a dangerous place”, or the one that makes me scream: “but, at the end of the day, business is business” … something sweeping which somehow, it is imagined, brings the weight of common sense, or what is presented as majority opinion, however misinformed, rallying to your side very quickly. The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s “Someone will have to be held accountable for us committing economic suicide” is a classic “at the end of the day”.
It’s a point that takes a lot longer to argue with it than it takes to make it. What one would like to do in response is to make the point that the best way to “commit economic suicide” is to allow the world to warm by 6 degrees, to unleash weird weather on the world, to allow large parts of the world to be ravaged by drought, flood, famine, unpredictable weather, fires, etc etc. That approach is probably the best definition of “economic suicide” one could think of.
But that conversation has been closed down by an “at the end of the day”. Dave Barrett would be proud (he still works on radio and also does some TV work by the way, and if he reads this, Dave, thanks for the years of entertainment. In my dreams he had a major shift in world view, was one of the founders of Transition Swindon, and doesn’t say “at the end of the day” anymore).
“At the end of the day” closes down the discussions we most need to be having. It’s not an expression you’ll find me using. If I ever use it on this website, you have my permission to shower me with scorn and derision and put me out of my misery. It is the antithesis of good listening. You won’t find it used in Non Violent Communication. You won’t find it used in Open Space meetings. You won’t find it anywhere where people are genuinely interested in open and respectful communication with each other.
Yet somehow if you want to really communicate the kinds of nonsense pedalled by GWPF, it’s a useful tool. Watch out for it. It’s just not one I intend adopting. At the end of the day.
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26 Oct 2014
All too often our experience of being consulted on proposed new developments is a few architects drawings in a church hall and our being asked to give some feedback. We are never then told what the community’s feedback was, the development then goes ahead pretty much as planned, and it all feels like a rather token exercise. Atmos Totnes (which we reported on recently), has now begun its consultation. It’s doing things differently. We asked its facilitator, Ruth Ben-Tovim to walk us through it:
Here are some photos to illustrate some of the activities Ruth mentions in the podcast:
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24 Oct 2014
It’s an all too common experience to plough on with doing Transition, from activity to activity, without pausing to reflect on or celebrate what we’ve achieved. It was delightful therefore to visit the New Forest this week, both to give a talk but also to see their ‘Live and Unleashed! New Forest Transition’ exhibition at the New Forest Centre.
New Forest Transition began in 2008, and has been hard at work ever since, working on a wide variety of initiatives. Doing Transition in an area with a dispersed community isn’t easy.
There are a number of town and village initiatives, some more vibrant than others, but given the amount of travel required to get everyone together, sustaining New Forest Transition as a network hasn’t been easy. The exhibition, however, is great testament to all that they have achieved.
They’ve done regular Green Open Doors events, energy efficiency work with local schools, raised over £2 million in shares for a community solar farm, thermal imaging surveys, a range of other work with local schools, including renewable energy site visits, projects to promote cycling and the New Forest Food Challenge, which led to a wide range of local food initiatives. They have 3 apple presses that are borrowed by people to make apple juice and cider. Here’s the trailer for a film they made about local food in the Forest:
There’s the Hale Village Market:
and of Energy Audits they did for local schools:
They have joined forces with Transition Southampton for a scheme offering people the possibility of buying fruit trees and shrubs at cost. Here are some photos from the exhibition:
There was also a rather fine globe made from recycled jeans. Every geography class should have one:
It felt to me like there was something very powerful about taking the time, as they put it in their publicity for the exhibition, “to celebrate our recent projects and to find out what we can all do in the New Forest in the future”. Perhaps it marked the culmination of one stage, one phase, in the evolution of Transition in the New Forest. Later that evening I gave a talk (see photos below), and the Q&A and subsequent discussions opened the possibilities of what might come next for the initiative.
