SWAFFHAM: Transition Thursday and the Power of Just Doing Stuff - 4 July

An evening with Rob Hopkins, organised by Transition Swaffham, Transition Downham Market and Transition King's Lynn is happening at The Green Britain Centre in Swaffham on Thursday 4th July at 7pm.

Rob will be launching his new book The Power of Just Doing Stuff and engaging in a Q&A. We will also be building a picture of the stuff we are all doing in Norfolk so do come and help us fill in the maps! This is a really important opportunity for us to come together and think about how we can create a positive vision and transition for this great part of the world. If you are interested in helping out before the event, or on the night, please e-mail John Knock at johnknock2@hotmail.co.uk.

There will be refreshments available and this will be a great chance to meet other like-minded people from around Norfolk. All welcome. (Ben Margolis)

Image: Rob Hopkins signs new Transition book at Crystal Palace launch (Jonathan Goldberg)

Norfolk Permaculture Design Course - 3-16 August

An exciting opportunity to participate in Norwich’s first residential Permaculture Design Course. 

This course provides an overview of what permaculture is all about and how it can help you to design a more sustainable, yet more abundant lifestyle. The venue, Park House, consists of 12.7 acres of woodland, arable land and gardens 4 miles from the city centre.

Although permaculture is most commonly thought about in connection with gardening and farming, its principles, ethics and design methods can be adapted and used in individual's own work, interests and home and offers a perspective on all aspects of building a sustainable future. Permaculture encourages us to use our individual skills, knowledge and interests, whilst drawing on traditional wisdom, science and our innate ability to observe and learn from the world around us. 

Permaculture is about meeting fundamental human needs by mimicking the design of natural systems. A simple way to understand this is to consider something you don’t want (waste) being used creatively as new input to the system. In this way problems can become the source of solutions. The elegance of systems designed on permaculture principles is in their simplicity and functionality. (Deepak Rughani)

Contact: Deepak Rughani Tel: 07931 636337 Visit: www.designedvisions.com for more details

Ecotherapy Awareness workshop 22nd May!

We will be hosting a one day workshop, ‘Ecotherapy Awareness’. This is open to anyone and led by Andy McGeeney here in High Woods Country Park , Colchester , on Wednesday 22^nd May. Booking is essential - places are limited so if you are interested please book up asap. £45 for organisations, £35 self funded individuals, £25 unwaged/students.

 

Andy says:

‘Ecotherapy is much more than a walk in the woods. The invitation is to spend a day outdoors with the intention of creating a deeper connection to Nature and in the process increase our sense of well-being. The use of the outdoors for well-being is becoming increasingly popular. The ecotherapy I train people to use is leading edge in its use of specific activities that bring people closer to nature and in turn improves their well-being. You will experience the ecotherapy activities I do with my clients and receive the positive benefits for yourself. There will also be an opportunity to reflect on ecotherapy and how it relates to your professional work.’

 

To access the booking form, click the link below, scroll down page click ‘download information and booking form’ and select ‘Colchester’.

http://www.andymcgeeney.com/experience.html

 

Best wishes

Jo Wheatley

Community Gardener, BIG Garden 

tel 01206 855287    mobile 07950 243904

Colchester Borough Council

Community Services

High Woods CP, Turner Rd , CO4 5JR

 

mailto:jo.wheatley@colchester.gov.uk

The BIG Garden organic food growing project is open for visits, volunteering and garden therapy.

The garden is open for visits and volunteering from 10am to 1pm from Monday to Thursday and on alternate Saturdays, 13th & 27th April; NB 11th May will be 12 to 3pm; & 25th May; 8th & 22nd June.

Health referrals 10.30am to 1pm Monday to Thursday - see the website for further information and to download a referral form and guidelines:

http://www.colchester.gov.uk/biggarden

WOODBRIDGE: 'Streetwise' - Transition Streets come to Suffolk - 20 April

Streetwise is a one day training course that provides the basis for running a Transition Streets (TS) project, whereby street by street behaviour change is introduced which will benefit the people involved and the environment. The course will be led by two Transition Totnes approved trainers and is designed for those wishing to co-ordinate and lead Streetwise courses in their area. It follows a successful trail with 8 households in the village of Cransford, part of GreenerFram.

Transitions Streets originated in Totnes under the name of Transition Together. Based on 468 households from 56 groups the average saving per household is around £570 per year and 1.3 tonnes of CO2 per year’. ‘The greatest benefit of participating was the new social connections and the strengthening of local community.’ 

