Plants for Life Review and What's Coming Up this Summer

This piece first appeared earlier this week on the Sustainable Bungay website and discusses events in Bungay, including this Sunday's BUNGAY BEE HIVE DAY. Visitors from Norwich are welcome to come to any of the events and meetings mentioned here.

The Plants for Life series of walks, talks and workshops on plant medicine continues to gather pace. In April we Walked with Weeds around Bungay and explored their medicinal qualities. In May, Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal, authors of Hedgerow Medicine, brought herbal tinctures, plant syrups and huge knowledge to a packed library as well as an elderflower water with the most incredible aroma. And in June we learned how to make wild plant oils and ointments of plantain and St. Johns wort with Rose Titchiner, visited Outney Common for wildflowers and discussed plant families at Green Drinks. So far there have been between a dozen and forty people at the Sunday sessions.

These events are a great way to meet up with other people interested in finding out more about plants and the medicine they bring. They also provide a space for anyone to share their own knowledge of and direct experience with the plants. It's all about paying attention to the earth's living systems, and fostering well-being on an individual, collective and planetary level by connecting with those systems.

In the Wild Plant Oils session a woman described how eating feverfew leaves at the onset of a migraine worked for her every time without fail. You can read this fact in a hundred herbals but when you hear it from someone with firsthand experience it brings the whole thing alive.

Back at the library after Walking With the Weeds, we drank a fresh Wild Green tea Charlotte had prepared whilst we were out, and which someone afterwards told me was a total revelation! And a Japanese friend wrote saying how much she enjoyed the afternoon and wished us “Good luck, Weeds Professors!”

You can also read a short article I wrote about Plants for Life in the well-being section of the preview issue of the new Transition Free Press (p.13). Printed copies are available from Bungay Library (along with the latest Sustainable Bungay newsletter), and updates on many of the articles can be found on the TFP website.

Plants for Life this Summer

Here is what we have planned for the summer. This coming Sunday 15^th July Plants for Life meetsBungay Community Bees at the second Bungay Bee Hive Day, when I will lead a Bee & Flower Walk around town at 12.15pm, starting at the marquee on Castle Meadow and including a visit to the Plant Medicine bed at Bungay Library.

Last year twenty five of us explored a meadow, alleyways, wastegrounds, Margaret's garden, a car park and the community garden - all in the centre of town and within the space of an hour. For the full (and full-on) programme of this year's Bee Hive day CLICK HERE.

At 5pm after Bee Hive Day, the Transition Norwich Low Carbon Cookbook crew will have their July meeting - an open, shared non-industrial picnic in Bungay and a discussion focussed on bees and pollinators. SEE HERE for more.

Shake, Rattle and Roll with 52 Flowers

On Sunday 5^th August don’t miss This Low Carbon Life author Charlotte Du Cann as she takes a radical look at medicine plants with a reading from her just-published book 52 Flowers That Shook My World - A Radical Return to Earth (Two Ravens Press, 2012). Charlotte will also be doing a bee-focused reading from 52 Flowers at Bungay Bee Hive Day, 15th July at 2pm.

And on September 23^rd at the Equinox and as the season turns we’ll be learning about (and sampling) someAutumn Berry Tonics.

Both the August and September sessions are at the library at 3pm

The Plant Medicine Bed

And the Plant Medicine Bed in the Library Community Garden? On my latest visit, Friday 6th July the elecampane and burdock were giant, the vervain growing tall, the thyme tumbling over the wall of the bed. The self-heal was coming into flower and the buddleia preparing for its 2012 blooming. We’ll be looking at and talking about Burdock, amongst other plants on the Bee and Flower walk next Sunday.

Everyone is welcome at all Plants for Life events. If you want to know more about plants as medicine or share what you know, come along. There is no charge but donations are happily received.

NB: I will be at the library garden most Fridays during the summer between 1 and 3pm for a ‘plant surgery’ and to talk about the Plants for Life project and events. Come and say hello.

So far I’ve been joined by Carol Stone, permaculturist, wild bee lover and co-ordinator of no less than forty six community food projects in Devon, on a visit to Norfolk with her partner Nigel. And Christian and Fairy, recently back from a year in South America and finding their feet again in Suffolk. Fairy gave me a hand tidying some of the ox-eye daisies which had been bashed around a bit by the recent winds and rain, and we spoke about everything from Ecuador to Elecampane to confronting mass negative assumptions about getting older.

