REconomy

Through the new REconomy website (public launch April 2012), we hope to provide some inspiration, processes, knowledge and tools that will help a community as it undertakes this exciting adventure. Social media will be used to enable conversations and sharing between those interested in local economic work, and we also aim to run regional/national REconomy workshops and offer online training. We aim to share the skills and knowledge as widely as possible and in turn learn from what works best on the ground. 

We have organised around 60 resources into a framework that includes leadership (how to build a willing coalition of local strategic organisations, including the councils and Chamber of Commerce for example) and visioning (how to then develop a collective vision for a local economy), working with existing businesses (how to help them transition to a new economic paradigm) and starting new enterprises (that aspire to meet Transition principles).

For example, within the leadership section we are running a sub-project called Economic Evaluation. This analyses the current economy of a place (a market town - Totnes, a city - Manchester and a rural county - Hereford) and identifies the opportunities and vulnerabilities. It then estimates the economic value of the opportunities around food, retrofitting and renewable energy, and informs a wider strategy about how to bring them to fruition.

We have also developed a set of principles for what we mean by a Transition Enterprise and also the desired features of a new local economic system. We look forward to getting feedback on these resources in particular.

People are already creating new livelihoods for themselves, and inspiring stories are emerging about community-based energy companies, bakeries, bus companies, food hubs and so on around the country. It’s wonderful that these new enterprises are appearing and succeeding and some are looking at ways to replicate their models more widely.

While individual social-community enterprises are popping up everywhere, and are a great start, we feel that in order to respond at the necessary scale we also need to foster a general culture of enterprise in our Transition communities, offer support and investment options to those that emerge, and act with a strategic intent that encourages core resilience-building enterprise as a priority. This is what REconomy is here to do.

To help us develop the best framework and resources, we (the project team of 6 part-time Transition folks) are working with 10 Transition Initiatives around the UK.

This is Phase 1 of what we hope will be an ongoing programme of activity. This project had been kindly funded by the Roddick Foundation, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Tudor Trust.

There's more information about the project on a recent blog post.

Participating Transition Initiatives 

1. Transition Durham 
2. Transition Omagh, N.Ireland 
3. Sustainable Thornbury (near Bristol) 
4. Transition Hereford (also a rural hub) 
5. Transition Manchester 
6. Transition Leicester 
7. North Howe Transition Toun (Scotland) 
8. Transition Town Totnes 
9. Transition Finsbury Park, London 
10. Transition Ipswich

News about the release of REconomy will be posted here and via the Transition Network website, newsletter and Transition Culture.

Note: clearly social enterprise has been around for a long time, and there are a number of organisations offering help and support. We are not looking to duplicate services/support/partners that already exist, but to sign-post/broker/package/partner as appropriate and accelerate take-up within transition communities in particular. We have used the term ‘business’ here but include, as appropriate, all types of private, public and third-sector organisations.