Transition Network Newsletter: February 2008-DRAFT

Transition Network Conference

11/13-April-2008, mark your diaries now.

Location: Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester

Timing: Friday lunchtime to Sunday lunchtime

Full details: All the current details on the conference are here. The content will be developing as we pull the programme together, so if you don't get your answer right away, come back in a while.

Transition Training

Bringing down the house with another great course!

Totnes transitioners and professional trainers Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande continue the drive to educate the early adopters of the transition model. They've now delivered three Transition Training 2-day courses, refining the material and delivery all the time - and there are more to come.

The scale of this effort is massive - 70 cities, 15,000 towns/villages and any number of smaller rural communities in the UK are going to have to undergo some kind of transition or energy descent. It'll either be proactive, or reactive.

Then there's the rest of the world...

These trainings are aiming to get as many communities as possible to become proactive in tackling energy descent. The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation is a major supporter of these efforts - hearty thanks to them for their vision and commitment!

New Transition Initiatives

Congrats and kudos to this pioneering band setting forth on their transition journeys. Each one of them is at the cutting edge of social transformation. If you need to get in contact with any of them, let me know. (Full list of official Transition Initiatives here.)

Last newsletter there were 4 more communities to add. This time there's 10! No, actually it's 11 - another New Zealand community snuck in at the last moment. No, it's 12 - Dunbar from Scotland just sent in their response to the criteria and are now part of the tribe.

Llandeilo, Wales

• Wiki link to Llandeilo
• All about Llandeilo
• The first of the Welsh Transition Initiatives, with others to follow...

• Once printed its own currency as part of the network of the Welsh "Bank of the Black Ox", a bank so stable that it had at times a higher credit rating than the Bank of England. Apparently became the "Bank of the Black Horse", aka Lloyds Bank, now LloydsTSB. The Bank's first offices were in a pub in Llandovery - make of that what you will!

Phew, with the rate now increasing to about one per week, who knows how many there'll be by the next time this newsletter hauls its creaking butt off the keyboard and into cyberspace. We're at 34 now, with the international dimension expanding yet again...

Notable new "Mullers"

Originally, if you wanted the Transition Initiatives Primer, you'd have to email me. All such emails would find their way onto the Mullers' Maps. However, sheer volume was turning me into a bottleneck (yet again) so we made the primer available for direct download and asked you to email us if you wanted to get onto the maps.

For this reason, the rate of increase has slowed down - for now... Still, there have been some interesting additions from...

Hot tips from other transition initiatives

Running engaging awareness raising meetings

There's an initiative bubbling away in Kilkenny, Ireland. I recently got an update from them on a meeting they held that sounded particularly engaging. Here's the email from Brian Dillon:

Last friday we had a very successful workshop on peak oil here in Kilkenny with over 30 people in attendance.

We started off with some ice-breaker exercies. Everybody got a sticker on their back with a word on it that was part of a pair. For example, 1 person gets 'Peak' and another gets 'Oil'. Other pairs were 'Climate Change', 'Solar Panel' , 'Wind Power' etc. Everybody had to mingle and ask each other only 3 questions in order to find out what they were and who their partner was, at the same time introducing themselves and why they came. After about 15min most people had paired up and then we asked each 'pair' to introduce themselves and what their pair was.

We then screened a film on Peak Oil.

After the film we split into 10 groups of 3. Each group got a topic card, such as 'food', 'health', 'transport' etc and were asked to discuss the negative impacts that oil dependancy had generated and the positive impacts that could occur if this dependance was removed. Again after about 15min we got back together and heard what each group came up with and put it on a wall chart.

We closed the evening with a short reading from David Holmgreens book, the paragraph 'From the Mountain Peak'.

Nice one, Brian. Inspiring stuff.

Transition Network new recruit

Just a couple of weeks ago, Jo Coish started as our new Office Manager to help build an organisation that's worthy of the communities who are heading off on the transition journey.

Welcome to Jo - many of you will see her at the 2008 Conference.

New content for Transition Network

Rob's book - the Transition Handbook

If you thought the Primer was important reading, then the Transition Handbook is a "stop what you're doing, find a comfy chair and a large packet of biscuits and apologise to everyone you live with for ignoring them for the next two days" kind of book.

If you've read any of Rob's blog then you'll be very familiar with the accessible style, gentle wit, oodles of common sense, visionary thinking and sound practical advice.

We've arranged bulk discounts for Transition Initiatives (mullers and official). It's going to retail at £12.95, but to you it'll be:

• 5-9 copies @ £9.00 per copy post free (over 30% disc)
• 10-49 copies @ £7.50 post free (over 40% disc)
• 50+ @ £6.00 post free (over 50% disc)

You can order from the Green Books offices by phone on 01803 863260 or by sending them an email.

Transition Presentation

It's the one wot I give at awareness raising meetings, available for download here.

This month's "something to get you pissed off "...

... and ready to take action on.

The Private Members Planning and Energy Bill is designed both to protect the Merton Rule and enact the provisions of the Caton Bill. This bill has been taken up by Michael Fallon MP in the 2007 Private Members’ Ballot. It will enable local planning authorities to set requirements for clean energy generation and energy efficiency in local plans (and prevent the developers from diluting them).

The vote is 25-Jan-08, so there's not much time. Please send an email to your MP [surname] [first letter of first name]@parliament.uk (eg Anthony Steen is steena@parliament.uk) and ask them to support this bill.

Thanks!

Funding news

This is a section that we'll develop over time.

We'll put news of other successful bids here. If you have spectacular success, or failure, that you'd like to share, send us an email about it.

In the meantime, a survey will be going out shortly to everyone on our database requesting your views on the best way for you to interact and share these stories while we're figuring out the longer term software options to ensure people can network along geographical and specialty lines and access a knowledge database.

Seaton success

Seaton has recently had success with a bid they put into the National Association for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (NAAONB). Their website is here. The funding requests that the grant is matched, so it's not all plain sailing...

Partners' corner - Schumacher college

Tackling Climate Change at Home (7/11-April)

Transition Network works very closely with Schumacher College .'

Here's a quick summary:

On a personal note, the college made a massive contribution to my own journey into this transition role. Getting Gaia'ed by Stephan Harding was a highlight, as was the "Life beyond Oil" course I attended in 2006. Something happens to people when they attend a course at Schumacher. There seems to be a significant ecological shift inside and nothing's quite the same again.

Please email me directly if you want to pursue this.

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