I also removed armies of slugs and snails and transported them to a nearby wasteground and spoke with Richard about slug pubs, though we haven’t got round to making them yet!

For all info on Plants for Life events and the Plant Medicine Bed 2012 at Bungay Library, contact Mark Watson: 01502 722419, markintransition@hotmail.co.uk, or check this website for regular updates.

Images: Outney Common wildflower walk, June 2012; Josiah gets into legumes with Great British Beans at midsummer's Green Drinks; at the Wild Plant Oils workshop with Rose, June 2012; Bee and Flower Walk Bungay Bee Hive Day July 2011*; 52 Flowers That Shook My World by Charlotte Du Cann - cover; Six of the Plant Medicines in the community garden, July 2012; discussing Burdock with Richard, July 2012. All images from Mark Watson except * from Muhammad Amin

Talking with Fellow Transitioners - Plants and Places

Since I started blogging for Transition on This Low Carbon Life when it began in October 2009, and on the Social Reporting project since last September, I've written posts on everything from connecting with the earth and the value of a handmade 'A' board to personal carbon reduction and how to make a medicine jelly.

I've also interviewed fellow transitioners and those engaged in energy descent, growing food, waste recycling, working with plants and living in a lighter way on the planet; and it's these posts I find among the most rewarding to write. One example is my interview with Nick  from Sustainable Bungay. We sat down over a cup of tea after he'd helped me fell a dead elm in the garden and saw it up for firewood, and I asked him how transition had changed his life. Another is walking down to the end of the lane I live in in Suffolk and speaking with Norman who has a local market garden there. And Saturday I did two short interviews with friends in transition in London.

Sarah Nicholl and Alexis Rowell were part of the original steering group of Transition Belsize in north London and have been instrumental in setting up both the food growing site at the Premier Inn on Haverstock Hill and the more recent Royal Free Permaculture Garden above the local hospital car park. Sarah is a trustee of the Transition Network and Alexis was a local councillor (Camden 2006-10) bringing climate change and peak oil to the local agenda. He also wrote Communities, Councils and a Low-Carbon Future: what we can do if governments won't (Green Books, 2010).

Last weekend Sarah and Alexis invited me up to run a Planting Medicine workshop at the Royal Free Permaculture Garden where I spoke about the medicinal value of wild and garden plants and brought some along to include in the bed with the food plants and fruit trees. They also put me up for the night, did brilliant publicity for the event and made me extremely welcome. Alexis cooked a delicious risotto for dinner accompanied by vibrant beetroot tops, curly kale, kohl rabi leaves, purple sprouting  broccoli leaves and spinach all freshly picked from the Premier Inn site.

I'll be writing more about the actual workshop in the near future, but I also took the opportunity whilst I was there to speak to Sarah and Alexis about some of the reasons they are involved in these growing projects. My questions are in italics and Alexis's and Sarah's responses are in normal type.

Alexis
What motivated you to start up these garden projects?

Primarily I wanted to inspire people to understand food and plants, learn how to grow their own, about the medicinal, the edible, as well as the beautiful.

What difference has your involvement in the gardens made to you?

Well, it's very relaxing to be on the growing sites. And also encouraging to see how many people want to participate. Also restoring a piece of neglected ground from a place full of cigarette butts and empty bottles to a living space that has meaning and beauty and relevance is very satisfying.

Has doing this work increased your knowledge of plants?

Before transition I knew nothing about plants. Now I know so much - about foraging, how to make a food site, do container planting, set up a wormery, and of course now something about medicinal plants.

Do you have any favourite plants?

Now Mark I think you know the answer to that one already.

This is true. When Alexis first came to visit us in Suffolk, I saw a pair of cycle shorts and a bicycle pass by the window and overheard a male voice say "Alexanders! I LOVE Alexanders!" Which was excellent, because the whole of our area is awash with alexanders. That was a very good start and we did a lot of foraging together that weekend and enjoyed some awesome salads.

Sarah

What keeps you involved in the food (and medicine) growing projects?

I've had a long term fascination with food, medicine and nature. Growing food physically helps to reconnect us with the living systems we depend on. It makes us whole. For me this is important given how disconnected we've become within the global industrial food system from the food we eat.

Growing food inspires all sorts of people and can really capture the imagination. At the Premier Inn site which has been going since last year, it's rewarding to see how building the garden has deepened friendships, formed new ones and how the combination of Transition and food creates beneficial relationships on so many levels. And all in the corner of a hotel car park! Now we have the Royal Free Permaculture Garden above the hospital car park. It's much bigger and feels more daring.

