| Session
| Description
| Download write ups and powerpoints
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| 1. Working with Local Authorities
| How best to approach local authorities, and what useful insights might we draw from the work Transition Initiatives, Post Carbon groups and others in our building relationships with our local government? Presented by Daniel Lerch of the Post Carbon Institute
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| 2. Permaculture and Transition
| The Transition model is underpinned by permaculture principles, but what exactly are they, and how might they best underpin our work, and what does permaculture have to offer our work? Patrick Whitefield
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| 3. The Heart and Soul of Transition
| What are the belief systems that drive our industrial growth culture and where do they come from? How can understanding the inner aspects of what happens in transition help to engage people, defuse conflict, and build a personally sustaining and enjoyable movement? What insights and tools can a Heart and Soul group offer to the wider project? Sophy Banks
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| 4. Telling Transition Tales
| The idea of Transition Tales is very powerful, one of finding creative ways to enable people to envision a powered-down Transitioned world. This work can be done with adults and with children, but rather than being a workshop about how to do Transition Tales, this is a creative storytelling workshop where you create them! Bring your imagination, creativity and sense of making the impossible possible. Hannah Mulder
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| 5. Peak Oil and Climate Change. What they are and how they overlap
| An opportunity to refresh your knowledge on peak oil and climate change and on how the two overlap. What is peak oil, and what is the latest prognosis on climate change, and what happens when we look at the two issues together? Chris Vernon
| pdf
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| 6. Transition and Local Food
| Strengthening our local food economies is going to be one of the key elements of Transition work. If we were to think of our current situation as being akin to 1939, with the need to urgently and collectively rebuild local food systems, where might we start, what organizations, resources and support is available for doing so. Claire Milne
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| 7. The Transition Network; structures, governance and constitution
| As the Transition movement grows, the Transition Network is attempting to build a structure to most effectively inspire, support, encourage, network and train these emerging initiatives. How does it plan to do that what will that structure look like, and how will it function? Ben Brangwyn
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| 8. Local feast or local famine? Putting food security on the map
| Can existing UK farmland keep us fed, clothed and housed? A recent study says yes, for the UK as a whole. In this workshop, geographic information expert Mark Thurstain-Goodwin will use powerful data and mapping technology to zoom in to the local scale – and discover that England on its own sees a shortfall leaving 9 million people hungry, with even more marked disparities between smaller regions. The analysis makes clear that there are solutions at hand, but also signposts how climate change and flood risks need to be central to our plans. Mark Thurstain-Goodwin
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| 9. Engaging Local Businesses in Transition
| This session will cover why it's essential to engage your local business community with Transition, how you can recruit companies for your projects and which business projects have been delivered in Totnes (including the innovative Oil Vulnerability Auditing). We will also discuss the critical success factors for working with businesses in a professional capacity. Fiona Ward and William Lana
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| Session
| Description
| Download write ups and powerpoints
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| 1. Organizational models and structures for Transition Town groups
| How can we set up Transition Town groups that are effective in achieving their aims, that are responsive to their members without decision making being slow and cumbersome? How can we build in a culture of empathy and creative handling of conflicts? This workshop will present some models and share experiences. Gary Alexander & Paul Baker
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| 2. Local Energy Systems
| Many Transition energy groups are starting to explore the practicalities of decentralized energy systems, locally owned and managed energy systems which harness local energy sources to power local communities. Transition Penwith is one of the most advanced in this field. Charmian Larke
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| 3. Your vision of the Transition Network
| Visioning is one of the key principles of transition. In this session, we're going to blue sky how we'd like the Transition Network organisation to be operating in 3 to 4 years' time. What would you be expecting from them? How would you be interacting? Who would be working within it? What involvement would you have in decision making? What would you be able to offer? What would they not be doing? Where should it be located? How would you expect it to be funded? Would we still be aiming at the mission of "Inspiring, Encouraging, Networking, Training and Supporting"? Depending how far we get, we may start thinking about the steps to get there. Ben Brangwyn
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| 4. Engaging Young People
| Engaging young people in Transition will be key to its long term success and to its take up in our communities. A number of Transition Initiatives have now been working with their local schools and devising innovative ways of engaging young people. This workshop will explore some useful tools for this work. Ed Wade-Martins and Hannah Mulder
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| 5. The 12 Steps of Transition
| At the heart of this process is the 12 Steps of Transition, the collection of tools, insights and activities that underpin the first couple of years of most Transition Initiatives. This workshop will go through each step, offering space for people to share their experiences of using them, and their insights and suggestions. Rob Hopkins