Spaces are limited to 25 (with two people coming from any one ‘community’) 

Local vegetarian food will be provided. There will be an optional donation of £5 to go towards printing more localised Transition Streets workbooks. 

For more information on Transition Streets and the pilot contact David by email:      greenacre356@btinternet .com.

To book either call 01394 444218 and leave a message or email  

Deborah.Wargate@suffolkcoastal.gov.uk 

Date & Time: Saturday 20th April 2013, 9:00am - 5:00pm
Location:       Hacheston Village Hall, Hacheston, IP13 0DR

Some Winter Dispatches from East Anglia

First published on the Transition Network Social Reporting Project 21 Jan 2013, introducing a regional week on Transition in East Anglia

It’s early January and I’m sitting in the Green Dragon pub at Sustainable Bungay’s first event of the year, a Green Drinks session on the theme of Well-Being and the Community. The room is packed, the discussion is lively, and a new Arts, Culture and Well-Being group is formed with monthly events already being planned and put into diaries. Everything from mapping the areas in town where people experience well-being (or not), to teaching each other skills in communications, living together, growing food, meditation and even body drumming (I’m going to have a go at that one).

This post is not (for once) just about Sustainable Bungay (“You don’t really need to speak about us this time Mark,” laughed Josiah on the phone the other day. “We’ve been very well represented, after all!”). I did want to mention that meeting though, because of the connections I perceive between the local initiative I’m in and what people are saying and hinting at in their pieces for this week on other Transition initiatives in East Anglia.

The two main things I notice at this point five years down the Transition line are: one, a strong feeling that we actually have been building community over this time with all our meetings and events and discussions. People really wanted to be in the pub looking at ways, often quite simple ways, to maintain well-being, and hence resilience, by doing things together. This is reflected in Carol Hunter's piece (this coming Thursday) about Downham and Villages in Transition in west Norfolk.

The other is an awareness of how many people are in our lives who weren’t there before Transition began. And how diverse we all are. Even in a rural market town like Bungay (sorry, I’ll try not to say it again) where the population is less obviously diverse than in a city, say, our transition group has (and welcomes) a large variety of people. Everyone was aware it couldn’t be done on our own. And even within the group itself, there is a greater awareness of the challenges we face both locally and globally, certainly in terms of financial and climate instability, than there was in the early days.

Out in the East

East Anglia has hosted three Transition in the East gatherings since 2009, in Downham Market and Diss (Norfolk) and East Bergholt on the Suffolk-Essex border, as well as a large Transition Suffolk meeting in 2011. The Diss gathering in November 2009 coincided with the publication of a document “Transition in the East: co-operation, collaboration, support and influence” produced by Charlotte Du Cann and Josiah Meldrum and based on telephone communications with twenty nine initiatives over the course of several weeks.

These events catalysed vital discussions and were key in forming and strengthening the transition networks in Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire. Many of the people and groups involved are still in touch with each other within the region.

We often attend each other's events to share experience and best practice. And sometimes to give each other a boost.

In November a quartet of us set off from a previously mentioned Transition Initiaitve in north-east Suffolk to see the folks at the recently revived Sustainable Bury at Bury St. Edmunds Green Fair. This was in exchange for the visits to B**G*Y from Karen Cannard of The Rubbish Diet fame, who had come to talk all things bin-slimming at our Give and Take Day in September and led a Green Drinks session earlier in the year on domestic waste. See Karen Cannard's blogpost on how these exchanges provide fertile cross-pollination.

Sustainable Bury is not the only initiative to re-emerge. Transition Woodbridge has recently started to organise again following the collapse of the original group.

Wivenhoe, a university town of 10,000 people on the River Colne in north Essex, is home to Transition Town Wivenhoe, now over four years old. The initiative recently celebrated the New Year with a cycle-powered showing of the film Chasing Ice, a climate change documentary about photographer James Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, which recorded Arctic ice melt over a period of three years.

I bumped into an acquaintance the other day I hadn't seen for ages and started talking to her about Transition, had she heard of it? "Oh yes," she said, "I'm part of GreenerSax's foodgrowing group" (in Saxmundham, Suffolk).

Nearby GreenerFram in Framlingham have just published their report on last year's Suffolk pilot of Transition Streets, based in and around the village of Cransford and have set up a meeting to take it further. And Stowmarket Transition formed last summer, recently appearing in the local paper talking about their "new "green project" aimed at reducing the town's carbon use.

