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Rob Hopkins

Rob Hopkins is the cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. He is a serial blogger, and author of The Power of Just Doing Stuff , The Transition Handbook and The Transition Companion. He has been awarded a PhD by the University of Plymouth and an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the West of England. In 2012 he was voted one of the Independent's top 100 environmentalists and one of ‘Britain’s 50 New Radicals’. He is an Ashoka Fellow, a keen gardener and one of the founders of New Lion Brewery in Totnes and a Director of Atmos Totnes, a very ambitious community-led development project.

Sunflowe3rs

Resilience.org short break

By Resilience.org Staff, Resilience.org

The Resilience.org editorial team are taking a short break from 13-14 July. Regular posting will resume on Wednesday 15 July.

  • July 10, 2020

Introducing the Imagination Sundial

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

The aim of the Sundial is to act as a heuristic or design tool for how we might set out, intentionally and skilfully, to rebuild the imaginative capacity of people, organisations or nations. Underpinning this is the belief, as set out in ‘From What Is to What If’ that we are living in a time of imaginative decline at the very time in history when we need to be at our most imaginative.

  • July 1, 2020
Human Kind cover

Rob Hopkins Reviews ‘Human Kind: A Hopeful History’ by Rutger Bregman

By Rob Hopkins, Transition Network

Rutger Bregman’s new book, ‘Human Kind’, argues that, in essence, “most people, deep down, are decent”, and that the world would be a very different place if we were to recognise that. It may be one of the most important books you will ever read.

  • June 26, 2020
chickens

When the Chickens of Imagination Come Home to Roost

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

So we arrive in 2020, reaping the results of decades of down valuing, sidelining and undermining the imagination. The potential rewards that would emerge from letting the imagination loose are incalculable, but instead we keep it locked in tall tower, protected by the dragon of disimagination. What would it look like if we were to set it free?

  • June 16, 2020
Thank you

What the Transition Movement can Teach us About how to ‘Bounce Forward’

By Rob Hopkins, Transition Network

Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better.

  • May 19, 2020
Apple Trees

When a Resilient Future Calls by to See if you Want to Come Out to Play

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

Now that these myths lie shattered, let us move on from here, the smell of fresh air in our nostrils, and build the future our dreams tell us is what we, and the world around us, deserves. And one that this time works for everyone, not just a select few…

  • April 24, 2020
kitchen table

Please Don’t Read this Blog. Do Something Else Instead.

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

So I have decided to do something counterintuitive, and write a blog that I really hope you won’t read, because its intention is that that you might instead use the time you would have spent reading it to close your laptop screen and go and do something else instead.

  • April 14, 2020
Sisyphus

What did Sisyphus Dream of?

By Rob Hopkins, Rob Hopkins blog

I feel right now as though we are at, or very close to, the tipping point on these issues, nearing the moment where the gravity begins to change. I have felt, since Extinction Rebellion and the School Strikes began, since Greta began her strikes, as though deep beneath our feet the tectonic plates have finally begun to shift. Slowly and imperceptibly at first, but definitely shifting.

  • March 5, 2020
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