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
26 May 2006
Last night around 95 people attended the UK premiere of the Community Solution’s film ‘The Power of Community’ at the Totnes Methodist Hall. The film explores what happened to Cuba when their oil supply disappeared, almost overnight, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. It looks at the positive way in people responded and relocalised many aspects of their lives. At last, a peak oil film which is also positive and inspirational. The film was very well received, and the group discussion afterwards was lively and very positive about the film.
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25 May 2006
**Building With Hemp by Steve Allin – a Review (see bottom of review for a chance to win a copy of this book in our latest Transition Culture competition).**
Hemp is a plant with an extraordinary history and a list of uses that would gave most other plants a serious inferiority complex. Historically it provided the UK Navy’s ropes for centuries, the paper for the first US dollar bills, it can be made into a material called Hemp Plastic which was what the bodywork of the first Ford car was made from, and makes a wide range of papers and fabrics
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24 May 2006
**Peter Harper** has been at the Centre for Alternative Technology for over 15 years as a landscape designer, director of biological research and now as Head of Research and Innovation. He is author of many articles and of the classic “Natural Garden Book”, which I think is now tragically out of print. He lives in Machynlleth has done a great job of renovating his traditional cottage as ‘greenly’ as possible, as well as creating a beautiful and productive garden.
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23 May 2006
As I was washing up this evening and listening to the news on Radio 4, a story caught my ear that sounded too good to be true. After endless stories of wind projects being turned down across the country and all the ‘blot on the landscape’ nonsense about wind turbines, did I actually hear that **urban** wind farms could be the thing of the near future? In a very timely follow up to yesterday’s post about community renewables projects, the BBC gave a taste of things to come in the field of community wind projects.
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22 May 2006
One of the most useful things about the **Community Renewables** course at CAT was that I got to bounce some of my ideas off the people there. Clearly I don’t have a strong background in community renewables, being more of a permaculture and plants kinda guy, and community renewables are clearly a key part of a relocalisation process. I will look at this below, firstly setting out what was my thinking prior to the course, then the reservations that the course leaders raised about that, and finally the revised version of how I am now thinking that all of this might work.
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Last night around 95 people attended the UK premiere of the Community Solution’s film ‘The Power of Community’ at the Totnes Methodist Hall. The film explores what happened to Cuba when their oil supply disappeared, almost overnight, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. It looks at the positive way in people responded and relocalised many aspects of their lives. At last, a peak oil film which is also positive and inspirational. The film was very well received, and the group discussion afterwards was lively and very positive about the film.