Yes, it's a very different space, more open and of course in the hospital grounds. How's it going?

It's been amazing. We started the planning in December and planting in March. The mix of everyone holding the vision, planning and joining in the practical action is very exciting. It has the potential to be a really great site and bear good healthy fruit on all levels. And it's something everyone can benefit from, including visitors and people who work at the hospital.

I know you have been instrumental in both these projects Sarah, from the planning to the planting. That takes hard work and commitment. What has your involvement in the Premier Inn food site and the Royal Free Permaculture Garden brought you?

Well, there's a good sense of teamwork. I love that. At the Premier Inn there's a nice dynamic, building beds together with people you didn't know before, making friends with the people working at the hotel. I'm always learning something about myself and others, and about how we can co-operate with each other.

And what about the plants? I know from my experience setting up the Plants for Life talks, walks and workshops in Bungay that even after all these years working with plants myself, I learn something new every single time from the people who come, both the speakers and those coming to join in.

Well, my knowledge of plants has definitely increased. Though I've always loved them, especially herbs, and been a keen gardener for several years now, the learning never stops. We've done a lot of foraging for wild food as part of Transition Belsize as well. I've learnt to look at the many aspects of plants from the edible to the medicinal to how they bring up nutrients from the soil and what insects visit them.

It's also really interesting in an urban, public setting. You're working on the plant beds, people are passing by, conversations start up, you get to know your neighbours. I think this is one of Transition's really strong points. You're out there in the open, growing food together with others. People stop and ask what you're doing, some of them come back and get involved. They want to know about growing more food for themselves. They might want to learn about why we're doing it, helping to relocalise food sources for the future, having a living example of what's possible.

So working with plants in this way helps to make these links between people?

Yes, I think it does. After the workshop you gave today several new people approached me to find out about getting involved with the garden. Suddenly plants you thought were quite ordinary turn out to have all these amazing qualities. It was very inspiring.

Thank you Sarah. I enjoyed it thoroughly and really appreciate the effort you and Alexis made to publicise the day and get such a great crowd to come. It made all the difference. That's the kind of behind-the-scenes work I normally do in my Transition initiatives.

You're very welcome. We'll get those lovely medicine plants in now. It's great to see these patches of bare neglected earth transforming into a vibrant healthy garden.

And it's great being with it whilst it develops.

Photos: Nick Watts, Bungay Library 2011; Premier Inn food growing site, Belsize Park, May 2012 (MW); Alexis prepares white deadnettle and lemon balm tea for the Planting Medicine workshop (MW); Sarah Nicholl (SN); Planting up the Royal Free Permaculture Garden, March 2012 (Transition Belsize); Planting Medicine workshop poster in South End Green newsagents window by Sarah Nicholl and Alexis Rowell

Published originally on Transition Network Social Reporting Project on 29th May 2012

Transition-Anywhere-You-Find-People. Even here!

This post first appeared on 19th April as part of the Transition Social Reporting project's Transition without Initiatives week.

Okay I admit it upfront. I do have a Transition initiative. In fact, I'm involved with two. Sustainable Bungay and Transition Norwich. So why don't I just get out of here and let the Transition individuals without an initiative get on with the week?

The thing is, I live in neither of the places where the initiatives are. I live down a lane in Suffolk a mile and a half from Southwold, a wealthy seaside town where 70% of the houses are holiday or second homes and most people are retired. It's a nice place but unless I'm missing something no transition initiative will be happening there any time soon.

So in my transition beginnings in 2008 I was very glad of the introduction to the 12 original key steps, with its idea of Transition Anywhere-You-Find-People. The people I had found were in Bungay (and later also Norwich) both some way from Southwold.

What bothered me most was having to drive to meetings and events. Car use is carbon use - especially when your car is fifteen years old and has had six owners already – and I was trying to reduce both. From early on I would use buses and trains as much as possible and sometimes stay with people overnight.

Over the past few years the bus services have dwindled to a fraction of their former selves. No more night buses connecting the train from Norwich back to Southwold. No more buses to Bungay in the early morning or at night.

Our old car went the way of all old cars and we didn’t replace it. Then our neighbours (not in Transition) offered to share their second car with us (splitting the service costs) specifically so we could do our shopping and get to Transition events and meetings. A mini local car-share scheme – that wouldn’t have happened without transition.