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| 6. Communication
| A good poster is worth a thousand words. Or perhaps a film shown in the local cinema, or a really arresting website? How we communicate Transition is one of the key aspects of the success or otherwise of our work. This workshop will look at ideas for design, communication, and how to make the most of your visual outreach. Jody Boehnert
| Large pdf
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| 7. Post Peak Medicine
| An exploration of the role of herbal medicine in a more localized healthcare system. Mandy Dean
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| 8. Reviving the Cottage Economy
| It is only a few generations since most people produced for the majority of their own needs directly from the land. In this session Molly Scott Cato considers how livelihoods and local trade will be revitalised in the post-transition economy. Molly Scott Cato
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| 9. Cities in Transition
| Attempting to apply Transition thinking to our urban areas offers a unique challenge. This workshop will be a forum for sharing what seems to be working at that level and the struggles unique to working on that scale. Sarah Pugh and Paul Paine
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| 10. Takers to Sustainers - Challenging Convention
| Transition as a grass roots movement can help us let go of the way of life that is destroying the natural world of which we are a part. Together as mature adults, we can remove the blind-fold of consumerism and demonstrate we are capable of much more than we are given credit for. And more, Transition communities will help political and business leaders understand that there is another way and that people will accept change and soon be demanding it. Transition washes away the notion that ordinary people are too ignorant or selfish to change, often an excuse for doing so little in the face of the greatest challenges humanity has known. Ciaran Mundy
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| Session
| Description
| Download write ups and powerpoints
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| 1. The ‘F’ Word
| Ah, the big question. Funding, and how to get some. Although Transition initiatives can roll along quite happily for a while with no funding, after a while financial input is needed to allow key projects to emerge. How best to approach funders? What do they want to hear? How best to maximize your group’s chances of success? Cath Peters and Fiona Ward
| -Presentation (ppt)
-Transition teams (doc)
-UK Voluntary Sector Almanac (pdf)
-Project Masterlist template (xls)
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| 2. Local Authorities
| At the moment the Transition Network’s advice to Councils who get in touch is that Transition is a process they support but not one that they drive. However, if you are a Town, Parish or District Council and you want there to be a vibrant Transition Initiative in your community, what do you do? How might Councils become proactive in getting Transition Initiatives underway? Cllr. Bill Evans and Cllr. Linda Hull
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| 3. Energy Descent Pathways
| The last of the 12 Steps is the creation of an Energy Descent Action Plan, but so far the only one in existence is Kinsale’s which was, in effect, a student project. Now Totnes, Lewes and others are starting the processes of developing theirs, and in this workshop you can catch up with the latest on the process and how it is evolving. Rob Hopkins and Adrienne Campbell
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| 4. Enabling Local Energy with ESCOs
| Energy Services Companies or ESCOs are not a new concept. Many ESCOs are already in operation, some in the UK, but they are used to a far greater extent elsewhere in the world. In Scandinavia, for example, community ESCOs commonly operate large biomass district heating schemes. ESCOs can exemplify the concept of distributed generation and can offer the opportunity to bring people 'closer' to their sources of energy. Energy Service Companies should not provide a fixed offering, but a service solution that befits the client's needs. Chris Roland
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| 5. Transition Transport
| Transport is our key Achilles heel when it comes to our oil dependency. Breaking our addiction to the car and shifting towards more locally powered and efficient transport sources will be key. What strategies might be most appropriate for Transition transport groups? Peter Lipman
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| 6. Education and Training – an introduction to Transition Training
| Transition Training has been an amazing success, sold out each time it runs, and giving participants an empowering and inspiring crash course in Transition. This workshop offers a taste of what the training contains in an experiential way, as well as allowing space for feedback and for ideas as to how Transition Training might evolve. Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande
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| 7. The Transition Timeline
| One of the key pieces of work the Transition Network has been involved in is the Transition Timeline, which is about pulling together from the latest thinking and modeling on peak oil and climate change a ‘map’ of the next 20 years, a scenario of how things might unfold and the terrain upon which our energy descent plans can be designed. This workshop will present work-in-progress and unveil what will prove a very useful resource for Transition Initiatives. Shaun Chamberlain
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| 8. Avoiding Transition Towner Burnout
| Being at the cutting edge of Transition Initiatives can be exhilarating and empowering, but it can also be exhausting, and lead to our taking on more than is good for us. This workshop will explore tips for avoiding burnout, how to notice when it is creeping up on us, and how to also support our fellow Transitionistas in avoiding this common pitfall. Mike Grenville
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| 9. Transition Universities
| How can we develop a Transition University aimed at education and re-skilling for the transition towards a post peak oil, zero carbon, re-localised future? What courses are needed, would it be a new university or a network of courses already offered, how can we make it happen? Julie Richardson
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