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
21 Dec 2007
It’s that time of year when I pop the laptop in a drawer, turn off the mobile phone, and try to stop thinking incessantly about energy descent strategies, the best kind of wood to edge raise beds with and whether solar panels are a terrorist threat, putting **Transition Culture** to bed for a week or two. The New Year will bring the release of the third Totnes Pound (they’re gorgeous) and a redesign of this site in January, the publication of **The Transition Handbook** in late February (you’re gonna love it), the Positive Energy conference at Findhorn in March (finally, I get to meet Joanna Macy) and the second national Transition Network gathering in April. Beyond that, who knows, but given the current rates of growth of the Transition Network, it should be a busy year. I’d like to thank you for your companionship over the past 12 months, for all your comments and suggestions, and for actually reading the stuff I blearily post on here most mornings. I’d also like to wish you a Happy Christmas, Solstice or whatever you call this time and its gift of making us stop work, take some time with loved ones and reflect on the past year. **Transition Culture** will be back on January 7th and will, among other things, continue working through Ted Trainer’s questions. See you then, and thanks again.
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20 Dec 2007
Clearly, in the context of energy descent, this is a question we should all be asking, yet amazingly no one has really asked it in any depth since Kenneth Mellanby’s book ‘Can Britain Feed Itself’ published in 1975. In the most recent issue of the excellent publication The Land, editor and planning reform campaigner Simon Fairlie returns to Mellanby’s report and attempts what he admits is a “back of an A4 envelope” update, and the results are fascinating. You can download the pdf. of his report here, it may be the most fascinating and important piece of reading you take away with you for the Christmas break. His conclusion is similar to Mellanby; yes Britain can feed itself, but the key is the amount of meat we consume.
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19 Dec 2007
I wouldn’t know the answer to that question, but I certainly feel more open to the possibility following an event organised recently by the Transition Town Totnes Heart and Soul group called **Poetry in Motion** (“an evening of words to move, inspire and uplift”) which featured Drew Dellinger, one of the most respected and admired performers in the field of deep ecology / awakening / planetary work, and local Totnes poet Matt Harvey, who recently also performed at the TTT first birthday party. The event was a huge success, and I had the huge frustration of already being committed to teaching my evening class in the room next door, and being able to hear the laughter and applause through the wall but needing to focus instead on teaching about varieties of walnut and forest garden design. I thought I would never be able to hear the event.. but it turns out I can….
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18 Dec 2007
It’s here, after many late nights editing, and a raft of last minute changes… It once again gives me great pleasure to unveil the new Transition Town Totnes programme, for January to March 2008. It represents our intention to begin to move the project away from high profile speakers and towards events which are more practical and focused and engage people in doing things. We think it is our strongest programme yet. It also contains a number of events intended to seed some new directions and ventures for TTT in the programme after this one. You can see the pdf. copies of the programme here (inner) and here (outer).
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14 Dec 2007
**5. How conscious are people that what they are doing is extremely subversive…that to make a town sustainable and just is to more or less eliminate the normal economy, by taking control of their fate and preventing market forces and the corporations from determining it for you. Is there a sense that what they are about is taking collective control of their town?**
It is my sense that the “extremely subversive” nature of the Transition approach is implicit rather than explicit. Permaculture teacher Mike Feingold once described permaculture as “a revolution disguised as organic gardening”, and the Transition model is designed similarly to come in under the radar.
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It’s that time of year when I pop the laptop in a drawer, turn off the mobile phone, and try to stop thinking incessantly about energy descent strategies, the best kind of wood to edge raise beds with and whether solar panels are a terrorist threat, putting **Transition Culture** to bed for a week or two. The New Year will bring the release of the third Totnes Pound (they’re gorgeous) and a redesign of this site in January, the publication of **The Transition Handbook** in late February (you’re gonna love it), the Positive Energy conference at Findhorn in March (finally, I get to meet Joanna Macy) and the second national Transition Network gathering in April. Beyond that, who knows, but given the current rates of growth of the Transition Network, it should be a busy year. I’d like to thank you for your companionship over the past 12 months, for all your comments and suggestions, and for actually reading the stuff I blearily post on here most mornings. I’d also like to wish you a Happy Christmas, Solstice or whatever you call this time and its gift of making us stop work, take some time with loved ones and reflect on the past year. **Transition Culture** will be back on January 7th and will, among other things, continue working through Ted Trainer’s questions. See you then, and thanks again.
