On Thursday, the 14th of
February, twelve members of the South West Learning for Sustainability
Coalition met in Totnes in Devon for a seminar about Transition Towns. The day-long seminar was arranged by Isabel
Carlisle and William Scott and was both engaging and informative.
Ben Brangwen introduced members to the work
of the Transition Network. He spoke
about the how Transition Towns had developed from a small localized project based
on the work of Rob Hopkins to a what it is today, a network of Transition
groups, across Britain and Ireland.
Although the same principles of community
level responses to carbon reduction and building resilience and happiness apply
to all groups, each group approaches these issues in a way that suits their
specific local context. Some groups have
developed local currencies to help build and maintain local supply chains;
other groups have different foci.
Ben talked about the way that academic research
is addressed by the Transition Network.
The protocol under development encourages an approach that aims to
ensure that research that is undertaken is meaningful to both the researchers
and the network. The Transition Network
has collated over 200 papers in an online transition research repository to
provide interested researchers with relevant background reading and this is
available from the website. The concept of a Transition University was also
discussed.
Isabel Carlisle talked about her work with
Schools in Transition, which she initiated when she joined the Transition
Network movement. She is currently
working with three pilot schools (Wellington College (Crowthorne, Berkshire),
KEVICC Co-Operative Trust School (Totnes, Devon) and Crispin Academy (Street,
Somerset). The approach is to work with
the school in a contextualised manner to identify what they need and to
facilitate this. The Transition Network
has the potential to help the schools engage with and become a central part of
the local community.
‘Learning that leads to agency’ and ‘embedding
in place’ are central tenets of the Transition Network’s Schools in Transition
work.
Challenges identified by Isabel and Ben
included the question of how to grow beyond the early adopters of the network
and how to expand the Schools in Transition project.
Points of discussion raised by members of
the Coalition included:
·
how the network engages with
other organizations with similar principles both in the community and in the
schools it works with
·
how the network engages with
members of the local community that do not share their commitment to the
principles of a sustainable future
·
what the purpose of resilience
is in the context of the Transition Network
The Coalition would like to thank the
Transition Totnes for hosting this event that initiated frank discussions that
were both thought provoking and informative.
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