Author Archives: Rob Hopkins

Heather Ackroyd (HA) and Dan Harvey (DH) work together as Ackroyd and Harvey.  Sculpture, photography, architecture, ecology and biology are some of the disciplines that intersect in their work, revealing an intrinsic bias towards process and event. For over 25 years their work has been exhibited in contemporary art galleries, museums and public spaces worldwide.  […]

I had never been to Luxembourg before.  Having recently visited France and Belgium to meet Transition groups, I had just about got used to the fact that in one (I can’t remember which) people kiss on one cheek, and in the other they kiss on two cheeks, and I always get it wrong, either over-kissing […]

Today’s blog is a podcast recorded in poet Matt Harvey’s composing shed in his garden in Totnes.  A few weeks ago, SWIMBY The Musical (original working title ‘Transition Town: The Musical’) raised over £10,000 in a Kickstarter appeal, and this was followed by some Arts Council funding. So now the team of Matt Harvey (poet/lyricist), […]

Transition Guelph asked Sophy to help us scope out the current state of our initative and its progress toward the overall goal of growing resilience in our city. One of the tools she introduced was the Transition Animal. I believe the animal was a little dog at the time. Interestingly, it has since gained the ability to […]

Here’s a piece from 2012 which is a great contribution to our Social Change and the Arts theme.  We also post it in loving memory of Battersea Arts Centre, whose magical space helped to make this exercise what it was, which was damaged badly in a fire a couple of days ago: For many people, […]

Dear Agony Aunt.  This May sees the General Election in the UK.  What is your advice about how Transition groups should respond to elections?  How can we raise the issues we would like to see discussed by our local candidates, while retaining the party political neutrality which is such an important element of Transition?  It’s something […]

Juan del Rio is the author of the recently published ‘Guía del movimiento de transición’, the first book about Transition in Spanish.  He has been involved with social movements and Transition for the last 10 years, and is part of an initiative in his town of Cardedeu near Barcelona.  We thought we should hear a […]

Bristol was the first official ‘Transition City’.  Transition Bristol has been instrumental in many pioneering initiatives in the city, such as the Bristol Pound, the UK’s first Peak Oil Report produced by a city council, the Food Resilience Plan to name just three.  Last Saturday the penultimate Transition Roadshow came to Bristol and both looked […]

“Dear Agony Auntie.  I notice in our Transition group that there are a few people who rarely chip in and contribute.  They clearly enjoy being part of things as they keep coming back, but they tend to hang back and keep quiet.  Any suggestions for how we might coax them to get more engaged?” D.P. […]

“Dear Agony Aunt.  Our Transition group has been going for 2 years now, we’ve several great projects underway and feel things are moving well.  We read in the Transition books that we should have an ‘Unleashing’.  Do we have to?  Have we left it too late?  Would it be a good thing to do?” P.D.  The […]

Sarah Corbett runs the Craftivist Collective, which she describes as “activism through needlework” and “slow, gentle, joyful activism”.  The term was first coined by Betsy Greer in 2003 as “a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper and your quest for justice more infinite”.  Given that […]

This month, we’ve asked some people who’ve used the Transition Animal (an exercise that’s part of the Transition Health Check) for their thoughts on how it worked for them.  Today we hear from Chrissie Godfrey, until recently part of Transition Taunton, for her experience: “In a Transition group, it is really easy to end up […]

Transition Network’s Transition Initiative Support Coordinator Mike Thomas reports from the recent Transition Roadshow in Penwith, Cornwall:  The Penwith ‘Rethinking our Economic Future’ event was great and I hope that Transition Penwith members have been taking a long deserved rest after organising an event that had several events in the run up, a REconomy day, a […]

Welcome to our month on Social Change and the Arts.  It’s a theme that has been long overdue for exploration.  It could be subtitled “Why the Arts need Transition, and why Transition needs the Arts”.  The trigger for our finally sitting down to give it the attention it deserves is the impending publication of Lucy […]

Lucy Neal has lived in Tooting in London for nearly 3 decades. She has a background in the arts, used to run a festival called LIFT (The London International Festival of Theatre) and got involved with Transition in 2008, starting up Transition Town Tooting, which, she told me, “I’m proud to say, in its own […]

Our theme for these couple of months has been ‘The Power to Convene’.  It’s been another busy couple of months.  We opened with an editorial that set out what the term means and some examples of it, setting up the exploration that followed.  We then looked at different aspects of convening.  We talked to James […]

