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
Here is a great new film from Transition Scotland that was designed as something new initiatives could show that would give a sense of where Transition has got to in Scotland. And rather good it is too…
This is a big week for ‘The Transition Companion’. This is the week that pre-ordered copies will be mailed out (Wednesday), the London book launch will be held on the roof of Food from the Sky in Crouch End (also Wednesday), and that we will be holding a Twitter launch (Thursday). The Twitter thing will run from 2.30-5.30pm, and will be an opportunity to ask questions about the book, request signings, discuss points in it, or whatever you like! The hashtag will be #ttcomp, and all are welcome (@robintransition). Here is this week’s Transition object film, a rather lovely one about Transition Belsize and their Draughtbusters project.
https://vimeo.com/30004830
Transition Toronto recently held a film competition for people to use film as a way of communicating Transition. The winner was Mariko Uda with her film ‘The People in my Neighbourhood’. Rather lovely it is too. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/vkBR3n2JiiQ
The judge, Gregory Greene, producer of ‘The End of Suburbia’, said of why he chose this film as the winner:
In 2004, Steve Pacala and Robert Socolow published a paper in Science about climate mitigation which introduced the concept of ‘stabilisation wedges’. This proposed that rather than waiting for some ‘magic bullet’, one amazing technology that would bring climate change under control, what was needed was the immediate and much expanded application of a combination of existing and proven technologies which, combined, would have the desired effect. “Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century” they wrote. It was a timely and seminal approach. But it strikes me that, given that their underpinning assumptions neglect a wider perspective in term of the ‘perfect storm’ of other challenges that increasingly keep climate change company in the “reasons-to-lie-awake-at-night” charts (powerfully described by Jeremy Rifkin recently), that it is in desperate need of a profound overhaul, rather than having been ‘reaffirmed’ by the intervening 7 years.
The Green Valley Grocer in Slaithwaite.
From West Yorkshire here’s an exciting story to start with. At the Colne Valley Local Food Festival, Marsden & Slaithwaite TT have joined forces with other local groups (Handmade Bakery, Edibles and Green Valley Grocer) to form a Declaration of Independence from the global network of food! Go Colne Valley! Here’s a short film about the Green Valley Grocer:
Part of this process has been developing a Colne-U-Copia brand for locally produced food. A bold initiative we’ll keep an eye on in future round-ups.
