Sara Ayech

Dreaming of neighbourhood

‘Daring to dream’ is the fifth and final Transition ingredient, and far from being as whimsical as the title suggests, it actually refers to imagining what Transition would look like if it were implemented nationally, enabled by government and council policy and invested in properly. It is also a look at how Transition initiatives can learn from one another and deepen through our …

A year of growing workshops, and Snowy Seedy Saturday

A year ago, slightly by accident, Anita Gracie - a member of the Islington Master Gardeners - came to do a workshop in Transition Dartmouth Park's new food growing space at Highgate Newtown Community Centre. We were holding our first Seedy Saturday event which we hoped to use to generate interest in the project, but one of our workshops is cancelled at the last minute, and Anita kindly agrees …

No matter what

Foraging was the first and most important skill I have learnt with Transition, my first connection with nature and something that will stay with me for life. Part of the staple knowledge and diet of generations past, it is a re-emerging practise, even in in the urban environment of London.

Is using the internet as carbon heavy as flying?

For this week’s opening piece on technology I wanted to find out more about communications technology. Phones, computers and the internet have become crucial not just in my own life but also to the spread of the Transition movement, and an essential part of projects like Social Reporting. A book published last year, ‘Greening the Media’, reports that in 2007 emissions from …

Recipes for austerity

Last month it was reported in the press that average consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables had fallen in the UK by 30% since the recession, to only around half the amount needed to make up out 5-a-day recommended by the government. Growing our own food locally is a way to fill this gap; along with many other Transition practices, it is a way to save money and ensure we have what we need …

Real life, real incomes - creating social enterprises

Over the last few years, Transition Initiatives have been looking at how to get economically real. This is key in terms of formulating a response not only to climate change and the need to stop using oil, but equally to the financial crisis and the need to be able to articulate and show what an economic alternative would look like.

Saving the things we need to keep while building the new

I think that people who want to stop environmental destruction, the closure of services and other things that are wrong in the world, are in many cases the very people who will also want to create positive change in their own communities.

Postcard from Transition Ibiza and Can Masdeu, Barcelona

Last summer I was inspired by the film 'Paths Through Utopias' - documenting a road trip around Europe visiting communities who are already living post-Transition futures, to varying degrees - to make my own journey to see some real-life examples of the world we're trying to create. Having spent the last decade or so with pictures in my head of how I'd like the world to be, and trying to work …