This month sees publication of the first new book about Transition not written in English, a landmark moment worth celebrating.  Guía del movimiento de transición (‘A Guide to the Transition movement’) is the work of Spanish Transition activist and trainer Juan del Rio.  We will be speaking to him soon about the book, what it covers […]

Believe or not the Transition Health Check is not about measuring everyone’s blood pressure in your Transition group or seeing how fit you all are. It’s actually a great tool for you to use to see how your group is doing, one that many Transition groups have already found to be really useful. It is […]

Dear Auntie.  Please help!  I am finding our Initiating Group’s meetings very frustrating!  It seems to me that everyone wants something different, we can’t even seem to agree on how to hold a meeting. It’s driving me mad because it’s paralysing the group and it means we never actually DO anything. I’m sure we can’t […]

When you talk about the Transition movement, what works, and just as importantly, what doesn’t?  When you read things others have written about the Transition movement, what delights you, and what infuriates you?  Transition Network is undertaking a project with Jon Alexander of the New Citizenship Project who is helping us to shape the story the […]

When planning consent is given for a development which local people bitterly oppose, is that the end of the story?  What options remain open to them?  As South Hams District Council planners grant the Duke of Somerset permission to close down the last working dairy farm in Totnes to replace it with 83 homes, the […]

We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of our dear friend, Transition Free Press.  TFP, as it was more affectionately known, had, in its short life, become a lighthouse for those bobbing on the seas of Transition, a shining beacon of our collective emergent culture.  Ever since its initial ‘Preview Issue’ in June […]

January 14th saw the launch of a new Economic Resilience Study (following in the footprints of the Blueprints/Evaluations undertaken so far by various communities), this time produced by Transition Buxton in Derbyshire.  The report, which included a Foreword by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Derby, was unveiled at the Old Hall Hotel in the […]

Shelter, originally published in 1973, is one of my favourite books.  Large format, black and white, a celebration of hand built shelters around the world.  I’ve had my copy for 20 years, and still pick it up and find new stuff in it.  Tiny Homes is Kahn’s latest book, the fifth in the series of […]

Christophe McGlade is a research associate in energy materials modelling at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources.  He recently co-authored, with Paul Ekins, a paper called “The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2°C”, a paper whose stark call to leave the substantial majority of fossil fuels in the ground […]

I first heard about Alex Epstein’s book ‘The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels’ via an unsurprisingly fawning review over at the SkeptEco blog.  Its premise is so ludicrous that normally I wouldn’t read it, never mind review it.  There is no “moral case for fossil fuels”, just as there was no “moral case for slavery” […]

The words of the ‘Sankofa’ bird were written during one of many dancing, singing, making and music workshops that took place in the lead up to the Trashcatchers’ Carnival in July 2010. On Fishponds I will find my flock And fly in formation and Nest on our Rock’ Sankofa is a mythical creature, carrying a […]

The story of how Transition Black Isle got started is told by two founder members, John Wood and Wendy Price, Ann Thomas and Maggie Price.  Our thanks to all of them for making the time to sit down and think back to those founding days.  “Hope it’s of some use, we enjoyed reminiscing anyway!” wrote […]

Something very powerful feels to me like it is starting to move.  I see it in the victory of Syriza in Greece on a platform of localisation, resilience building and sustainability as an antidote to austerity.  I see it in the explosion of craft breweries, farmers markets, community energy companies and so on, in Scotland’s […]

Pamela Boyce Simms is convener of the Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub, which brings together and supports Transition groups from southern Connecticut to Virginia in the US. She is also a very active Transition trainer and is also involved in interfaith work.  Given our ongoing exploration of the theme of ‘The Power to Convene’, there is much […]

“Dear Transition Agony Aunt.  What’s the best way to start a Transition group after a previous one has folded?  And should you even think of doing so if you haven’t been able to track down at least eight people who were involved in the folded group? LR I think the first thing to say is […]

One of the most ambitious examples of The Power to Convene to come through a Transition initiative is Atmos Totnes in Devon, England.  It has brought together the site’s owner Dairy Crest, a mainstream developer and a community, to plan the future of the former manufacturing site.  Its recent community consultation reached over 2,200 people, […]