And this is the thing. Being in a transition initiative (or two) over time, even though they are not right on the doorstep, has not only helped build relationships and community with all the diverse people in those initiatives, it has impacted on all areas of my life, and led to better links with the people where I do live.

Sustainable Bungay is where the hands-on, experiential, action-based moves happen – collectively creating the Library Community Garden, organising Give and Take Days, plant swaps, themed Green Drinks, Bungay Community Bees, film nights, the new Garden Share scheme and Grey Water systems group, the Plants for Life events, Happy Mondays at the Community Kitchen. And where we publish a quarterly newsletter in print that showcases all these activities.

And Transition Norwich is where I join in with The Low Carbon Cookbook, write on this community blog and help out with the monthly news bulletin, all of which are light on trips to the city these days.

The links and exchanges between city, market town and isolated rural area are important. Norwich offers a place for intellectual stimulation and discussion and I can relate some of what’s going on outside its boundaries in the hinterland; This Low Carbon Life is read by people from all over the world. Bungay, in discovering community resources for developing resilience, shows how in a town of 5000 people a Transition initiative can thrive. It's become a hub of transition activity attracting people from both the town and nearby villages and has inspired people countrywide.

I don't get out of East Anglia much any more, despite having been an inveterate traveller in my 20s and 30s. And I don't really miss it. There's plenty of interest in this region to explore and as I've become cash-poorer I've also become less spoilt. I've started to enjoy the people, plants and places nearby.

And people are coming to visit; friends from both local and wider initiatives, like Transition Network webmaster Ed, who set up the Transition Social Reporting project with Charlotte. And like Alexis and Sarah from TTBelsize in London: we talked all weekend about transition communications (Charlotte and Alexis are shaping a national Transition newspaper), about medicinal plant beds (Sarah and I set out plans for a medicine plant workshop at the Royal Free Hospital permaculture garden in May), and we went foraging for wild salads.

Fellow social reporter Kerry Lane, one of the original movers and shakers of post-unleashing Transition Norwich, was here this week on a break from her Glasgow job, cycling from Norwich to Bungay for Happy Mondays and a night in Transition Reydon. All of us were able to discuss the challenging aspects of being active and committed members of our initiatives, for whom this cultural shift is not just a hobby that happens once a month on Tuesdays.

And that's what this Transition Individual can offer any fellow who might happen to come by Anywhere-Reydon to pay a visit sometime. A cup of tea, something local to eat, a light (or dark) low carbon conversation or a foraging walk down the lane.

Pics: Standing on the Edge, Dunwich, Suffolk February 2012 (MW); On the platform at Lowestoft station behind the St. John's Wort 2010; Charlotte and fellow Social Reporter and TN-Blogger Kerry Lane at the bus stop, April 2012 (MW); Ed Mitchell Transition Network webmaster, visits Suffolk, Happy Mondays, August 2011 (CDC); Sarah, Charlotte and Alexis - foraging down the lane in Reydon, April 2012 (MW)

A world with hope

Transition made me the person I am. It has guided the path I walk, the people I know and the way I think. It gave me hope. I cannot imagine a life where I was not involved with Transition.

I first discovered Transition during my third year of university, when I heard about the 'Great Unleashing' of Transition Norwich and thought it sounded exciting and something I would be interested in. I had been bought up with a love of nature and being outside and I was studying all of the ways we were destroying our world at university. I was getting tired of just studying what was going wrong and I really wanted to start doing something about it. I had got involved with a lot of the environmental groups at the university, but I had never really felt comfortable with Protest and Direct Action. I recognise their value, but the anger and negative angle never resonated with me. I was drawn to the positive projects, such as setting up a veg box scheme on campus, but I hadn't really found my niche. It all felt too small, not quite right, too isolated.

I had also been living in Norwich for 2 years and I still hardly knew people outside of the university. And then Transition started and WHAM!

It all started with lots of meetings, lots of discussions. I learnt a lot and met lots of diverse, but all lovely people from across Norwich and East Anglia. It was a gradual process, but we started to build a community, I felt I was part of something, I had found lots of other lovely people who were also trying to do something to make the world better.

I had already learnt about Climate Change and Peak Oil in my degree, but for Climate Change the solutions all seemed very big and imposing and the advice we were given on Peak Oil was stockpile food and buy a gun......so Transition's positive vision for the future and can do optimism were the balm I needed. They gave me hope that another world was possible, that enough people cared. And I came to realise that solving all of these problems could actually lead us to a better world as well.

