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
28 Aug 2008
Part of being on holiday with my kids meant a small but fascinating exposure to children’s TV. At this point in time, given that we now officially have 100 months to save the planet, children’s TV really ought to be advocating low-carbon living, the Great Reskilling, healthy eating, empowerment, conflict resolution skills and so on. It’s not of course. It offered a fascinating insight into the double messages that young people are being given, feeding the contradictory, confused outlook so many of them have. The day was saved, well sort of anyway, by Basil Brush, recently relaunched and back from his wilderness years after being so popular when I was a kid (boom boom).
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27 Aug 2008
I was up in Nottingham a while ago giving a couple of talks to a very young but vigorously emergent Transition Nottingham group. The first talk was to an invited audience of business people and local councillors, and the second was a public talk with almost 200 people. There is some very good work going on there, a good deal of energy and momentum. On the Every Action Counts website, you can find this excellent update on what they are up to, which I have also copied below. We are planning a Transition Cities event for some time around the end of the year, which we hope will be in Nottingham. Watch this space.
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26 Aug 2008
On Tuesday 9th September 2008 at the Foundry Gallery in Lewes, Transition Town Lewes will be launching the Lewes Pound, the second currency to be issued by a Transition initiative, the first being the Totnes Pound (although Brixton are at the early stage of planning their Brixton Brick). The evening will be hosted by the Mayor of Lewes, and will include short talks by Stewart Wallis, Executive Director, New Economics Foundation, Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and author and myself.
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25 Aug 2008
Stopping work and going away has similarities with being hit repeatedly over the head with a plank of wood. In the same way that it is only when the beating stops that you realise how much it hurts, it is only when you actually stop work, turn off mobile phone and email contact, that you realise how utterly exhausted you are. That’s how it was for me anyway. So on our first day away, we ended up in London, and went to Hamley’s toy shop. While the rest of the family wandered around, I sat with our bags and promptly fell asleep in the middle of the shop. When I woke up again, I found I was sitting just by a big XBox thing which was demonstrating the latest version of the game ‘Guitar Hero 3’. While I sat waiting for the return of my family, I had no alternative than to observe this dreadful thing for about half an hour, which prompts the following…
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22 Aug 2008
I am feeling a bit like a Head of State who has gone away from his/her well-ordered country, only to return two weeks later to find complete anarchy, breakdown, looting, gangs in control and the country’s infrastructure in tatters. When I left to go away for two weeks, my garden was a model of neat and tidy vegetable production. On my return a couple of days ago, it was a picture of carnage, laid low by the the Four Horsemen of the Gardening Apocalypse, slugs, caterpillars, torrential rain and bolting.
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Part of being on holiday with my kids meant a small but fascinating exposure to children’s TV. At this point in time, given that we now officially have 100 months to save the planet, children’s TV really ought to be advocating low-carbon living, the Great Reskilling, healthy eating, empowerment, conflict resolution skills and so on. It’s not of course. It offered a fascinating insight into the double messages that young people are being given, feeding the contradictory, confused outlook so many of them have. The day was saved, well sort of anyway, by Basil Brush, recently relaunched and back from his wilderness years after being so popular when I was a kid (boom boom). 