Last month our theme was ‘Less is More’. We had one interview which I didn’t get to post that month and so am posting it today.  Jenny Rustemeyer is described on her website as “the woman behind thecleanbinproject blog; she’s the one who said “ok” to Grant’s crazy idea to live zero waste for a […]

What does the Power to Convene look like in the work of Transition Stroud?  Transition Stroud describes itself as “a dynamic group of volunteers who are supporting the local community to strengthen its’ local economy, reduce the cost of living and prepare for a future with less oil and a changing climate”? They were one of […]

Recently Transition’s co-Founder Rob Hopkins responded to a critique of the Transition movement by Ted Trainer. Trainer’s critique was much discussed at the annual Degrowth Congress in Leipzig which I have blogged about already.  Trainer’s critique suggested that there is little more to the Transition Towns movement than community gardens. Naturally anyone who knows much about […]

For most people, Stratford-upon-Avon is about Shakespeare and tourists. It’s got a world-class theatre sitting by a pretty river, and old streets with old buildings offering all sorts of treats for visitors – of which there are millions each year. But it’s also home for 25,000 people, and the centre of a wider rural area […]

“We have been exploring the establishment of a co-housing project which explicitly but not exclusively supports people with disabilities and are in contact with a national charity to see whether there is scope for collaboration. One issue that came up was whether forward-looking towns, such as Transition Towns, would be quite supportive in helping with […]

Following the expansion of the Transition movement globally in the late 2000s, community groups and activists in Aotearoa New Zealand began establishing Transition Town groups following a similar model as the original Transition groups in the U.K. In the past two years, I was involved in a team of researchers (Drs Sophie Bond and Amanda […]

Part of the Power to Convene (our theme for January and February) is the ability to bring groups and people together to work in new ways. The story of the South Devon Cycle Link campaign and in particular the role of James Furse has many useful insights for this.  “You have to share enough of yourself […]

I had seen it in lots of different places. I’d seen it in the 30 people who turned out to plant nut trees on a grey Sunday morning in Totnes. I’d seen it in Liege in Belgium, where representatives of many local organisations had come to an event to discuss creating a ‘Food Belt’ around […]

What is a sustainable building?  A sustainable built environment?  A sustainable city?  The poor word ‘sustainable’ has been much abused, to a point where, for some, it has lost much of its meaning and relevance.  Yet it remains a powerful concept, and a powerful lens for framing the debates as to what it actually means.  […]

Richard Barnett of New Forest Transition tells the story of their beginnings: “During the autumn of 2007 discussions started between a local B&B owner and the Tourism Manager at New Forest District Council about how to strengthen and protect the local community and economy of the New Forest. They had an awareness of the concept of Transition […]

Welcome to our last Digest of 2014.  Our theme this month was ‘Less is More’, and it began with an editorial that looked through the Christmas ads on TV and suggested what a Transition TV ad might look like.  One reader even offered to organise a crowd-funding appeal to ensure it got made for next […]

Pandora Thomas is a teacher, writer, speaker and designer. She currently lives in Berkeley, California and is a board member of Transition US, a founder of the Black Permaculture Network,  a co-founder of Earthseed Consulting, and co-creator of the Pathways to Resilience programme.  We’ve been trying to get an interview with her many months, so we’re […]

A few weeks ago we asked you for your thoughts, via a short survey, on the Transition Culture blog.  We thought we would share the responses with you, as well as some reflections on what we might do about them. In total 56 of you responded, and we’re very grateful for your input.  So, the […]

A couple of weeks ago the Western Morning News asked me to write something for a new feature they were starting called ‘If I Ruled the World’.  “Feel free”, they wrote, “not to take it too seriously – after all (unless you know something we don’t) no one is really about to make you ruler […]

So how did you set about researching the book? I was really fortunate because there are quite a few excellent researchers in Japan who have done a lot of the groundwork, and researchers overseas as well. Of course a lot of it was academic research. And again, the specialisation was interesting, because I met people […]

On Friday, at St John’s Church in Bridgetown, Totnes, I was the subject of a rather unusual version of Desert Island Discs.  The Winter Concert, organised by 2 local choirs, Global Harmony and Viva, and by The Bogg Boys, invites a local person to choose 8 tracks which are then performed interspersed with stories from […]

Humans are storytelling beings. In fact one could argue that it is impossible to make sense of the world without story. Storytelling is how we piece together facts, beliefs, feelings and history to form something of a coherent whole connecting us to our individual and collective past, present and future. The stories that help make […]