So I jumped in with two feet and pretty soon I was attending 3 or 4 Transition meetings or events a week and my life was revolving round Transition. When conflict reared its head I was shaken and disheartened, but Transition had given me an enduring belief in what is possible. So I developed an ongoing interest in non-violent communication and healthy group dynamics ('Groups' are something we are missing in our current society and we need to relearn how they work.) And we got through and were stronger for it and we moved into the action phase and there were lots of wonderful events and activities and projects that emerged.

I have learnt so much from other inspiring ordinary people and through my experiences about how we can live a happy low carbon life. So when it came to finding a job I wanted something that could help create this world, hence the fact that I have been working for a Transition Project since May. My contract finishes in March but one of the criteria for my next job/location is that it needs a Transition community...

I do not know where I would be now if it wasn't for Transition, but I am sure that the last 4 years wouldn't have been anywhere near as exciting, eventful and happy. And I wouldn't have such hope for the future.

Photos: One of the first Transition Norwich Open Spaces, the Transition Norwich contingent in the Lord Mayors procession with Celeste the dragon, A rag bag that I made in a reskilling workshop and the flier of Transition University of West Scotland who I work for at the moment.

Keep Making Sense - How Transition Changed My Life #2

Yesterday afternoon, I interviewed fellow-in-transition Nick Watts for today's installment of How Transition Changed My Life. Nick has been active in Sustainable Bungay since 2008. He co-ordinated the Library Community Garden project, is one of the key organisers of Happy Monday's monthly Community Cafe and is secretary of the initiative. He also grows-his-own vegetables at home and on two allotments.

Nick had come over with his chainsaw to cut logs from the dead elm I've been felling recently, so our interview was informal. We sat by the woodburner with a cup of tea and I said, "So Nick, how has transition changed your life...?"

Nick: In October 2008, I applied to do a Phd at UEA in Norwich, involving action research on how effective the Transition movement was on bringing about change in response to Peak Oil. At that time I knew nothing about Peak Oil.

MW: So that's when you first became aware of it?

Nick: Yes, and it affected me deeply. It was totally life-changing. I thought, 'This is it. I want to spend my my life doing something about this.' I realised our whole society rested on very shaky foundations. I'd been worried for some time about climate change and that there was a real social problem with addressing it. But when I put Peak Oil and Climate Change together it crystallised my thinking. I felt the solutions to these problems went hand in hand. On a personal level it also unleashed a huge surge of creativity - one of the first things I did as a response was make a Peak Oil collage...

MW: Oh, I remember that Nick, have you still got it?

Nick: Yes, I'll send you a picture of it.

MW: So what was your next step?

Nick: Well, I didn't get on the course. But I was totally fired up. I started reading the Energy Bulletin, John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report, James Howard Kunstler's work, got into the 'doomer porn' thing a bit (laughs)...

And then I went to a Transition Norwich Economics and Livelihoods meeting. Again, I didn't really know anything about economics at the time, but my own booksearch business had dwindled after more than a decade of earning a decent living with it, so I was at a bit of a watershed in my own life...

MW: And all this was happening at the same time as the economic crash? Around October 2008?

Nick: That's right. So I went to this meeting and met Tully Wakeman. He said, 'Did you know there's a Transition Group in Bungay?' I had no idea. He told me to get in touch with Josiah...

MW: And the rest is history...

Nick (laughs): Josiah told me later that Tully had warned him, 'I have to tell you Josiah, he's VERY keen.'

So I came to that Xmas party where the only person I knew was Margaret, so I talked to her most of the evening in the living room with a couple of other people. And I kept hearing bits of the conversation everyone was having in the kitchen... about Marx! I couldn't believe I was in Bungay!

MW: Yeah, it's a shame you missed that, it was really interesting... And you know Rob is a Marxist scholar. I'd also just been reading 'Capital' for the first time, an old version I got from the library. Transition gets you like that, especially at the beginning. You want to find out about all sorts of subjects you've never paid any attention to before. And talk about it with others.

Nick: Yes. You get a head of steam up and it takes over your life.

MW: Once you've had that end-of-suburbia moment, you get kind of hooked...

Nick: It's like a transition epiphany!

MW: So once you got involved, how did it affect your life then?

Nick: Well, practically speaking I started to co-ordinate the Library Garden project in 2009, which really got going after the Permaculture weekend in Jan 2010.

MW: What about transition's impact on your social life?

