News

 Recently bees have been disappearing in their millions, affecting not only the production of native honey in every country but the bees' great task of pollinating the trees, fruit, vegetables and herbs that make up two-thirds of what we eat every day. In response to this local and global crisis, several of us formed a working party within the Transition initiative, Sustainable Bungay, to help the threatened honey bee.

If you are interested in working with your local businesses, and haven't heard of 9carrots, it's worth your consideration. It's a simple enough idea whereby local shopkeepers can add themselves to a map, and when customers visit and mention the map, the shopkeeper puts 10% of the takings aside for energy efficiency measures (more on their 'how it works page').

Some of the 9carrots team came to the 2010 conference and found a lot of interest in the idea. Since then, Annesley and Jonathan from 9carrots have been working on a starter pack for Transition Initiatives, and Graham Truscott and others from Transition Training and Consulting are looking at. Here is Graham's outline: 

Our Rob has been very busy thinking about the next Transition Handbook and how to communicate Transition between ourselves and others. His thoughts have lead him to seeing and talking about Transition as a 'Pattern Language'. He ran several workshops on the topic at the conference (workshop recordings here), put all the patterns up for comment, and got some sound feedback.

We will soon have a new online directory for the patterns which will enable Rob and Helen (who is doing lots of research into them) to share their thoughts and invite Transitioners to offer comments, suggest projects, images and more.

In the meantime, you can't keep a good idea down, nor a passionate movement quiet (not that anyone would want to). Ideas seed themselves and spread, rooting themselves in the different experiences and cultures of initiatives, taking on different forms and working in different ways.

Sustainable Bungay have been thinking a lot about how the Patterns overlap with their world and have written a wonderful piece which they have kindly agreed to let us copy; lock, stock and barrel - thanks all - here it is: 

Transition Training and Consulting (TTandC) is the part of the Transition Network specifically designed to engage with businesses and organisations in our communities, and deliver transition-related training and consulting services. Run as a social enterprise, any profits go to support the work of the Transition Network.

This is the first of a regular series of updates from TTandC. It aims primarily to keep transition folk posted about the work we are doing, the services we are developing,  opportunities to help, and upcoming training sessions if you wish to join us.