Transition Scotland

There have been various threads here previously about music inspired by, or to inspire, Transition.  A quick scoot about on YouTube reveals a couple of Transition-themed tunes people have posted there.  This first one, by Lala Jane Wilson (I’m guessing that’s her name), was inspired by her going to watch ‘In Transition’…  she came home, [...]

Transition Adelaide West recently ran an open-air film screening (somewhat easier to do in Australia than in Devon in March). Looks like a great event, and all credit to them for documenting the event and making it available online.

TRANSITION SCOTLAND SUPPORT (Edinburgh) Transition Scotland Support is recruiting for a new post to develop a range of printed, video, web based and other resources around training, mentoring and re-skilling for Scottish Transition communities. We’re looking for someone to connect with local groups around Scotland and create accessible materials that tell their stories, someone who can create [...]

A while ago now I was in London for the launch of the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment’s ‘Building a New Green Economy’ conference, where I was a speaker alongside Tim Jackson, David Orr and Stewart Brand.  You can read about the event here, and films of our talks will be posted soon.  I [...]

A fabulous piece by Richard Heinberg.  Great to read him being optimistic, well. in a Heinbergy kind of way.   I also read this piece as an early, brief version of the history of the peak oil/relocalisation/Transition movement that someone will inevitably write one day….   One correction though, ‘Transition Handbook’ wasn’t my PhD, unfortunely I am [...]

Here is another great short film by the nu-project folks, this time documenting the recent Seedy Saturday event that took place in Totnes, a fantastic event.  Enjoy!

I was disappointed to read Mark Lynas’s piece in New Statesman, “Why We Greens Keep Getting It Wrong”.  The piece builds on Lynas’s previous much publicised conversion to nuclear power, arguing that if we are to apply the scientific rigour that underpins climate science to all other areas of life, in the same way [...]

While Chris Martenson was in the UK recently, Peter Lipman and myself did an interview with him, which was fascinating and wonderful, but the memory chip it was on just got corrupted before I could download it and it is lost.  Gah.  As a meagre way of overcoming the profound sense of trauma I am [...]

We’ve got so many wonderfully diverse and inspiring activities to show you this month…ideas for getting people involved and having fun! And they’re here for the sharing… In the UK, TT Luton is organising a series of Grow Your Own events to relocalise food production and consumption, with discussions and a [...]

One of Totnes’s best kept secrets is cartoonist Simon French (who, trivia fans, is the son of the head of Sixth Form from when I was at school).  Every week his column ‘Two Knights in the Castle’, based around two knights sitting on the walls of Totnes Castle, grows more surreal and ploughs its own [...]

The Story of Transition Tales by Simon Robinson (MSc student at Schumacher College). This is the story of Transition Tales, a small group within Transition Town Totnes. One of the aims of this project is to raise awareness within Primary and Secondary School children of the transition solution of community led response to [...]

Last Friday I travelled to Dorset on a beautiful clear day which turned from a hard frost to glorious sunshine over the time I was journeying. I was going to Bryanston School which was hosting the Dorset Schools Green Summit, drawing together kids from 40 schools across the county. There were various [...]

There have been critiques of Transition in the past, such as the Trapese Collective’s one, or other more ranty online versions, usually from the very deep green Left, who argue that unless it can get rid of capitalism/economic growth [insert personal pet political issue here] first then it is unforgivably naive.  It was interesting therefore, [...]

A while ago we published here a draft guide for Transition initiatives wanting to hold Transition hustings with their local election candidates, in particular to explore themes around resilience.  Thanks to everyone who sent in comments and changes, and I am delighted to announce that the final document is available now to download here.  It [...]

Those good folks at the nu-project are going great guns, acting as ‘embedded film-makers’ in Totnes… I just wish we had had them around from the very start, what an amazing record it would have been… anyway, here is their latest, a short film about the nut tree plantings that have been taking place in [...]

What can local government do to promote those four things because clearly in our consumer society people tend to feel less safe and are becoming less and less competent?  Relatedness is breaking down and people feel they have less control over the democratic process. I’m not a political scientist, I’m a psychologist, but my sense is [...]

Here is the first part (Part Two to follow tomorrow) of an interview I did with Tim Kasser a couple of weeks ago while he was at Schumacher College.  He is a psychologist, author of the seminal High Price of Materialism, as well as other useful writings such as a great chapter in the State [...]

As the Scottish poet/bard Robert Burns put it, “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men gang aft agley“.  The 2010 Transition Network conference had been planned to take place near Forest Row in Sussex on the 29th-31st May 2010.  It was all going so well.  Then the news reached us that Emerson College, which was [...]

Amazing times. Last week’s headline of one of the papers I saw at the station was that the UK’s national debt is now worse than that of Greece. On Tuesday I spent the morning with Chris ‘Crash Course’ Martenson, whose view is that last year’s ‘banking crisis’ was just the first of many, which [...]

Tim Kasser was recently in Totnes giving a talk, and the good folks at nu-project were there with their cameras. While Tim was in Totnes I also did an interview with him which I will be posting here over the next couple of days.