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.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
1 Sep 2006
The flyer for Transition Town Totnes is now done, is at the printers, and will be ready tomorrow. I thought those of you outside of the ‘pop into Totnes and pick one up’ radius would like to see it. It was done by the very creative, professional and patient Simon Blackler of Idealic in Ivybridge. Idealic is a South West Devon design agency specialising in corporate identity, concerned about the affects of climate change, wanting to work with companies who wish to work more sustainably, who I recommend wholeheartedly. You can download it here. Do feel free to print out and distribute or circulate in whatever way seems appropriate.
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1 Sep 2006
I have ruminated before here about how we might entertain ourselves when the highly energy intensive ways we choose these days become unviable. With the news that the craze for plasma screen TVs is creating an energy demand requiring two new nuclear power stations, it may be instructive to consider some modes of collective entertainment that will still be feasible beyond the Age of Cheap Oil. I had the great pleasure the other week of taking my kids to see a great example of this, Giffords Circus, performing on the common at Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire.
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31 Aug 2006
**Life After Oil: Breaking the Habit. A Residential Course at Schumacher College, Devon, UK. November 12-24, 2006**
**Teachers:** David Fleming, Ron Oxburgh, Michael Meacher, Richard Heinberg & Rob Hopkins.
*I am reposting the information about this upcoming course because I thought that you might be interested to know that I’ve been asked to do a bit of teaching on it. I’ll be teaching a day on Energy Descent Planning at the beginning of the second week. For those who wrote in suggesting the H2 tour could become the H3 tour were I to head down to Australia too, this is an opportunity to see a different H2 combination!*
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31 Aug 2006
Young people hanging out on street corners and in bus shelters has been a regular part of British life since street corners and bus shelters were invented. Sometimes they can get a bit too bouncy, and sometimes can get up to all kinds of mischief. For the most part though, they just want to ‘chill with their homies’ and talk about teenager stuff to other teenagers (which usually, sadly, tends to revolve around ringtones…). Naturally sometimes this can be threatening to other people who use bus shelters and street corners. Responses up to now have ranged from the police chasing them off the streets to ASBOs (not ASPOs) and trying to herd them into youth clubs. But natural building? How might cob, strawbale and clay plaster have a role to play?
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30 Aug 2006
“Magic” and “wonder”. Not words we read too often in the peak oil literature. I contend, however, that if we are actually to engage people in energy descent as a positive transition on the necessary scale, we need to work magic and wonder into what we do. My mum recently passed on to me a video of an amazing thifrom BBC4 of a thing that happened a few months ago in London, called “The Sultan’s Elephant”, a huge piece of street theatre by the French theatrical magicians Royal de Luxe that took place in the capital in early May. The whole thing was prepared in the greatest secrecy, and took people by surprise, and the event that unfolded over the next 4 days brought magic and wonder to millions of people, and the film about it, I confess, brought tears to my eyes.
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The flyer for Transition Town Totnes is now done, is at the printers, and will be ready tomorrow. I thought those of you outside of the ‘pop into Totnes and pick one up’ radius would like to see it. It was done by the very creative, professional and patient Simon Blackler of Idealic in Ivybridge. Idealic is a South West Devon design agency specialising in corporate identity, concerned about the affects of climate change, wanting to work with companies who wish to work more sustainably, who I recommend wholeheartedly. You can download it here. Do feel free to print out and distribute or circulate in whatever way seems appropriate. 
