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
The last Transition round-up featured the film of Lee Brain’s testimony at the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel in Prince Rupert, which has already been watched nearly 45,000 times. In the last part of my interview with Lee, I wanted to know how that had come about, what had happened since, and whether the response to it had taken him by surprise.
“We’re on a mission here now with this group. We all are co-ordinated and there’s something powerful about having fifteen people completely dedicated to the degree where we all know we’re going to do absolutely what it takes to make this happen in our community”.
Transition Prince Rupert, in British Columbia, Canada, launches its website today. Nothing extraordinary about that you might say. But the process that led to it, and its contents, are a story worth telling. The interview I did recently with Lee Brain, a young man who is one of the group’s founders, was one of the most inspiring I have yet published here at Transition Culture. So inspiring in fact that it is, in effect, this month’s Transition podcast. In today’s installment, he gives a fascinating taste of what it looks like when an emerging Transition group gives over some time to getting the foundations of its work as solid as possible before proceeding any further. Here is the interview:
In a surprise move that could bankroll the Transition movement for many years to come, Transition Network can reveal that it is in the final stages of discussions with Danny Boyle, director of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, to buy the rights to remake ‘In Transition 2.0’. Boyle, who saw the film at its preview in Tooting, London, stated “as soon as I saw it I recognised its potential for a remake. It would need recasting, but for me it’s the ultimate feelgood story”.
You’ll remember Lee from the last Transition round-up, the young man in Prince Rupert in Canada who spoke out at a hearing about a proposed pipeline, and who is also active in founding Transition Prince Rupert. I recently interviewed him, and the content of that will emerge in a three separate pieces over the next few days. Originally it was to be part of the March podcast, but it was so interesting, that they will replace this month’s podcast. To start with though, here are his thoughts when I asked him how he thought Transition initiatives might best engage more young people (Lee is 26).
The last leg of my week of dashing to various places (Dublin and London) took me to Glasgow for the Social Enterprise Exchange, the world’s biggest social enterprise event. It was huge, loads of events with speakers such as Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond, Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civic Society and Chuka Umunna, Shadow Business Secretary. There were over 150 stalls from various organisations, including Transition Network’s REconomy stand which proved very popular (see below), and all in all the day was a huge statement of intent about the scale and ambition of the social enterprise sector.
I couldn’t stay all day unfortunately, but after the opening session, I took part in one called “More, better, faster – how can social enterprise grow?” It was chaired by Susan Aktemel of Impact Arts, and featured myself along with Jim Mullan of KibbleWorks and Karen Lynch of Belu. It was a very interesting session, here is the talk I gave at it:
