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.
I am delighted to be able to announce that Transition Network has been chosen as one of three finalists for the Curry Stone Design Prize. The Prize is, according to the organisers, “an annual award to exceptional emerging design innovations that contribute positively to living circumstances for broad sections of global humanity. It is awarded to an individual or group of designers for extraordinary design projects or innovative ideas. The Curry Stone Design Prize rewards and supports new design projects and/or ideas that improve global, societal, and/or humanitarian conditions and represent innovative thinking. It is supported by the Curry Stone Foundation of Oregon and administered by Architecture For Humanity”.
Michael Portillo passed through Totnes yesterday, filming part of his upcoming series of ‘Great British Rail Journeys’, which follows in the footsteps of George Bradshaw, the Victorian travel writer, who visited the town in the late 1800s. Portillo’s trip, which began in Swindon, took him to Dartmouth, then up the River Dart to Totnes, from whence he will head further west, ending up in St. Ives. A taste of Totnes was laid on for him, meeting and interviewing me, initially in Totnes High Street (where the level of interest and fascination was such that another location was quickly chosen), and then in St. Mary’s churchyard. We talked about TTT and the Totnes Pound, and then Michael and the film crew headed off to buy and then spend some Totnes Pounds, and get ferried back to the station by Pete Ryland of the Totnes Rickshaw Company, in one of the town’s biodiesel-powered rickshaws.
We often say that failures in Transition are just as important as our successes, that Transition is an iterative process where what matters is that we learn from honest assessments of what we have tried. In that spirit, today’s post offers a fascinating and illuminating case study of a Transition initiative stalling. We are deeply grateful to members of the steering group of the now-dormant (hopefully temporarily) Transition Oxford group for so honestly and openly sharing their thoughts as to why things have reached the stage they have. Their reflections are largely unedited, and have been left anonymous. My thanks to Jo Hamilton for collating them.
OK, OK, I promise tomorrow I’ll start blogging about things other than the Brixton Pound, but today, here is a great film made by Positive TV about the launch, featuring some of the Brixton Pound crew and really giving a powerful sense of the event.
“One of my first experiences of currencies along the lines of the Brixton pound was in Ithaca in upstate New York, where they have had an amazing printed currency for the last 15 years. You can get loans in it. The biggest loan was for $36,000. Not bad for a local currency. Some of the notes are printed on paper made from Angora rabbit fur, which is an innovative solution to the problem of counterfeiting which has not yet struck the Bank of England.
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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I am delighted to be able to announce that Transition Network has been chosen as one of three finalists for the Curry Stone Design Prize. The Prize is, according to the organisers, “an annual award to exceptional emerging design innovations that contribute positively to living circumstances for broad sections of global humanity. It is awarded to an individual or group of designers for extraordinary design projects or innovative ideas. The Curry Stone Design Prize rewards and supports new design projects and/or ideas that improve global, societal, and/or humanitarian conditions and represent innovative thinking. It is supported by the Curry Stone Foundation of Oregon and administered by Architecture For Humanity”.
We often say that failures in Transition are just as important as our successes, that Transition is an iterative process where what matters is that we learn from honest assessments of what we have tried. In that spirit, today’s post offers a fascinating and illuminating case study of a Transition initiative stalling. We are deeply grateful to members of the steering group of the now-dormant (hopefully temporarily) Transition Oxford group for so honestly and openly sharing their thoughts as to why things have reached the stage they have. Their reflections are largely unedited, and have been left anonymous. My thanks to Jo Hamilton for collating them. 