The success of the solar farm fundraising shows clearly that there is demand for interesting Transition-esque investment opportunities. They have an established reputation for delivering projects. Discussions around what’s next focused on how to better build on coalitions with partner organisations, taking more of a REconomy approach, creating an Economic Blueprint for the Forest, perhaps running a Local Entrepreneur Forum with other organisations, identifying some opening for social enterprises and making them happen. It felt like there was both the enthusiasm and the expertise to take that step forward.
The next day, I was taken to see the Minstead Study Centre, one of only a few dedicated Sustainability visitors’ centres in the country. The Centre offers either a 3 or a 5 day residential experience for school kids, immersing them in thinking about sustainability from a range of angles, local food, a fairer world, energy, water and so on.
The centrepiece is a beautiful residential accommodation block, built using local timber, and to be a showcase for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Kids staying in it have a monitor which is set to zero when they arrive and which records their use of mains and rainwater, energy and gas.
The site also features a great food garden, sculptures and artworks, a clay pizza oven (when I arrived, a group were making pizzas having milled their own flour first), a beautiful tipi used as an outdoor classroom, sheep, a beautiful labyrinth modelled on the one at Chartres cathedral, a beautiful fire pit, a pond/wetland, a beautiful thatched wattle and daub roundhouse, willow sculptures and lots more.
I would love to have spent a few days there when I was a child. The place itself and the diversity of activities undertaken when there clearly have a rich impact. A delicious lunch with some of the Study Centre team and some New Forest Transition folks was followed by a dash to the station for the journey home. An inspiring trip, and it will be fascinating to see what happens over the next couple of years.
If you are in or around the New Forest, the Live and Unleashed! exhibition runs until Sunday 23rd November at the New Forest Centre, Lyndhurst Car Park, Lyndhurst.
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23 Oct 2014
Instead of running an annual conference in 2014, Transition Network is running four Roadshows around the UK. The pilot took place in Lancaster in July, and St. Andrews in Scotland hosted the first Roadshow proper. The St Andrews event was hosted by Transition University of St. Andrews, who have been doing amazing work both within and beyond the University. It was a great occasion, and in this post we’ll try and document and celebrate the event, and capture what you missed if you weren’t there.
Day One (by Rob)
The St. Andrews event started on the Friday morning with the Transition Scotland gathering, held at the Botanic Gardens in the ‘Glass Class’, a long greenhouse now used as a classroom. The morning brought Transitioners from across Scotland together to reflect, share and plan. As the Roadshow booklet put it:
“Whether your group is going strong, is just getting started, or is somewhat burnt out, we’d love to hear your story as we pool visions of how we see Scotland transitioning to a resilient future, and plan how we’re going to achieve it!”
That set the tone for the day. We heard stories from across the country, from groups thriving and acting as amazing incubators for all sorts of new enterprises and initiatives to those hanging on by their fingernails. One of the interesting challenges in Scotland is the Climate Challenge Fund. Several years ago, when it began, I remember Scottish Transition groups coming to the national conference and talking with delight to jealous Transitioners from elsewhere about this new government grant that was going to fund them to do Transition.
A few years later it’s fascinating to get a sense of how this has worked. While for some groups, such as Transition Linlithgow and Sustaining Dunbar, it has enabled the patient and skilful building of a range of enterprises and REconomy work, it also had a downside. Groups that had barely got started, had little in the way of successful projects under their belts, were suddenly well-resourced, and time and energy went into projects rather than building the kind of resilient groups and social networks that Transition depends on.
Then, after a couple of years, when the funding dried up, there was little to fall back on, and the groups floundered. Some of those groups are now finding their feet again, some have disappeared. Similarly dormant now is Transition Scotland, the national network. The morning discussed ways forward, the role Transition Scotland could play, and possible future directions for Transition.
The afternoon was held at St Andrews Town Hall, and was a REconomy workshop, entitled “Re-imagine your local economy”. It wasn’t just about the new ideas the REconomy are promoting, but also about linking those in with movements and initiatives already underway in Scotland.
The session opened with 3 keynote speakers. Transition Network’s Delivery Director Sarah McAdam spoke about where the idea of REconomy came from, how Transition Network is supporting it, and how far it has already spread.
