Welcome to our Transition Town home page.
We are a group of local people working to create a sustainable community, a greener, healthier, more connected place to live, much less dependent on resources and solutions from 'out there'. We hope you will join us on this journey.
Since February this year we have grown from three people to a core group of sixteen and a mailing list of over 150. We have held film screenings, a Green Family Day and successfully lobbied the council to adopt the Feniton to Sidmouth cycle path in its local plan.
What would you like Ottery St Mary to be like in 2020?
We began from the view that our current resource hungry life style is unsustainable and that fossil fuels which supply us cannot last forever. It is our hunger and over consumption of such fuel that has led to the global warming crisis which we now face.
We’re ordinary people who believe that by working together we can achieve amazing things. Our vision is to get the whole community involved in building a better future.
For more information or to get involved contact us on: info@sustainableottery.org.uk or come along to the next steering group meeting or event.
NEWS
We recently held a visioning day where we asked participants what they would like Ottery St Mary to be like in 2020.
FUTURE EVENTS
Steering group meetings are on the third Thursday of every month at the United Reform Church hall in Yonder Street at 7.30pm. Everyone is welcome to come along.
Green Drinks are on the first Thursday of every month. Please join us for a drink and an informal opportunity to exchange ideas and put the world to rights from 8pm at Ottery Indian Cuisine, 5 Cornhill, Ottery St Mary.
For more events check www.sustainableottery.org.uk
Peak Oil and Petrol Prices
Everyone has seen the price of fuel in Ottery in recent days crash through the £1 a litre mark and head up as far as £1.10 at one point. Is this just a seasonal blip, or a more serious warning from tomorrow? The Peak Oil message is that this is just the start of ever increasing prices. You may have heard reports of an energy ‘crunch’ due in 2012. From a peak oil perspective we are right on the cusp of the all-time global oil production peak NOW. Half the Oil on this planet has gone and we are entering a world where increasing demand can never again be met by supplies.
It’s a good time to be thinking about a community response to the crunch times we are living in….
Sustainable Ottery Sub-Groups
And that community response is just what Sustainable Ottery is all about. On 15th November around 30 people watched The End Of Suburbia, a US film about the impact of Peak Oil on our way of life. Briefly, the impact is huge and unpleasant (think about how oil makes the world go round –take out the oil and think about what happens to your way of life.)
In response to the film and the changing times we live in, we are working with the transition theme –creating a locally sustainable community in balance with the environment- across a range of areas:
Food, Energy, Art and Culture, Locally Produced Food, Transport and Heart and Soul (the Psychology of Change), Plastic Bags and Packaging.
The breadth and scope of ideas generated in just half an hour was incredible. There was a real sense of ‘we CAN do this, we can change our community and together with all the other hundreds of millions of people who are changing theirs across the globe, we really CAN change the world. It all starts with getting involved. As Goethe said:
'''Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!'''
Click here to read the ideas for relocalising Ottery.
PAST EVENTS
Film Screening: The Power of Community
Around 30 people watched this film examining how Cuba dealt with a massive loss of oil supplies after the break up of the Soviet Union. To see creative ideas about how Ottery could respond as we approach the Global Oil Production Peak, click here for a list of action points from the discussion.
Family Green Day
Saturday 28 July 2007, at Cosmic
Paper, waterwheels, windmills and bird feeders where just some of the things children and their parents made at our Family Green Day. Well over 100 people came and worked out their carbon footprint, made pledges and recycled old bottles and corks to discover how energy can be generated from wind, water and sun. Click on pledges to see some more pictures and read some of the pledges.
What Ottery St Mary can do
Friday 8 June 2007, The Institute
About 40 people came along to hear local speakers, Phil Foggitt of Otter Rotters, Ros Sutherland of Recycling in Ottery and Cllr Roger Giles talk about what's already being done in the town.
That was followed by Naresh Giangrande, one of the leaders of Transition Town Totnes who spoke about Peak Oil and Climate Change and what they are doing in Totnes and led a discussion afterwards.
We asked people: How are peak oil and climate change likely to affect Ottery St Mary? And what can we do about it? Click here for ideas that came up during the discussion.
We also asked people to write their hopes, fears and what they are interested in on post it notes and stick them on the walls. Click on hopes and fears to read them.
An Inconvenient Truth
We are thrilled at the success of our first public event. More than 100 people came to The Institute to see Al Gore's climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, on Friday 11 May 2007. Many stayed on afterwards for a lively debate about what we can do locally to prevent climate change.
Click to read what people said