Involving the council

If your Transition initiative decides to talk to the council to interest them in your work, what is the best way to make sure it goes well? How can you prevent it going badly?

Four tips for community groups wanting to approach their local authorities (from the Community Development Foundation[i])

• Be persistent, polite and ready to work with others.
• You need patience and networking skills to find the right person who is interested and supportive of your work
• You must have something to offer. For example, how can your group help the council meet its targets?
• Often the council is already dealing with other third-sector groups. You may have more influence as part of a coalition. 

Alexis Rowell was a Camden councillor for four years and one of the founders of Transition Belsize. He sets out in his book Communities, Councils and a Low-carbon Future[ii] his advice for Transition initiatives wanting to approach their local council. Firstly, he suggests, councillors are only human, and spend much of their time being berated about different problems, so they love people who bring solutions rather than problems. Consider what your initiative can do that helps councillors solve a problem they are facing.

Secondly, make them feel a part of the process. Invite them to events, such as film screenings, as guests of honour, and invite them to comment after the film. You could invite them as ‘keynote listeners’ to your events (as Transition Network did with Ed Miliband in 2009 when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change). Make sure they know of your events. Even if they can’t attend, they should get a sense of the buzz you are generating, at second hand at least. You might invite them to Open Space events (see Tools for Transition No.15: Community brainstorming tools) Offer them first refusal on dates when planning the event, to ensure they can attend.

Thirdly, think about why you are going to see them. What are you asking for? Don’t go too early: as Alexis warns, make sure you get all your organisational ‘birthing pains’ out of the way first. It works better if the ‘buzz’ around your work reaches them first, or if you have a practical project under your belt first, to show that you aren’t just another ‘talking shop’. Make sure you have a clear ask; don’t turn up empty-handed (or headed).

Some dos and don’ts on giving a presentation to your local council

by Alexis Rowell

• Do dress the part. Wear a tie, or wear something smart; have a haircut if needed 
• Do tailor your presentation to your audience. If you are addressing the financial directors, tell them how Transition can save them money. If you are talking to the disaster-planning officers, tell them how Transition can help build resilience, and so on 
• Do practice what you are going to say, and ensure your co-presenters know who is doing what.
• Do try to get one or two sympathetic councillors on board before your presentation.
• Do offer your services as experts in consultation processes, as did Stroud (see below)
• Do try to not come across as unfocused and woolly . . . 
• Don’t take your family friends, your dog, etc. along with you· 
• Don’t spend the first ten minutes showing them peak oil graphs and pictures of stranded polar bears.
• Don’t slag them off, presenting them with a list of ‘the Council doesn’t do this, and it doesn’t do that . . .’ and so on.  

Matt Dunwell of Transition Forest of Dean has worked with his local council on establishing Transition thinking at council level. He told me that experience impressed on him the importance of Transition Training (see Tools for Transition No.3). He identified two reasons.

Firstly, “the training itself strengthens and supports commitment and feeds the desire to see a healthy community”. Without this it would be hard for people with little previous experience of local government to withstand exposure to it.

Secondly, it brings you into contact with people who have worked with government, which encourages you to seek their help. He concluded, “I have found that the impenetrable jargon of local government makes you doubt your own ability to think or speak, so be sure that you can express to yourself what it is you believe in. Only utter what you know you can understand and don’t try to out-jargon the others. It really is important that the Transition message speaks a different language.” 

Transition Stroud works closely with Stroud District Council. At the IDeA (the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government) conference in June 2009, Simon Allen and Cllr Fi Macmillan told how that relationship emerged.[iii] Transition Stroud became involved with the council’s Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), which held a series of ‘Inquiries’. At the Inquiry about food, Transition Stroud realised there were “no specialists on food supply in the district and we know as much as anyone”. After much research, they produced the report for the food Inquiry, along the lines of ‘Can Stroud Feed Itself?’. The report was accepted as evidence to the LSP on food policy. The council later said that this strengthened the relationship between Transition Stroud, the LSP and the council. Transition Stroud offer the following tips for other Transition initiatives:

• Don’t worry if your Transition group looks ‘home-knitted’ (which is in contradiction to Alexis Rowell’s advice above!) – we’ve got energy, commitment and great ideas.
• Work on what you want to achieve, not what sets you apart.
• Look for people in your Transition groups who welcome collaboration.
• Build that relationship; take risks and learn to trust each other.
• Careful communication, review and reflection build that trust.
• It won’t initially be easy; relationships need work.
• It won’t happen overnight; be patient.
• Internal concerns have to be managed.
• Outcomes might change, so just work on a shared agenda.

Transition in Action: The Monteveglio Transition Resolution

One of the most amazing resolutions passed by a local authority happened in Monteveglio, Italy, in 2009. Among other things, it committed the authority to:

“Strategic partnership with the Association Monteveglio Città di Transizione [Transition Town Monteveglio] with whom this administration shares a view of the future (the depletion of energy resources and the significance of a limit to economic development), methods (bottom-up community participation), objectives (to make our community more resilient, i.e. better prepared to face a low-energy future) and the optimistic approach (although the times are hard, changes to come will include great opportunities to improve the whole community’s quality of life)”.

I asked Cristiano Bottone of Transition Town Monteveglio (TTM) how the resolution came about. He said that it began with his giving talks about peak oil and Transition, which were well attended by local councillors. This led to the forming of TTM, who organised talks and other events and hosted a Transition Training by Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks, who developed the Transition Training sessions. Local elections were pending, so some within TTM decided to put themselves forward for election. Others preferred to continue with the Transition initiative. The candidates used Transition approaches such as World Café to generate ideas for their electoral platforms. They were all elected, enabling TTM and the council to work closely together despite recent public spending cuts. Cristiano offered three tips for approaching local authorities:

• When communicating with institutions, talk to the people, not their roles: speak to the parent, the citizen, the carer, rather than the title on the door of the office.
• Create the conditions for change (no.1): create a ‘new way’: when done well, Transition can create a new social and political space that politicians notice, and which gives them and local people new room for expression.
• Create the conditions for change (no.2): move beyond competition: Transition helps reduce competitiveness in local politics and promotes active, involved cooperation.