January 3 – 13, 2012
Naresh Giangrande, Rob Hopkins, Sophy Banks and Jonathan Dawson
This course is open for bookings.
Note: Because of the New Year’s public holiday, this course starts on a Tuesday, January 3, and the first week’s instruction will end at lunchtime on Saturday, January 7.
“Transition is the most vital social experiment of our times. The Transition movement has already motivated thousands to begin to adapt their lives to the twin challenge of peak oil and climate change.” Tim Jackson author of Prosperity Without Growth
The Transition movement has inspired effective action in hundreds of communities across the world. This two week course, taught by pioneers and leaders of the Transition movement looks at what it is about Transition that has created such widespread engagement around changing how we live. The course has a special focus on the emerging economic innovations being pioneered in Totnes
The ambitious aim of this course is to bring together models and practices from many different fields to create a synthesised working map of the transition to a healthy, sustainable, thriving way of life. Based on direct experience of community change from the Transition movement we will explore understandings of how change happens from economics and permaculture as well as social movements, psychology and spiritual traditions. And we will visit and learn from people who are putting these understandings into practice as businesses and community projects
This course is open to people with no prior involvement in the Transition or community-based sustainability movement, as well as those already working in this field either professionally or personally.
Week one – Living the Transition
In week one we will use Wilber’s four quadrants as a basic map to locate and see the connections between outer systems – such as food and energy infrastructure and social institutions – with inner worlds – our culture, world view, values and psychology. We will explore the ways that outer and inner mirror and reinforce each other, so that systems based on individualism and domination tend to create increasing over-consumption and unhappiness; while many cultures focused on interdependence and well being have created sustainable physical systems for supporting life. Drawing on personal, archetypal and historic stories of transformation we will discover the key elements of effective and lasting change.
Week two – Transition in Action
In the second week we dive into the experience of Transition Town Totnes’ economic experiment. There is emerging in Totnes a network of economic projects that, taken together, add up to a highly exciting and innovative new model for resilience-building. This week includes field visits to the emerging food hub, the local renewable energy company which is financed by a community share issue, and local enterprises designed around ecological principles. We will spend time with the designers of the town’s community currency, the team heading up the creation of the Totnes Economic Blueprint Plan and the authors of the Totnes Energy Descent Action Plan.
Both weeks will be highly interactive and experiential. We will be engaging in processes that will work with participants’ own experience and awareness as a way to find answers to some of the vital questions of our time. We will use story telling, personal reflection, shared group enquiries, embodied activities and field trips. Both weeks provide a chance to dialogue with some of the pioneers of the Transition movement, and the Transition Town Totnes project in particular.
Tutors are Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks, who have been immersed in the Transition experiment in Totnes since its birth in Totnes in 2006. They are the creators of the highly successful Training for Transition, now renamed Transition; Launch, (see www.transitionnetwork.org/training) a course that has been delivered in over 30 countries, to thousands of people from the towns of rural England to the favelas of San Paolo, Brazil. Both have worked extensively for Transition Network, which was set up to to inspire, encourage, connect, support and train communities as they adopt and adapt the Transition model.
Sophy Banks co-founded the “Heart and Soul” group in 2006 as Transition Town Totnes came into being. Its purpose was to address the psychological, spiritual and consciousness aspects of Transition. As the Totnes project grew she was involved in many areas of developing and running the organisation. In 2007 she and Naresh set up Transition Training and started to offer the two day “Introduction to Transition”. A year later they took this workshop around the world travelling in 6 countries across 3 continents and visiting many Transition and other community projects along the way. Sophy’s current interest is in supporting, networking and resourcing Inner Transition groups around the movement.
Originally trained in science and engineering, Sophy worked in London for over 20 years as a computer trainer and systems consultant mainly in the voluntary sector and then retrained in inner work – psychotherapy, healing and family constellations.
Naresh Giangrande is a co- founder of Transition Town Totnes (TTT) and Transition Training, and has been involved in designing, running and evolving many of the events, groups, and trainings that have been at the heart of the enormously successful Transition Towns project. He has delivered the Training for Transition, Transition Talk Training, Train the Trainers, and Transition training for Local Authorities and organisations to hundreds of participants in 11 countries. As one of the Transition Town founders he has given dozens of lectures and interviews, and spoken at many conferences and other public events. He set up and coordinated the energy group of TTT, and is currently a director of TTT ltd.
Prior to Transition Towns he has lived and worked in an eco community, was Managing Director of a small to medium sized enterprise, and a gaffer in the film industry.
Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Town Totnes and of the Transition Network. This grew out of many years experience in education, teaching permaculture and natural building, and setting up the first 2 year full-time permaculture course in the world, at Kinsale Further Education College in Ireland, as well as co-ordinating the first eco-village development in Ireland to be granted planning permission.
He is author of The Transition Handbook: from oil dependence to local resilience, which has been published in a number of other languages, and which was voted the 5th most popular book taken on holiday by MPs during the summer of 2008, and of ‘The Transition Companion: making your community more resilient in uncertain times’, published in October 2011. He publishes the blog www.transitionculture.org, recently voted ‘the 4th best green blog in the UK’(!). He was the winner of the 2008 Schumacher Award, is an Ashoka Fellow and a Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, served 3 years as a Trustee of the Soil Association, and was named by the Independent as one of the UK’s top 100 environmentalists.
He is the winner of the 2009 Observer Ethical Award for the Grassroots Campaigner category, and in December 2009 was voted the Energy Saving Trust/Guardian’s ‘Green Community Hero’. He lectures and writes widely on peak oil and Transition, holds an MSc in Social Research and recently completed a PhD at the University of Plymouth entitled ‘Localisation and resilience at the local level: the case of Transition Town Totnes’. He lives in Devon and grows food for his family.
Transition Towns, An Introduction – Part 1
Transition Towns, An Introduction – Part 2
Any One week £750
Any Two weeks £1,300 (Save £200 over weekly course price)
PLEASE NOTE: Participants wishing to attend only Week Two of this course should ideally have attended the two-day introductory Transition training called Transition: Launch, which is run at different venues around the country – see http://www.transitionnetwork.org/training for further details. However, if you think you have relevant experience and/or training, but have not been to any Transition trainings, please write to us outlining your experience and why you wish to join the second week of the course.
All course fees include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.
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