As I said on the front page introduction to this East Anglia in Transition week, this post is the tip of the iceberg as far as Transition activity in this region is concerned. I haven't mentioned Transition Norwich, for example, whose original food group turned into the CSA Norwich FarmShare, now in its third year, and whose NR3 neighbourhood group created the annual Magdalen-Augustine Festival in one of the city's so-called deprived areas.

The Transition Norwich blog, This Low Carbon Life, was the inspiration and model for this very Social Reporting project you are now reading. The voices of Norwich transitioners and guests are there to be read and enjoyed in the more than a thousand posts on the blog since its inception in October 2009. That's an archive if ever there was one!

If you are reading this and are part of a Transition initiative in East Anglia, do feel free to make yourself known in the comments box below and put a link to your website or Facebook page. And if you'd like to join the Transition Circle East community blog and upload posts about your transition group and events, email Charlotte at theseakaleproject@hotmail.co.uk for an invitation.

And me, I'll be getting on with helping to organise our new Arts, Culture and Well-Being group in SssshYouKnowWhere. And reporting on our activities here on the Social Reporting project and elsewhere throughout the year. Though talking of icebergs, I might not actually be able to get to Happy Mondays tonight for the South Indian themed meal. Bah!

Meanwhile, you'll find plenty of good nutritious fare here this week from fellow transitioners reporting from the east. Mark Watson

Pics: Poster for Living Together, a day about co-housing and intentional communities, organised by transitioners in Suffolk, January 2013; Happy talking rubbish with Karen Cannard, Sustainable Bungay's Give and Take Day, September 2012; Transition Town Wivenhoe's Chasing Ice poster; Transition Norwich 2nd birthday poster 2010; Transition East Gathering organised by Downham and Villages in Transition, March 2009

Living Together gathering

A day of workshops and networking about and for intentional communities. 

 How to set up a housing co-op 
Introduction to CoHousing 
Forming a group/ Visioning/ Action Planning 
Facilitation and Consensus Decision Making 
Raising finance and making a business plan 
Radical Routes 
Case studies from local communities: Random Camel Housing Co-op, Argyle St Housing Co-op, Norwich Cohousing, Old Hall, possibly the Drive from Walthamstow 
Open space discussions - and please notify in advance any specialist workshop desires

Matchmaking! Like a real time Diggers and Dreamers noticeboard! 

Lunch included, a local AND vegan offering - oooh. Cost: A tenner concession/ twenty pounds full price, but nobody turned away for lack of funds - contact us! Places limited please book Contact: Nigel - 07946529642 / livingtogetherevent@gmail.com

When:	Sat, 26 January 2013, 09:30 – 16:30
Where:	Old Hall Community, East Bergholt, Essex, CO76TG. Nearest station is Manningtree on the East Coast mainline then a 3 mile cycle/ walk along the Stour, or let us know if you require or can offer a lift.

If you want to display posters as below please ask download and print or ask Gemma for hard copies: 07816 146 567

IPSWICH - Community Resilience Workshop - 23 January

Transition Ipswich's Community Resilience Workshop - Wednesday January 23^rd - 8pm to 10pm; West Building, UCS Campus, Ipswich

The aim of this free, practical workshop is to devise new projects to increase Ipswich’s resilience to economic crisis, resource depletion and climate change – and improve our wellbeing.

It's easy to slip into despondency, thinking 'there's nothing I can do in the face of massive global changes which are outside anyone's control'.  Transition offers a different way of thinking and fosters projects that are making a real difference at the local level. But it needs people like you to make it happen.

Here in Ipswich, a range of initiatives are already well underway including (check out the links) a community supported agriculture scheme, a community orchard, a food co-op, a pig club, a local food challenge and a housing co-op.  Each of these was started by one or two people with the germ of an idea and a “can do” attitude that inspired others to join in.

The workshop on January 23^rd will build on these successes and explore new initiatives. It will be a dynamic Open Space event where anyone can put forward their ideas, debate them with others and focus on what interests them most. If you haven’t tried Open Space before you’ll be amazed how natural, enjoyable and productive it can be.

Come and join us to scope out the next phase of Transition in Ipswich - and bring your friends.

West Building is the large brick building in the central part of the UCS site – entrance labelled A on this map. Access by foot or bike is from Grimwade Street and New Street.

If needed, free parking is available in the UCS Car Park, accessible via Fore Street at the bottom of Back Hamlet.

For more information see http://www.transitionipswich.org.uk/ or phone Steve on 07889 751578