ROB HOPKINS

"What we have in each of those ingredients, is a problem that we’ve seen that Transition initiatives come up against enough times to think that that is some sort of a common experience; and then the solution to that problem that we’ve seen implemented enough times to have some kind of confidence that it works..."

(Transcript of a long conversation with Transition founder Rob Hopkins - newly edited and formatted.)

Here is the January Transition podcast, lovingly spliced together in order to offer a more in depth look at three of the stories from last month's round-up. You'll hear about how Transition Chesham's local produce market was recently voted the greenest market in Britain, how Transition Town Whitehead are planning to plant 60,000 trees over the next few weeks, and how Transition Town Shrewsbury stepped in when the local council announced that it was stopping collecting cardboard for recycling, and did it themselves. I hope you enjoy it, and do let us know what you think.

Today I'd like to share a map with you...It is a map of the town of Guildford (or Guldeford as it was then) in 1793. Regular readers will know I love a good map, and I have spent a fair while poring over this one. There are a couple of things I love about it. Firstly, it is the most amazing piece of draughtsmanship. It is a thing of extraordinary beauty in a way that Googlemaps can only dream of. The way its laid out, the calligraphy, the attention to detail, are beautiful in a way very few people could recreate today. But what is so extraordinary, upon closer inspection, is how it captures what it looks like when food grows everywhere. Think of it, if you like, as Incredible Edible Guildford, circa. 1739.

What do you do when you are the heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune and you have spent years surrounding yourself with new agey thinking and conspiracy theories? You make a film like "Thrive" the latest conspiracy theory movie that is popping up all over the place.

"In Transition 2.0" is nearly ready to be unveiled to the world! We are very excited about this inspiring reweaving of the Transition story, and want to tell you more about it here, and about how it will be rolled out over the coming months. To get us started, because we are so excited about sharing this with you, here is the film's trailer, completed just yesterday, directed by Caspar Walsh.

There are many possible futures out there. I think that what I see is a huge amount of resources in our economy, both in terms of capital equipment, intellectual effort, finance, being directed towards the growth agenda. A different agenda, a different ambition for our society and our economy away from the pursuit of growth, would automatically free up, at least in principle, a lot of these resources.

I had the privilege recently of speaking with Peter Victor, Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and author of "Managing without growth". At a time when the obsession with making our economies grow again is close to hysteria, Peter's work asks the question as to whether economic growth is the best way to achieve what we want from a society; employment, happiness, good public services, increased equality and so on, and concludes we could have an economy that isn't growing, but which is actually better at those things.

It's time for the second monthly Transition podcast, in which we return to November's "Round-up of What’s Happening out in the World of Transition" and go into more depth on three of the stories it contained.

Transition is so important because it is about doing things, engaging the community, starting to create and model the economy we do want to see. Across the world, Transition initiatives are doing just that...they are starting to model the kind of economy for which there is much more support. Yes it needs support, it needs investment, it needs that money currently being spent on bypasses and new roundabouts, and it needs to be far more visible on the ground. Portas puts it beautifully in her report, “what really matters, what’s really important, is that we roll up our sleeves and just make things happen“. Indeed.

Like buses, you wait for ages for Energy Descent Action Plans to come along, and then two come along at once. This month sees the publication of two new EDAPs, from Llambed in mid-Wales, and Dunbar in East Lothian, Scotland. These two high quality pieces of work represent two communities taking the idea of an EDAP and rooting it to their place, their community, their challenges.