Transition Town Totnes

And so to Totnes. This is a lovely little town in Devon; actually quite a large town of 8000 people, but with the feeling of a small town because the main street and surrounds still follow the pattern of the old walled town. Most of the buildings date from Elizabethan times when the town was most prosperous, and the main street is literally in some places only 4 metres wide between buildings!! This section of road is appropriately called The Narrows, and until fairly recently was 2-way. As you can see, the footpath just disappears in places, leaving pedestrians to fight it out with the cars.

Totnes has attracted many 'alternative' people since the 1970s, and this can be seen in the range of wholefood cafes, natural healing centres, organic clothing and craft shops along the main street. A fertile context, then, to grow and nurture the transition towns concept, as a way for people to address the challenges of climate change and peak oil in their local communities. The Transition Town model began here in 2006 (Transition Town Totnes) and has spread rapidly around the UK and the world, including New Zealand.

I came to attend the 2-day transition town training with Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks, and it was well worth while. The weekend is intended as support, training and a toolkit for people setting up transition initiatives in their own localities, and it was extremely useful and thought provoking; a good balance of information and participation, good processes for getting people engaged with the material and practising explaining climate change and peak oil, good attention to the deeper questions of the psychological processes of denial, addiction and change, good information and models about group dynamics and effective processes for TT groups, the transition town model, etc etc, all packed into 2 days!!

There was lots there that I will continue to ponder, but one aspect I'm particularly interested in is what gets people motivated and what helps groups work together successfully. There are many models of the progression of group dynamics, but they generally acknowledge that as people get to know each other there is a period of upheaval, conflict or 'storming', a totally necessary part of the group process when the group members find out where their differences are and get clear about the identity of the group, what it is and isn't about, and whether they can handle conflict. A group that has a clear sense of who they are feels safe to stretch the boundaries, whereas groups that feel unsafe will hold more rigidly to the culture. Since we are in a time of culture-change, when we need to be finding different and better ways of co-existing on this planet and thinking really creatively to address the scale of problems we are facing, this feels like an important area to keep an eye on.

There was also a clear message to build the group first, before going out to enlist others; to pay attention to process, nurture the initiators, and build a smallish cohesive group that can then detonate the launch into the wider community. To bring in the natural supporters first, and build a solid centre before trying to engage people wider out. I was constantly reminded of the progress of planning Earthsong in the early days, and much of what was said in this weekend really rang true. There are also messages there for our local TT group in Ranui.

The most powerful part of the weekend for me were two exercises devised by Joanna Macy. One was called 'Meet the Descendants', where we sat facing one other and had the chance to tell our “descendants” from 200 years hence what it was like to be living now in the “time of the great turning” when global devastation threatened and we had to relearn how to live with less oil; what inspired us to keep going and what was our part in that time. I found it extremely moving, to really believe that the human race could/had survived, and that how I lived my life had a part to play in that. Sitting there looking into the eyes of someone from the future, I felt deeply accountable to those future inhabitants of our planet to do my upmost to give them the best possible chance.

It was a full and valuable weekend, and I'm arranging with Sophy and Naresh to do a similar or perhaps longer training when they are in NZ over summer. Should be a great boost to the transition town movement in NZ.