Totnes, the real transition

  • 2014
On the green route

The Transition movement was born in Totnes in 2005 and has already spread through 34 countries.

Rob Hopkins, one of the founders, created a network to create a range of ideas and initiatives from the local.

By: Carlos Fresneda Totnes (Great Britain)

In a village of 7, 000 souls, among the bucolic hills of Devon, a slow and quiet revolution has been cooking for eight years. Anyone who comes to Totnes for the first time will not possibly notice the difference: cars continue to circulate among the stone mansions and, as the neighbors themselves warn, "we still don't have goats grazing on the green roofs."

Tracing High Street, however, one begins to notice that something is really happening in Totnes. In the midst of crisis, here we have the explosion of thriving local businesses. Many of them admit payment with the native currency, the Totnes pound. The 40 local coffees have made pineapple to prevent the opening of multinational chains. And the neighbors have been able to organize, street to street, to fill the roofs of solar panels.

The seed of change was planted long ago in Totnes. Almost a century ago, Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst raised their rural utopia very close, in what is now Dartington Hall and Schumacher College. The town was always one of the mainstays of progressive thinking and the search for other lifestyles. But the real catalyst has been the Transition movement, which was born here in 2005 and has already spread through 34 countries with its message of energy, economic and social regeneration.

"The system we work with has entered a dead end, " warns Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the movement, renamed in his own land as "the Gentile revolutionary." As a good permacultor, Hopkins decided to transplant Totnes the experiment after the first steps in Kinsale (Ireland), at the dawn of the new century, when the change seemed inevitable and imminent: “The era of unlimited growth and cheap oil were touching their Anyway, but we still didn't have an alternative on hand ”…

"With the Transition Network we try to create a range of ideas and initiatives from the local level, " says Hopkins, determined to convince Totnes in a laboratory of the possible. “We don't have the solutions, but we are looking for them. The goal is to create resilient communities anywhere in the world. Each country and each culture is adapting it in its own way and with its own ingredients. ”

Energy descent plans. Cooperatives of solar energy. Complementary currencies Support for social entrepreneurship. Boosting urban agriculture. The movement that was born as Transition Towns, in response to the challenges of climate change and the peak of oil, has adapted to the times and the need for responses to the crisis.

Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition movement.

Reconomy Project, the project to regenerate the economy, has become the engine of "relocation" in the last two years. Totnes has its Entrepreneurs Forum, its initiatives incubator (Reconomy Center) and its own plan to identify resources, gaps and possibilities for job creation (Local Economic Blueprint).

In the field of energy, Totnes set the tone in 2003 with the first Energy Descent Plan of the United Kingdom, with a view to 2030. The main action tool has been Transition Streets, to promote isolation and efficiency measures energy house to house, and to give all the strategic support to the self-consumption with solar energy.

A clean look, from the top of the Norman castle from which Totnes dominates, will suffice to verify the flash of the photovoltaic panels on the rooftops. More than 65 transition groups - with 550 households involved - have paid for the change, with an average saving of 700 euros in the electricity bill and with an average reduction of 1.3 tons of CO2.

The food, so linked to the past and future of this city-market, is undoubtedly the most fruitful field. The Food Link initiative puts producers in direct contact with consumers. Gardenshare has created a network of shared gardens. Food Hub tries to respond to problems such as food surpluses. The Seeding Sisters are the animators of urban agriculture and the local Incredible Edible group, cultivating at discretion in all public spaces, has taken root in just two years.

The collaborative economy has planted its fruits here with Skillshare, where the elderly and not so old share their skills. Dr. Bike tries to give an extra boost to the two wheels, despite so much cost, and the Interior Transition groups are going around the concept of "living".

Just over a year ago, a new project, The Network Of Wellbeing (NOW), created by Nigel and Margaret Woodward and sponsored by Satish Kumar, the “soul” of Schumacher College, which is less than ten kilometers from Totnes . “In the 'well-being', the personal, the social and the environmental go hand in hand, ” emphasizes Kumar. "We cannot be healthy if we do not live on a healthy planet and if we do not strengthen community ties."

A few months ago, the Spanish Jesús Martín, 42, who came to the southern countryside of Iglaterra with his family, attracted by the call of the transition, joined the “network of well-being”. “The seeds of change are already planted here and over time new and new projects are emerging, ” acknowledges Jesus, an engineer and anthropologist, citizen of the world.

When he was still adapting, and in full personal transition, the NOW project came into his ears, which fit directly with his own idea of ​​sustainability: “A world in which the welfare needs of the population are met within resources limited of the planet ”. To promote this vision is dedicated now, with the antennas always placed on everything that is germinating and emerging (in 2014 a new social media, Worl Wide We, will be launched from Totnes, which aspires to harness the potential of networks to boost the change).

"Cultural and paradigm changes take some time, " says Jesus, who admits that even in a place like Totnes there is "still much to do." “The good thing about a town like this is that it attracts people who tune in to your values, and that serves to reinforce that new culture and move towards a positive future that for me goes through the idea of ​​'responsible well-being' and of 'living well "

Another countryman, Emilio Mula, came to Totnes for a longer time and has been involved to the core in the movement of the transition. Emilio is the “animator” (in every way) of the documentary In Transition 2.0. His was the idea, among many others, of "labeling" the title of the film with multicolored spices from all parts of the world, "to illustrate the variety and diversity of this movement that knows no borders."

Through the Nu-project production company, Emilio Mula has become the great communicator of the transition with that simple and direct language, which also serves to explain climate change than to illustrate the transforming power of urban agriculture In these moments of uncertainty, we need to tell stories that give us hope. The animation manages to restore the innocence and look of the child, and from that space it is easier to reach people in the heart.

The last thing we need at the moment are more apocalyptic movies that depress us, warns Rob Hopkins himself in one of Emilio Mula's shots, then The publication of The Transition Companion has been unmarked with a new book in the form of a forceful call to action: The power of just doing stuff.

Looking back, Hopkins recognizes how the beginnings of the transition were perhaps too rigid, with those twelve steps now synthesized into four principles: begin, deepen, connect and build. And each one, that adapts to their circumstances

We have to talk less and do more, warns Hopkins. And you have to put a very special emphasis on the positive vision of the other possible world, make it as appetizing as possible, like a chocolate cake. This life better for everyone, and better for the planet, is basically the goal towards which we walk, although at times it may seem impossible .

Without leaving Totnes (he refuses to catch an airplane and usually travels by train in the United Kingdom), Hopkins has made the wick of the transition spread in a short time from New Zealand to India, passing by Japan, Brazil or Italy. About forty groups operate in London, more or less the same as in Spain, where two national meetings have already been held.

Transición n: passage from one state to another, period of transformation We could not leave Totnes without finally talking to Ben Brangwyn, co-founder of the movement and organizer of this network that knocks powerfully at our doors, from the top of this small great town, surrounded by an intense green and protected by the thick walls of the Norman castle

We experiment by doing: we don't wait for anyone to give us permission. We do not have a magic recipe for change, and we have found that the same formula does not work in all parts of the world. But the network is spreading faster and faster. From the exchange of experiences, a transforming power is emerging that is finally bearing fruit.

Source: https://www.elcorreodelsol.com/articulo/totnes-la-autentica-transicion

Totnes, the real transition

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