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
23 Jul 2007
A wonderful event took place at Bowden House near Totnes last Friday, bringing together about 150 teenagers together to make music and to party together, but also to be introduced to some of the ideas around Transition Town Totnes. The event was organised by a group within TTT and by the Totnes School of English. About half of the kids there were on foreign exchange trips to Totnes, the majority of them from Spain, and the rest were from Totnes itself, often from their host families. The weather just about behaved itself, despite the occasional rumble of thunder from over the hills… The whole evening was a real celebration of music, culture and of the energy the Transion Town approach has unleashed.
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20 Jul 2007
I had the great privilege this week to be invited to teach as part of the Prince of Wales’s **Farming and Food Summer School** on his Highgrove Estate in Gloucestershire. He has, over recent years, developed a number of these summer schools on subjects such as architecture and education, and this was the first one to explore food and farming. The delegates had been invited from a diversity of backgrounds, senior people from DEFRA and the NFU, some from the commercial sector such as TESCO and Sainsburys, some local food pioneers and farmers, some organic, some not. The aim of the 4 day course was to explore the concept of sustainable food, and what that might mean in practice.
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18 Jul 2007
I have often joked that it won’t be long before Totnes Pounds start to appear on Ebay. Last week though, someone drew my attention to the fact that one had just sold on Ebay that day… for £4.27! Now I look and there are 3 more for sale although so far they have generated somewhat less excitement. I suppose it is inevitable really, but it isn’t really in the spirit of the thing somehow. It is reflective of the interest such a scheme generates from coin and currency collectors, which I note the Salt Springs Dollar people have turned to their advantage, producing limited edition silver coins and also signed notes (signed by the artists). If you want a Totnes Pound and can’t get to the town, please buy them through us (see right), as it generates some much needed revenue to keep the scheme going. For your interest, since the notes were launched about 3 weeks ago, over 4,000 have been sold into circulation.
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17 Jul 2007
How’s about this? Anthony Steen is the Conservative MP for Totnes, and isn’t the first person you would necessarily think of when looking for a green leaning thinker. He has recently undergone what one might call a climate change conversion, and now, seems to have also really grasped the Transition Town thing in a big way. He helped with the launch of the Totnes Pound, and last Saturday, in his monthly column in the local paper, the Herald Express, wrote a piece which was staggering in its enthusiasm for the work that TTT is doing (see below). How this translates into other areas of policy and so on remains to be seen, but credit where it is due for openeness to new ideas.
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16 Jul 2007
You might like to hear a second, more detailed, and less sleepy interview with Andi Hazelwood at **Global Public Media** which I did last week. In it we explored in more depth the Transition concept, the Totnes experience and the ‘7 Buts’, the reasons why people can stop themselves from beginning Transition projects. You can hear the interview over at Global Public Media, where you can either stream it or download it as an mp3 file. I think it gives a good overview of where this is all going, I hope you find it useful.
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A wonderful event took place at Bowden House near Totnes last Friday, bringing together about 150 teenagers together to make music and to party together, but also to be introduced to some of the ideas around Transition Town Totnes. The event was organised by a group within TTT and by the Totnes School of English. About half of the kids there were on foreign exchange trips to Totnes, the majority of them from Spain, and the rest were from Totnes itself, often from their host families. The weather just about behaved itself, despite the occasional rumble of thunder from over the hills… The whole evening was a real celebration of music, culture and of the energy the Transion Town approach has unleashed.
