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
16 Dec 2005
**Lesson 4 – Designing in Flexibility**
I once did a course with Australian permaculture teacher Dave Clark, who talked about his experiences working doing permaculture in refugee camps in Macedonia. You can read more about his work here, here, and especially here. He was dealing with large numbers of people moving to places with no infrastructure, all of which had to be created. He did amazing work, building strawbale buildings, food gardens, putting in miles of swales and hundreds of thousands of trees. One thing he said really stayed with me.
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15 Dec 2005
*Graham sent this article about an event he organised and participated in in West Cork, which I thought you might find interesting.*
**Who really needs a Silver Mercedes?- an evening with Dr. Colin Campbell and Graham Strouts, Schull, West Cork, Dec. 14th 2005 – by Graham Strouts.**
After a successful presentation with Dr. Colin Campbell in Bantry in September, I was asked to join him once again last night to talk to some 60 people who turned up at the Community School in the small village of Schull in West Cork, at an event organised by the Irish Country Women’s Association.
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15 Dec 2005
On the evening of Wednesday 14th December I gave a presentation called **”Unleashing Abundance in Response to Peak Oil”** at Bogan House in Totnes. About 55 people came and it was very well received. The talk was a follow up to the screening of The End of Suburbia that we organised last week. I recorded the talk, and once I master the technology I will post it here. The evening felt like a very positive first step in working towards an Energy Descent process for Totnes (not the greatest photo ever taken though…).
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15 Dec 2005
**Lesson Three – Creating a Vision of an Abundant Future.**
One of essential things in developing community strategies to peak oil is that of facilitating the community to create a vision of how the future could be. We move from working with peak oil, which is about probabilities (how probable is it that it will be horrendous, how probable is peak in 2007 and so on…) to possibilities. The shift is subtle but illuminating. Through the Open Space event we ran in Kinsale, we gave the community (well those who came at least) permission to dream. It was very powerful to see it happening, people going home excited about
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13 Dec 2005
**Lesson 2 – Creating a sense that Something is Happening.**
The KEDAP process arose from the Practical Sustainability course at Kinsale FEC, which began in 2001. Over the last 4 years, it has developed a reputation in the town for being a place where unusual yet fascinating things are occuring. People often commented to me that they loved the ‘buzz’ around the town created by it. The various building projects that have taken place there have particularly been of great interest, indeed sometimes students would spend the morning cob building or clay plastering, and then head down to the town for some lunch, leading to their being fondly referred to in the town as the ‘Mud People’. We also had an annual Open Day where visitors would
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I once did a course with Australian permaculture teacher Dave Clark, who talked about his experiences working doing permaculture in refugee camps in Macedonia. You can read more about his work here, here, and especially here. He was dealing with large numbers of people moving to places with no infrastructure, all of which had to be created. He did amazing work, building strawbale buildings, food gardens, putting in miles of swales and hundreds of thousands of trees. One thing he said really stayed with me. 