Mark Simmonds, REconomy’s Enterprise Advisor, looked at the scope and potential of Transition enterprises in a post-referendum Scotland.
Philip Revell of Sustaining Dunbar, talked about their Local Resilience Action Plan, and what it has led to.
This was followed by workshop sessions: on farming; making the most of opportunities for emerging enterprises, the role of resilience action plans, and the one I went to, led by Angus Hardie, on the Community Empowerment Bill, a piece of legislation so fascinating that it will be the subject of a future post here.
After a break, I spoke briefly, and then it was into a choice of Round Table discussions. I went to one about Sustaining Dunbar’s proposed community owned business park, a fascinating, and slightly daunting step up for the group. After closing comments and a wrapping up, the event closed.
The evening’s event took place at the Byre Theatre, the town’s theatre that had closed last year only to be recently taken over and reopened by the University. This was a talk by me, in an odd space, with a gallery looking down on me as well as the audience in front of me. I talked for about 45 minutes, and it felt like it went well. A film of it will hopefully follow soon. I really enjoyed it, and had a couple of very nice St Andrews-brewed pints afterwards.
The second day was the Roadshow proper. As I then headed home on the 10 hour train ride home, I will hand over to Mike Thomas, Transition Network’s Support Co-ordinator, to tell you more, and leave you with a photo of the windfarm in the Highlands that I passed on the way home.
Day 2 (by Mike)
The St. Andrews Road Show is a bit unique as it was hosted by a Transition Initiative based in a University. Transition University of St Andrews have slowly been embedding Transition into their student community since they began. The Initiative has a Core Group that is made up of and chaired by students. Transition is promoted to all new students from the day they begin with the ‘St And Re-Use’ scheme which collects stuff from students leaving such as cutlery, utensils etc which are then distributed to new students in Freshers Week. In 2013-14 they collected nearly 1000kg of reusable items which were given new homes by over 700 students.
They also have edible landscape projects, low carbon living projects and social events like Carbon Conversations and Green Drinks amongst other things. It is a great initiative that introduces hundreds of people to Transition and hopefully when they leave university they continue to be involved in Transition in their local communities.
The Road Show got off to a great start with a Laughter Yoga session, which slightly worried me having done a fair bit of yoga myself, and thinking that if I also have to laugh at the same time, I may pull a muscle. It turned out that this wasn’t the case, and it was literally a good laugh (excuse the pun) without injuries.
We had a packed day to look forward to with workshops in the morning and afternoon. In the morning people attended workshops that consisted of an Introduction to Transition for people new to the idea, Resourcing your Transition Initiative and Supporting Healthy Transition Initiative. I was shadowing Naresh, our Transition Trainer, to run the workshop on Healthy Transition Initiatives.
We had a really interesting conversation where we discussed what success looked like for Transition Initiatives with lots good points put forward. We then had an introduction to the new Transition Support model that is going to be launched soon and people thought it looked really good and useful. Through our conversations it became apparent that many groups have the same problems, such as getting people involved, engaging with the community and group dynamics. These are themes that come up again and again and are ones that the new support model will help to address.
Speaking to others at lunch it seemed people found the other workshops helpful too. In particular the Resourcing your Transition Initiative workshop, which gave people a sense of where to go next for getting income. This was especially timely as lots of work developed under the Climate Challenge Fund would need to find new support as that Funding scheme is coming to an end.
Then it was off to St Andrews Town Hall for a lovely lunch of homemade soup and sandwiches. There was also a Sustainability Fair going on upstairs promoting actions that individuals can take to reduce their carbon and energy bills, all good stuff. During this time I got to chat to Andy and Rehema who gave me an insight into the impact of the referendum in Scotland. It seems that the referendum has really sparked a massive conversation amongst local communities on how Scotland should be governed and develop to deal with the future issues such as climate change, jobs, peak oil amongst others. We also discussed the historical land clearances and general land rights as they have a huge impact on the ability to build sustainable communities.
