I am often asked “So how did this whole Transi-tion thing start?” So often, in fact, that I often consider having the following couple of para-graphs printed on a T-shirt. The poor souls who share an office with me have heard this so many times that I can see their eyes glaze over when they hear someone ask me. Anyway, given that what follows is a history of how the Transition idea emerged and evolved, I must start at the beginning. If you too have heard it dozens of times, do leap forward a few paragraphs to the highlights on pages 21 to 26.

I was a teacher of permaculture at a wonderful, very progressive adult education college in Kinsale, Ire-land, where I had set up and taught the world’s first two-year full-time permaculture course. The course1 proved to be, and still is, wildly popular, turning one of the largest areas of lawn in the town into a mixture of ponds, gardens, polytunnels, forest gardens, a cob-and-cordwood amphitheatre and much else, while producing many inspired and enthusiastic students. At the start of term in October 2004, I showed the students the film The End of Suburbia, and the following day Dr Colin Campbell2 came in to talk to them about peak oil. This combination put a bomb under both me and the students, and so I set the second-year students a project to create a plan for the intentional weaning of Kinsale off its oil dep-endency (for more about permaculture see Tools for Transition No.1: Permaculture design (page 98).

The resulting document, entitled ‘Kinsale 2021: an Energy Descent Action Plan’,3 a compilation of the students’ work and a few other bits and pieces, was finished in time for a conference we held in June 2005 at the college, called ‘Fuelling the Future’. We didn’t see that we had created anything especially meaningful, and the document wasn’t even formally

launched; rather, it was almost apologetically on sale at the back of the room. Luckily, others, includ-ing Richard Heinberg, who spoke at the event, picked it up and saw something of importance in it.

The 500 printed copies were rapidly sold (I remem-ber over 100 going off in one box to Australia), and the pdf was downloaded many thousands of times. A few months later, Kinsale Town Council unani-mously voted to support the plan and its findings.4 In the meantime I had moved to Totnes in Devon,

CHAPTER ONE

The emergence of an idea: a potted history of Transition

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PART ONE l Chapter 1: The emergence of an idea: a potted history of Transition 21

where I met Naresh Giangrande, a fellow peak oil educator, and the two of us set about investigating what a better and deeper version of the Kinsale EDAP in Totnes might look like. We began showing films together and giving talks, and they generated a great deal of interest. Other people started getting involved and bringing pieces from systems thinking, psychology, business development and the power of the internet to spread ideas. The right people seemed to turn up at the right time. In

The emergence of an idea: a potted history of Transition

September 2006, after eight months of awareness raising and networking, we held an event called the ‘Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes’, where over 400 people turned up at Totnes Civic Hall to launch a process that had barely been designed in any detail. At that event were people from a few other communities, including Falmouth, Penzance and Lewes, who went back home and tried to figure out if this might work there too.

Shortly afterwards, at Schumacher College in Dartington, a course was held called ‘Life After Oil’, whose teachers included Dr David Fleming and Richard Heinberg, and I also taught a day about Transition. One of the participants, Ben Brangwyn, described me as looking like “a man standing under a tsunami that was building faster and higher than

Some of The Transition Handbook’s Dutch translators celebrating at the launch of the book. Photo: Ann Lamot

Members of the audience meeting each other at the Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes, September 2006.

he could imagine”. He offered to help set up an organisation designed to support the other places where Transition was emerging. The idea of some-thing called ‘Transition Network’ emerged, and within a short time we had secured core funding to get it under way – just in time, as it turned out, as pretty soon after that everything started going bonkers. Over the four years since then, there have been regular events or occurrences that have made us stop and go “wow!” Anyone reading this who

has been involved in Transition will have his or her own list, but here are some of my highlights.

The first crowd-translation of The Transition Handbook. In the Netherlands a group of around 50 people decided there needed to be a Dutch transla-tion of The Transition Handbook, so they divided the book into 50 bits and collectively translated it. The result, Het Transitie Handboek, has helped greatly in establishing a thriving network of Transi-tion initiatives across the Netherlands.

The passing of the Transition Somerset resolution. We got a call one day from Somerset County Council, saying they had just passed a resolution supporting their local Transition initiatives (of which there are many) and pledging to support them,

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22 The Transition Companion

was a celebration of Lewes, of its independent nature, of its local traders, and of the potential of its Transitioned future. Hundreds of people and traders packed the town hall, and the moment when the notes were first unveiled nearly took the roof off. The 10,000 notes they had printed were sold out within three days and were selling on eBay for as much as £50 each! The scheme settled down again after a few days and the currency is now accepted by well over 100 traders in Lewes. The launch of the Brixton Pound, about a year later, was a similarly rousing occasion (see Tools for Transition No.19: Tools for plugging the leaks, page 257).

