Evolving structure

One thing that has been incorporated into Transition is the ‘Project Support’ concept, which originated with John Croft’s ‘Dragon Dreaming’ model (see Deepening 5: Celebrating). This is the idea that the role of a Transition initiative isn’t to do everything itself – to become a developer, a bank, an energy company, landowner, training organisation and so on. Rather, its work is to catalyse, inspire and support the efforts to make things happen, helping the emergent projects on the ground, as well as to structure itself so that, as much as possible, it enables and supports the people developing those projects.

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Transition in Action: How Transition Town Totnes uses the ‘Project Support’ concept

For the first couple of years, there was a core group comprising one person from each working group. When the organisation reached the stage of having funding for an office, a representative of the office team joined those meetings. When Transition Town Totnes started to attract funding for different projects, it needed to become official, yet wanted to ensure it still embodied the Project Support principle into that structure. After much consideration and design, it came up with a model with the following elements:

• Core Group: Meets monthly and is the main body that decides direction, priorities and day-to-day issues. Plans events.
• Trustees Group: Also meets monthly, but is instead responsible for the support services of the organisation – for fundraising, financial management, recruiting and supervising employees, ensuring that the organisation’s activities are in keeping with its Memorandum and Articles. It is where ‘the buck stops’.

This leaves the projects, through the core group, to set direction, while ensuring they are practically supported. There is good interaction between the two bodies, and each is always represented at the other’s meetings. While this exact model might not work for everyone, the principle of being an organisation for supporting the emergent practical projects is central to Transition.

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Models of Transition: fennel, quilt or fungus?

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In the online discussion about the draft of this ingredient, three fascinating ways of looking at it arose, which deepened our understanding. Joanne Porouyow of Transition Los Angeles suggested the ‘umbelliferae’ model, like the flowers of a fennel plant. To anyone looking at the plant, the bright yellow flowers seem fundamental. The bees are buzzing and the pollen is dripping, so you don’t notice at first the strong structure holding the flowers up – the branching stems that keep the flowers supported, fed and connected. While the flowers are the entry into Transition, the structure behind them is of support and service.

David McLeod of Transition Whatcom suggested a ‘crazy quilt’, where small, irregular pieces are stitched into a practical and attractive whole. The last model, proposed by Scott McKeown of Transition Sebastopol, is that of Transition as a mycelium, a fine fungus that runs through undisturbed soils in networks. Scott suggests that seeing the core team as a mycelium network that feeds and supports projects and groups from below is better than seeing it than as an ‘umbrella’ organisation, which can be perceived as patronising and arrogant by other groups. The offer then becomes not to be part of ‘our’ umbrella, but rather to link to a larger network created to build community resilience.

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