So feeling pretty full, physically from the soup and mentally from the conversation, the next workshop was a ‘Walkshop’ around St. Andrews community food growing projects. St Andrews have set up several projects around different parts of the University and town. The first one we went to was a revitalised orchard. Ali from Transition St Andrews (see above) explained how the University actually used to grow a lot of their own food in the past but that had stopped over time, so an a old practice was being revived by Transition.
We then went off to visit to some of the student housing, this particular area had a lot of lawned green space and Transition University of St Andrews had managed to persuade the University property managers that a community garden would be a good idea. This garden was obviously a bit sparse due to the time of year, but you could see that it had been well managed by student Transitioners and had provided a lot of fruit and vegetables throughout the year.
They have had some problems, such as people eating all the rhubarb before it was ready, but apart from that it was a really successful project. They have also been weighing all the food produced and have found that their yield has increased year on year. It is hoped to extend this food growing project to other areas.
On the talk I also got to hear about the Fife Diet project from Eva who is involved in running it. This is a great project that is concerned with all things food, such as local growing, food networks and reducing carbon. It is one of the largest food projects in Europe with over 6000 members.
As I was touring St Andrews with Ali from Transition St Andrews, a whole other range of workshops were occurring where people were finding out about REconomy and community resilience and how they all link up to provide a powerful means for developing resilient communities. Others were discussing how to monitor and evaluate what their Transition initiative had achieved and what tools can be used to do that.
We then headed back to St Andrews University for the Think Tank Session, where we were treated to homemade apple juice. At the Think Tank session we sat and listened to talks from Prof. Stuart Hazeldine from the University of Edinburgh, who gave his view on Scotland’s future energy issues focusing on the need to reduce domestic use, challenge the use of oil and to think about energy including transport, electricity and heat and Dr. Antje Brown from St Andrews University who highlighted the areas of global, European and national policy that are having an impact on our energy production and carbon reduction target.
We then all broke into groups for the Think Tank session framed around the question of ‘How can Transition build a new world while still operating in the existing system?’. There were 6 tables setup looking at these topics:
- Jam in the doughnut – Resourcing the “centre” of your transition initiative
- Wildcard – Any other ideas
- Acknowledging this moment of change (risks and opportunities)… Making the most of the situation in Scotland
- Developing our inner journey… Inner Transition
- Peaks and Troughs : how to manage cycles
During this session there seemed to be an intense conversation happening, with people writing furiously and many ideas, opinions and thoughts being shared. A lot of flipchart paper was filled up with ideas. There definitely felt like there was a lot of passion in the room for Scotland’s future, which felt inspiring to see. It was also great seeing students involved in Transition St Andrews taking a really active role in helping run the sessions, by being scribes helping setup rooms, contributing to the debates and generally making sure everything went smoothly.
As is often the case with events you learn lots from the workshops and also loads of interesting stuff just from the conversations you have with people. This is one of the real benefits about getting lots of interesting people with ideas and opinions together in one place. For example my views of a Cèilidh have been permanently changed as I learnt that a Cèilidh is not just a dance but can also be a social gathering where people come together to talk about a range of issues. A practice which had seen a real resurgence in the lead up to the Independence vote.
Overall, it felt like the Road Show allowed a space for people to make new friends and connections that will hopefully continue after the conference, as a post referendum Scotland feels like a place ripe for local communities taking the initiative in developing a positive future for themselves. A big thank you must go out to the Transition University of St Andrews team for all their hard work in putting on this event and to all the people who came along and participated to make it a really fruitful day.
The second Transition Roadshow will be run with Transition Penwith and will take place in Penzance, Cornwall, on February 6/7th.
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My talk focused on “what a Transition University might look like?” I reflected on the university I went to, and how its campus, where were studying sustainability, featured only grass and concrete and didn’t model in any way what we were learning about. What would it look like, I asked, if a university was a showcase, embedding at all levels, Transition approaches? 