In Transition 1.0. The film In Transition 1.0 was con-ceived as a ‘wiki’ film, where people doing Transi-tion across the world were invited to send us their tapes. Over 100 hours of footage were contributed, from which producer Emma Goude painstakingly edited a wonderful film.6 The collaborative nature of the project also continued after completion of the film, with a crowd-translation process which saw people around the world subtitling it into many different languages. In Transition 2.0 tells the next part of the story, and will be released shortly after this book.7

The launch of the Lewes Pound. (Clearly the notes weren’t actually that big in reality.) Photo: Mike Grenville

Sophy Banks (front row, centre) and Naresh Giangrande (middle row, blue shirt) with participants on a Transition Training in Newcastle. Photo: John McLennan

which caused great excitement and inspired others to follow suit. Somerset has since had a change of administration and abandoned much of its sustain-ability work (see Daring to dream 1: Policies for Transition, page 281), but at the time this felt like a very significant development.

The spread of Transition Training. Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks designed Transition Training as a two-day total immersion course. Since the first course in Totnes in October 2007, 106 training courses worldwide have been organised by Transition Training, with local organisers, and presented by members of a dedicated team of 16 UK trainers to over 2,500 participants. Courses have been run throughout the UK, as well as in Eire, Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Flanders. Dozens more are being organised and run by local organising hubs in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, parts of South America and Asia, led by a team of multilingual trainers.

The Lewes Pound Launch. I have been to many extraordinary events put on by Transition groups across the UK, but one that most sticks in my memory is the launch of the first Lewes Pound.5 It

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‘Keynote Listeners’. Ed Miliband, then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, requested an invitation to the 2009 Transition Network confer-ence in Battersea Arts Centre. We told him that he could come on the condition that he attended as a ‘Keynote Listener’ – as in being there to listen, but most definitely not to give a speech. This proved a great success, with the now Labour leader spending subsequent months raving about the experience in a number of speeches. This story symbolises the approach Transition takes to politics, of leading by example and of trying to get politicians to experi-ence the buzz being created by Transition initia-tives, rather than just protesting. Reflecting later on the experience, Miliband wrote: “Thank you to all the people I met for taking the time to talk to me, and thank you for continuing to be the vanguard of that persuasion.”8

The conferences. The word ‘conference’ is often enough to send most people to sleep. It is probably not the best word to describe the annual gatherings of Transition folks to share ideas, insights, tools, concerns and stories. So far these gatherings have been at Nailsworth, near Stroud (2007); Royal

Agricultural College, Cirencester (2008); Battersea Arts Centre, London (2009); Seale Hayne, Devon (2010) and Liverpool (2011). They have been remarkable events, with usually over 350 people, lots of Open Space sessions and self-organising conversations, workshops, plenty of downtime and relaxation, and often group processes which take the whole thing to deeper levels.9

The first US Unleashing. An ‘Unleashing’, as you will discover later in these pages (see Tools for Transition No.10: Unleashings, page 184), is a launch event for a Transition project – the moment when it announces its arrival on the local scene and celebrates what it has already done, and what it hopes to go on to do. While there had been several Unleashings in the UK, the first in the US felt like a landmark. The Sandpoint Transition Initiative (STI) held their Unleashing event in a local theatre on 14 November 2008. It was packed, they streamed it live on the internet, and by all accounts it was an amazing event. Since then there have been many more US Unleashing events, each extraordinary in its own way and each a celebration of place, people and possibility.

The 2010 Transition Network conference at Seale Hayne, Devon. Photo: Mike Grenville

The Sandpoint Transition Initiative Unleashing, November 2008. Photo: Sandpoint Transition Initiative

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Transition Ambridge. In March 2008, the UK’s longest-running radio soap opera ran a storyline where one of the characters set up a Transition initiative in the fictitious village of Ambridge. Pat Archer, an organic farmer, told her friend Kathy: “The Transition movement says we’ve got to do something about climate change, and we’ve got to reduce our dependence on oil.” Kathy replied “Everyone’s been saying that for ages,” to which Pat responded “Yes, but Transition communities are actually doing it.”10 The group set up a local currency which is still in circulation, having survived Joe Grundy’s attempts to use it for his own profit.

The Monteveglio Resolution. Transition in Italy began in the town of Monteveglio, and a year or so later its Comune (local authority) passed an amazing resolution committing the town to responding to peak oil and climate change, to building resilience and optimism and to seeing challenges as opportunities. It included a commit-ment to “inform the community on the limits of a concept of development based on unlimited resources, on the need to reconvert an economy based on the massive use of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, and on the benefits of a

more frugal and sustainable lifestyle”. You can read more about this in Connecting 2: Involving the council (page 204), but I had to sit down when I first read about it . . . quite amazing.

Transition in Brazil. We had often been asked what we thought Transition should look like in the developing world, to which we usually responded that we had no idea; it wasn’t for us to design that, but for the people who live there. Some things had started in Chile and China, but the momentum generated in a short time in Brazil has been amazing. Transition Trainings have been held in a range of settings, from the wealthy neighbourhoods to the favelas (as has already been seen in the Forewords). The first Unleashing in a favela, in December 2010, saw residents, shamen, rappers and local elders gathering to celebrate the potential of Transition for their community (see Tools for Transition No.10: Unleashings, page 184).

