Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Imagining the future doesn’t make our present difficulties evaporate – but it gives us a north star to work towards and a collective vision of the difference our work could make.
From everyone I have spoken to who has either co-ordinated, or been part of, a community tree planting activity, it is clear it’s one of the most satisfying things we can do, where we can watch the impacts literally grow over time.
But what if… we instead saw resilience as something we share in common? Resilient communities are at the heart of Transition.
Located at the mouth of the River Exe, and plonked between a car park and the local rugby club, this public convenience is the unlikely site for an inspired piece of community activism.
Transition Southampton used seed funding to work in three very different parts of the city. Rob Hopkins spoke to Clare, Liz and Si from the group to find out how they used enticing ‘What If?’ questions and built on existing connections to help local people imagine a different future for their neighbourhoods and what emerged from the project.
This piece represents a return to my roots, to the origins of the word that has defined my life and work for the last 15 years, ‘Transition’.
The idea of a permaculture course that might go on to change the world would have seemed a completely absurd idea that June day in John Thuellier’s office. But as Naomi Klein says, “there are no non-radical solutions left”.
If positive feedbacks can be the way we describe how the world unravels and declines, perhaps it’s time we started using them as a way of describing what is so evident in Wellington: that self-reinforcing expansion of confidence and sense of what’s possible that comes from seeing real people creating real change on the ground.
Within the principles and practices of the Transition movement there is a clear theme that how we do things is as important as what we do. We think that the story of our shared governance model, and the journey that got us here, is an important one to tell.
The growing movement for regeneration offers a much needed reframe of how to fully show up in our humanity at this critical moment in our planet’s history.
Community-led climate hubs are springing up across the UK. They’re a response to inaction by global governments on the climate crisis, and the realisation that to avoid the worst we need to take action ourselves, while constantly pressing governments for ambitious policy matching the scale of the challenge.
What changes to ourselves, our groups and wider society would help us to build new systems? Systems that can deliver fundamentally different outcomes to the one that has given us climate change and the many other environmental and social issues that we are struggling with globally.
