Diss, Norfolk

Market town: pop. 7000
Timeline: Started June ’08, became official April '09

Transition Diss has a core group that meets every few weeks
(originally the core group was closed but has recently opened).
They have had one main event, a Knit-In, held outside the
just-closed Woolworths store in town. They have also had stands
at the Farmer’s Market and local environmental events such as
the Greenpeace Fair and the Zero Carbon Fair in Norwich, given
talks to local initiatives, Slow Food (Diss is a Citta Slow)
and the Community Partnership and hosted an evening of Future
of Food talks. Diss is also home and operations centre for the
Transition East web portal and support group.

Transition Diss arose out of an existing community group. This
has had both advantages and disadvantages. Stable and
sustainable emotional relationships between people are quite
rare in Transition (due to its relative newness) but they do not
always foster the boldness and drive required to move initiatives
forward. Gary Alexander says Transition is like building a fire
with wood that is not quite dry. After an initial burst the flames
die away. You add kindling, it catches somewhere and people say
I want to be part of that. Then it dies down again. We are past
those early stages and it is now the time to blow on the flames to
the point that the fire takes off on its own. When it reaches
critical mass and people get it and it takes off.

Website: www.transitioneast.net/
groups/transition-diss
Contact Person: Gary Alexander
Email: garyalex@earthconnected.net