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.
The 2009 Transition Network conference at Battersea Arts Centre, pretty much the only point at which everybody sat in rows...
Lots of people have been asking for the date of the 2010 Transition Network conference, so here we go. The good news for 2010 is that there will be not one but two UK Transition conferences! The first will be held at Michael Hall School near Forest Row in Sussex on the 29th, 30th and 31st May 2010. The theme of the conference will be ‘Broadening’, taking the Transition approach wider and deeper. Being based near Forest Row, one of the earliest UK Transition initiatives, gives the opportunity to experience first-hand the amazing local food systems already in place there. The second conference will be in Scotland, hosted by Transition Scotland Support, later in the year (s0metime October/November). The theme for that will be ‘Deepening’, and dates are to be confirmed. More information, such as times, accommodation, prices and so on, will be made available soon. Watch this space or the Transition Network website.
Here is a selection of 7 new short films about Transition, uncovered in a short rummage around on the internet. They demonstrate the dazzling diversity of things underway around the world, talks, events, community film-making, as well as personal reflections on the process. I love the fact that it is so easy to make short films and post them online (so I’m told), and the great stories that that allows to be captured. Sit back and enjoy…..
1. An unnamed gentleman somewhere in the US reflects on Transition while making toast in his kitchen after attending his first Transition meeting (great views of his ceiling)
I remember going to Chepstow last year for their Official Unleashing, and being told that they had nearly put out a press release about a project of theirs, which proclaimed that they wanted to make Chepstow “the most insulted town in Wales”, rather than insulated, spotting the typo just in time. Regular readers will have been following my ongoing attempts to retrofit my 1963 dormer bungalow. I have insulated the loft, crawled under the floors insulating between the joists, hemp and lime plastered my kitchen. Over the summer, we also insulated the trickier parts of our upstairs rooms with Pavatherm boards, and took up the floorboards in the rest of the downstairs and insulated under them, and put thicker carpets down. Yesterday however, we came up against a ghastly Catch 22 situation, and, dear reader, I have to say I am stumped, and feeling more insulted than insulated, and asking for any brilliant solutions the collective Transition Culture readership might have.
“I am treasurer of a church in Cumbria and we have received a Totnes Pound note in our collection box. Is it worth anything or do we just throw it away?”
How on earth did a Totnes Pound find itself in Cumbria, and why would someone think to put it in the church collection box? My mind is boggled. Anyone out there got any advice for our cumbrian church treasurer, given that driving to Totnes to change it back into a Pound sterling would not really be cost effective?
So, welcome to 2010. This new decade of limits, of huge possibilities and possibilities, of coming home to where we are, of reskilling, reconnecting and relocalising. While Sharon Astyk has offered her cogent predictions for the new year, and Richard Heinberg has offered powerful analyses as to why tackling climate change is down to us rather than waiting for the Copenhagen re-run in Mexico to sort it out, I want to mark my first post here in 2010 with a recipe. It somehow feels representative of the challenges of the new decade, embodying some of the qualities we need, as well as being highly delicious. It is Traditional Bread Sauce, although we could call it Transitional Bread Sauce (as my fingers mistyped it when I initially typed it in).
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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