Transition Towns

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The Transition Towns concept is a grassroots, action model for making the change to a low carbon future. It’s about designing the future and making it positive rather than just waiting for it to happen. All the signs are that it is a project that works and it’s spreading like a virus throughout the UK.

This programme features interviews with people involved in transition towns projects recorded at the Transition Network inaugural conference. It provides a snapshot of the many and diverse projects now underway.

• Naresh Giangrande – Totnes Energy group co-ordinator – pioneering community owned, large-scale renewable energy resources and bulk buying of domestic solar water heating
• Nick Weir – Transition Stroud food group member – pioneering community supported agriculture projects, communal allotments, food co-ops, and a new legal model – the Community Farm Land Trust
• Dr Pamela Gray – Transition Penwith Medicine group co-ordinator – asking how will we provide healthcare in a post-oil world?
• Jo Hamilton – from Oxford Climate Exchange – a dynamic project connecting all the climate change resources in Oxfordshire and aiming to engage all sections of the population

For more information see:

• Transitions Towns
• Transition Culture
  

Podcast: Download

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Climate Radio presents the last in our series of four talks recorded earlier this year at the Soil Association annual conference looking at the impact of peak oil on agriculture.

This week the founder of the Transition Town movement, Rob Hopkins, relates how he has been turning to challenges of peak oil and climate change into action now for a better future. If you’ve not heard Rob speak before, I’d highly recommend it as he is hugely inspirational. Here he describes the thinking behind the community-led process of designing Energy Descent Action Plans and the Transition Town model which is helping ‘unlock the collective genius of the community’. The original Transition Town in Totness is buzzing with creative energy and positive projects:

• an awareness raising programme (film screenings and talks)
• community “open space” days which brainstorm solutions and ideas for action
• oral history interviews – finding out what life was like with less fossil fuel from older people
• specific action groups on food, psychological aspects of change, medicine & health, the arts, energy, economics and local government
• evening classes
• bulk community purchase of solar water heating
• formation of a renewable energy services company
• local food directory
• oil vulnerability auditing for local business
• nut tree planting project

And that’s after just four months…

At the end of the programme we find just enough time to squeeze in a live recording of a lightbulb moment from the Boycott Coca Cola Experience. “Everybody Suddenly Got Real” was recorded live at Club Integral in Brixton earlier this year. Many thanks to the Soil Association and Tim Siddall (aka BCCE) for their kind permission to broadcast this material.