An Evolving Exploration into the Head, Heart and Hands of Energy Descent
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.
Last Friday, in Totnes Civic Hall, saw the historic launch of the Totnes Renewable Energy Society (TRESOC). A key piece in the relocalisation of Totnes and district, TRESOC offers members of the community the chance to buy into their own renewable energy company. The evening started with Cllr. Tony Whitty, the Mayor of Totnes, who put the work of TRESOC in the context of the town’s wider spirit of being a pioneering town, a spirit now embodied in its identity as a Transition Town. He mentioned the 74 photovoltaic panels now adorning the Hall as part of the Transition Streets initiative, which will be formally ‘switched on’ at the Energy Fair next Saturday. TRESOC, he told the nearly-full Civic Hall, is another key step towards enhancing the sustainability and resilience of Totnes.
The third book in the Transition Books series, ‘Local Sustainable Homes: how to make them happen in your community’ by Chris Bird, is now available to purchase here at Transition Culture. I got my copy on Friday, and it is fantastic, packed with stories, case studies and ideas. You can now order your copy here. It is a brilliant guide to creating low impact homes in your community, packed with inspiring case studies of low-carbon buildings, from retrofitted old houses to new eco-villages. Chris is launching the book this week in Stroud as part of their Open Eco-Homes event. Transition initiatives can buy multiple copies of the book here.
Catrina Pickering, Transition Network’s Diversity Co-ordinator, has just published the first Diversity Newsletter, which will become a regular feature. Future newsletters will be posted on the Transition Network site, where you can also subscribe to it.
Transition Network Diversity News: September 2010
Inclusion in Transition
What can we do to become more inclusive? This is a question that we at the Transition Network are starting to grapple with and if we’re going to grapple with it well, we’ll need your help, input and ideas too. What kind of inner change might need to undertake in order to become a more inclusive movement? Your thoughts on this – from the mundane to the sublime to the completely off the wall – are very welcome. Are we absolutely insisting on inclusion and holding it at the core of everything we do is it more of a “well, that would be nice but let’s wait until after the Transition”? To find out more and post your thoughts on this discussion, read the blog post on inclusion in Transition here.
I have referred to Stroudco here before, the innovative ‘food hub’ project in Stroud which aims to “provide local people with a new way of linking with local producers to buy good food and drink at fair prices for consumers and producers”, to “make a real connection between consumers and farms and other local places producing food and drink” and to provide everyone involved with “control, understanding, awareness, education, social links, nourishment and fun”. It has been running for a few months now, so how’s it going? Here’s a short film that provides a fascinating update on Stroudco….
It is time to announce the results of the fiendishly puzzling ‘Local Sustainable Homes’ competition. Oh dear people, it turned out to be the competition which generated the lowest correct answers to number of entries ratio of any competition I have ever run. The correct answers, the two local building materials/techniques which I had made up, were ‘rumpletumping’ (which is not a term from the Midlands used to describe picking through building stones), and ‘grot-stock’ (which is not the application of bovine snot to wallpaper application, described by entrant Andy Brewin as “a truly horrid thought”). A few astute readers questioned exactly how one would actually harvest cows’ snot, a fair question probably best not dwelt on for too long. Rex Brangwyn accused me of running a trick competition, in which all the responses were actually real, and Angie Corbet wrote ” ‘rumpletumping’ sounds just a bit too much like what small boys get up to just before bedtime, and my mother, a Kentish Maid born & bred many years ago, has never heard of “Grot-stock” so I’ll hazard a guess at those two!” Unfortunately however, such elegant prose failed to mean she ended up among the winners…those 5 noble souls were: Marcus Perrin, Michelle Bastain, Rachel Roddam, Amanda and Charlie Stephenson. Well done all. The other 8 terms are all real. Isn’t English a beautiful language? It is positively frightening just how much you can learn here at Transition Culture.
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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Last Friday, in Totnes Civic Hall, saw the historic launch of the Totnes Renewable Energy Society (TRESOC). A key piece in the relocalisation of Totnes and district, TRESOC offers members of the community the chance to buy into their own renewable energy company. The evening started with Cllr. Tony Whitty, the Mayor of Totnes, who put the work of TRESOC in the context of the town’s wider spirit of being a pioneering town, a spirit now embodied in its identity as a Transition Town. He mentioned the 74 photovoltaic panels now adorning the Hall as part of the Transition Streets initiative, which will be formally ‘switched on’ at the Energy Fair next Saturday. TRESOC, he told the nearly-full Civic Hall, is another key step towards enhancing the sustainability and resilience of Totnes.
