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 May 2008
Clare Short: Birmingham should become a transition city. May 13 2008 By Clare Short. From the Birmingham Post.
Just before Easter, I accepted an invitation to contribute to a course on development at Schumacher College which is situated in the grounds of Dartington Hall, near Totnes. The college is famous for its commitment to environmental sustainability as is the Dartington Trust. On the road sign for Totnes someone has painted “Twinned with Narnia”. It is a beautiful part of the world and large numbers of green minded, alternative sorts of people live there. This has made Totnes the ideal place for the birth of the Transition Towns movement.
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15 May 2008
The Rocky Road to a Real Transition: the transition towns movement and what it means for social change. Paul Chatterton & Alice Cutler. The Trapese Collective. A free download available here (warning: it is a huge file): 2008. 41pp.
It is flattering that so early in a movement such as the Transition movement, people take the time to sit down and write such a detailed critique of it. Trapese Popular Education Collective were previously behind the excellent ‘Do It Yourself Manual’. As the first published external examination of the Transition model it is to be welcomed, and the authors raise a number of important questions. From my perspective, “The Rocky Road…” does a very good job of identifying many of the key areas where Transition is distinctly different from other approaches to social activism.
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14 May 2008
Things seem to be moving so fast these days. About 6 months ago, BBC Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme ‘You and Yours’ ran a piece about Transition Initiatives and peak oil where Jeremy Leggett debated peak oil with a ridiculous guy from Audacity.org, who basically argued that the free market will solve all ills and there is still loads of oil left. The presenters rather laughed off the peak oil discussion as though it was all rather alarmist and silly. How rapidly things have changed. Yesterday’s ‘Call You and Yours’ was devoted to high oil prices and how they are affecting the consumer, and it was powerful stuff (you can hear the programme for the next 6 days here).
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9 May 2008
One of the downsides to gardening at this time of year is the torchlit slug hunts, wandering around in the dark prising hissing snails and impossibly sticky slugs off tender young runner beans and emerging salads. Years ago I lived in a house in Bristol with an impossibly sluggy garden which was host to my first gardening attempts. I came back from the pub one evening, collected a large plastic pot full of slugs and snails in order to transfer them to the front garden instead, away from my young salads. En route I stopped to make a cup of tea, which led to a chat, which led to more chats, and in the morning, when I came downstairs, I was greeted by the sight of an empty slug pot. Where they all went I never found out, but I often wonder if the current inhabitants are still puzzled to find slugs emerging from under the countertops. Anyway, I digress, for what I want to write about here is the wonderful creature that is the worm.
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7 May 2008
David Holmgren‘s permaculture principles are integral to the Transition concept, and are touched on in the Transition Handbook. I see them as really being the design principles underpinning the design of anything in a post-peak context. David has just launched a new site, PermaculturePrinciples.com, which takes a deeper look into the principles. You might find it a useful resource. We are currently exploring how they might be applied to businesses in the Transition concept, more on that later…
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