The experience we've had so far in Brighton is that raising awareness of transition towns in cities is quite different from doing so in small towns. In smaller places if you put on a talk or a film you can be pretty sure you will get an audience that is a greater proportion of the population of your town than in a city, because the talk or film will be a much more visible event, maybe even the only thing going on that week. In a city there is so many more events to compete with.
We've held a few events so far but may have made the mistake of thinking that because we put them on, people will come. So one suggestion I want to make at the moment is a new approach to holding events – that we don't just put them on, advertise them and hope that people will come. Instead I think there should be connections made with particular organisations who are invited to the event. Perhaps an event is particularly tailored towards schools, for example, with invitations to the environmental clubs at schools to come and take part (most schools have one of these now). Or teaming up with an existing venture that's trying to do the same thing.
In my opinion this is the way that cities overcome the problems of awareness raising, because although it is difficult to raise the profile of transition towns above the clamour of everything else going on, cities have in their favour that there are many other already existing enterprises that we can connect with.