Social enterprises emerging. It has been fascinat-ing to see the emergence of social enterprises in the area of Transition – businesses designed to address a social need and to create employment as well as revenue for the wider Transition process.

Transition Heathrow hosting the Sipson Golden Conker Championship, October 2010. Photo: Robert Logan

Leopardo Kaxinawá, from Kaxinawá Indigenous Village in Acre, and members of Recanta and Transition Brasilândia, at their Unleashing, December 2010. Photo: May East

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The art of identifying business opportunities and starting local enterprises in response has now begun in earnest and, as this book sets out, is seen as the next key stage in the evolution of the Transition movement (for more see Building 2: Social enterprise and entrepreneurship, page 239).

Media interest. One of the most remarkable facts about Transition Network is that it has only ever done one press release, and that was in the summer of 2009.11 In spite of this, Transition has featured in all the main newspapers, in Elle magazine, the cover of The New Yorker magazine, on Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys, and on BBC’s The One Show, which included the bizarre spectacle of Westlife handing each other Totnes Pounds . . .

Transition Heathrow. The interface between Transition and the protest movement, especially around climate change, has been often discussed. A remarkable example emerged in Heathrow where, following the cancelling of the proposed third runway, a group of climate activists occupied a derelict market garden, turning it into a community resource and once again growing food in the glasshouses. A statement provided by Daljinder Bassi of the Safer Neighbourhood Team, Heathrow Villages and Metropolitan Police Hillingdon, in support of the group when they were threatened with eviction, stated that “there is evidence to show that crime has reduced since the Grow Heathrow Group has occupied the neglected Berkeley Nurseries. Possibly the presence of the group acts as a deterrent for crime in the surrounding area. Positive feedback has been received from local residents regarding the group, and that the local residents feel safer knowing that there are people staying there. The evidence shows a reduction in motor vehicle crime in the area by 50 per cent and a general reduction in crime of 25 per cent.”12

Energy Institute / Department of Energy and Climate Change event. In March 2010, the soon-to-be-outgoing Labour government held a seminar at the Energy Institute, the first event where govern-ment began to explore the potential impacts of peak oil and their mitigation. Around 25 people

were invited, from industry, academia, business and government, and also two of us from Transition Network, which felt like an amazing acknowledge-ment of Transition’s work.13 Asked to give a presentation, we began with discussing Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s ‘Five Stages of Grief’, which suggests that people pass through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance when they encounter grief. Whereas the government is stuck at denial, Transition initiatives have passed through depression and arrived at acceptance, showing what is possible; as such, they are significantly ahead of government thinking on the matter.

Transition ‘endorsements’. Some of the most fascinating new developments in Transition appear when you least expect them. In May 2010 I travelled to Malvern for the Unleashing of Transition Malvern Hills, and halfway through that amazing event, a short session called ‘Transition Endorsements’ brought on to the stage 11 local people to say what Transition meant to them. They were the local MP, the head of the local police, the CEO of the local council, the principal of the local school, and so on. It was a remarkable testament to how deep the work of Transition Malvern Hills had gone in such a short time, and the regard with which they are viewed (see Tools for Transition No.17: Speaking up for Transition, page 231).

Malvern’s MP Harriett Baldwin speaks about what Transition means to her at the Unleashing of Transition Malvern Hills.

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Diversity conference. One of the key challenges for Transition initiatives is to make them as inclusive as possible. This is explored in more detail in Starting out 2: Inclusion and diversity (page 94), but one of the key developments in this was a two-day confer-ence in Edinburgh in November 2010 called ‘Diverse Routes to Belonging’, which explored issues of diversity, what it means to be indigenous and how Transition initiatives can ensure they appeal to and include as broad a cross section of their communi-ties as possible (see page 94) .

Sweden and France. Sweden is an interesting example of Transition spreading very fast. In 2010, Transition Sweden saw its website attract over 2,000 members, and over 90 Transition initiatives were set up across the country. Transition Sweden ran 30 seminars across the country about Transition, attended by over 1,200 people. Transition Network also recently received an email from France that read: “There’s a real frenzy about Transition right now. The public and media interest is growing fast, there must be around 15 established groups and one or two dozen more mulling across the country . . . two national meetings (one for the north and one for the south) and many conferences are to take place this month.” This is not centrally

controlled or coordinated; rather, a fascinating example of self-organisation in practice.

These, as I say, are just my own highlights. Each individual Transition initiative will have its own moments that made it pause and say “whoa!” This, for me, is one of the most rewarding things about Transition – how it never does what you expect it to but it delights and amazes in many unexpected ways. The idea of ‘letting it go where it wants to go’ is central to Transition. Transition can be very challenging for control freaks . . . it develops its own momentum and, because it builds on what those involved feel passionately about, it tends to head off in many unexpected, but usually delightful, directions . . .

A community garden in Mölndal in Sweden run by members of Transition Gothenburg. Photo: Jan Forsmark

“The change in direction represented by the Transition movement is as profound as any intentional change experienced by a civilisation.”Dr David Fleming

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