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 Nov 2008
Ed Milliband, the newly appointed Minister for Energy and Climate Change, gave a talk on Monday to the Environment Agency conference in London. As part of it, he said;
How do we build a popular movement on these issues? Movements come from individual experiences which raise consciousness of the issues and are translated into bigger demands. So local campaigns and action whether it’s the Transition Town movement or pioneering local authorities – are absolutely essential. Not just because they are important in themselves but because they can help create a movement for change.
We blushed, just as much as Sharon Astyk did recently, to be cited in such august company. Great to hear that the work of Transition groups up and down the country is on the radar. It doesn’t however mean that we can let his statement that “we need to show it’s possible to be for growth, for fairness and for tackling climate change” to go unchallenged. Our continued obsession with economic growth is potentially utterly ruinous, but I think that’s for another post on economic growth that I have gestating and should be with you soon….
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25 Nov 2008
As I mentioned yesterday, I was in London over the weekend, and my post Sigur Ros wanderings around that great city were fascinating and occasionally bewildering. The recent to-and-fro with John Michael Greer and the editing work I am doing on the impending Transition Timeline report have really got me thinking about stories, the cultural stories we tell ourselves at this time of monumental change and how woefully inadequate most of them are.
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24 Nov 2008
I was in London over the weekend, seeing a concert at the Alexandra Palace by the utterly wonderful Sigur Ros, which was indeed utterly wonderful. The next day, en route home, we went to Camden Market, and my eye was caught by this great T-shirt on one of the stalls. I had never considered Mr T a hero of the no-fly movement, but of course “I ain’t getting on no plane” was one of his catchphrases. Unfortunately Mr T wasn’t motivated by climate change, nor by the results of the Oil Vulnerability Audit he did for the A-Team’s activities, rather a sheer terror of setting foot on aircraft (something to do with his Vietnam experiences).
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20 Nov 2008
It was good to read John Michael Greer’s recent post about the Transition movement, entitled Premature Triumphalism, because as a long admirer of Greer’s work, I was looking forward to hearing his take on the subject. His piece is based on hearing a talk on Transition at the recent Community Solutions conference, and he raises some important points, most of which I have to say I agree with entirely and find his analysis very insightful. I want to start my response to his piece by drawing your (and his) attention to what I think is the most important thing on the Transition Network’s website, the Cheerful Disclaimer.
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18 Nov 2008
So yesterday we waved Naresh Giangrande off from Totnes on the first leg of the Transition Training Tour, with Sophy Banks set to head off to join him next week. The next four months are a very ambitious attempt to meet some of the demand for training arising around the world and to create a pool of trainers that can support it. They will be blogging regularly here at Transition Culture, and here is their first post by way of setting the scene.
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