Nick: It's widened my social circle. And it's really good that you become friends with people you're working with on a common understanding, for a common good. You get involved with Transition and it casts a different light on everything you do. You're thinking bigger in a way about the systems that underpin our lives, but acting from where you are.

At the beginning I did want to tell everyone about it. It was a bit like a quasi-religious experience. I couldn't believe that people didn't want to know about how our economic system was so fragile, for example, or how dependent we are on our access to fossil fuels to live the way we do... Sometimes I felt a certain distance from old friends because of this.

I've been headed in the direction of voluntary simplicity for some time and now it seems more relevant than ever. Simplifying your life to where you're less dependent on a high income or high energy use. It makes you more resilient, less dependent on supermarkets and the industrial food system for what you eat. Peak Oil presents the very real possibility of these fossil-fuel energy-intensive ways of life being taken away. I see it as a responsibility, especially if you have children, to take it seriously.

MW: So three years on Nick, what's your approach to bringing awareness of the Transition approach to others?

Nick: I still tell people about it, perhaps not so zealously though. It's difficult to engage with people in a community where there's a reluctance to new ideas. So you get on with it yourself and with those you can work with. You build it up like that. Do things people can see and join in with. I think Sustainable Bungay's doing pretty well.

MW: Yes, me too. That's great, Nick and thanks for agreeing to the interview. Is there anything you'd like to finish on?

Nick: Perhaps this quote from Vaclav Havel:

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

Pics: Nick in Bungay Library for Turning the Tide climate change play, April 2010; Peak Oil collage by Nick Watts; Nick shows me how to chainsaw logs, January 2012

Being Part of it All

Everyone reading this post will know our modern world is made of oil, from this computer to my toothbrush to the global food and transport systems. We are utterly dependent on it.

Responding to Peak Oil on a community level is one of the original drivers of Transition together with climate change. These drivers are what made a group of us in the pioneering Transition Circles spend 2009-2010 explore ways of cutting our personal carbon use to half the national average. And write about our experiences.

But what about the kind of people we are now after 150 years of cheap fossil fuel energy and all the perks that have gone with it - aeroplanes to cars to i-pods? I'd just assumed before my Peak Oil moment(s) that the "stuff" around us would be around forever. And that I would carry on not having much to do with anybody beyond my immediate circle. I had my own life, my own interests, my own world. I didn't really have to deal with other people. But this was an illusion.

Seeing through this illusion of being isolated, individual units in control of our own world as if we had no connection with or impact on anything or anybody beyond it is one of the biggest human challenges right now. We’ve had the energy and wealth (at least in the West) to keep ourselves apart from our fellow humans, ignore the planet that sustains us, whilst using up its physical (and human) 'resources' (hate that term) and cocoon ourselves in a web of consumerist products made of those resources.

This illusion of independence from the physical world casts a powerful spell. I meet a friend occasionally for a drink. We get on well and enjoy each others’ company. But I also have a strange and mysterious Power: the ability to bring the conversation and the evening to an abrupt end at any given moment. And not because I am endowed with any magical secrets. All I need do is mention the FINITE NATURE of the PLANET’S PHYSICAL ‘RESOURCES’, quite gently, throwaway even, and a restlessness ensues and suddenly it's time to go home.

I don’t do that on purpose. I just don't seem to be able to keep it out of the conversation.

My own separatist defence systems (which are not really my own, more conditioned social responses) have been breaking down slowly and surely over these past years in transition. I wouldn’t even be sitting with that friend four years ago. I probably would have been sitting at home on my own.

I would also not be visiting the Occupiers in Norwich or going to the workers’ rally in Lowestoft, or speaking with the local MP about climate change, or taking people on bee and wildflower walks around Bungay, writing these blogposts, working with a group of people on the Low Carbon Cookbook, or be part of the Transition Network Social Reporters’ project. I wouldn't be talking to Frank and Jeremy about chia, or keep forgetting to send helenofnorwich the photos I took of us picking sloes when she came down to visit with her girlfriend.

Or going over today to Kris and Eloise’s with Sustainable Bungay and the Norfolk Permaculture Group to help out on their work day chopping wood, moving compost and making soup...

Pics: Sunrise Autumn 2011 (MW); Me, Helen, Jo at Walberswick by helenofnorwich

Transition Is The People

I first published this piece on Monday 28th November as part of the week's People and Connections theme for the Social Reporting project on the Transition Network website.

"Your beetroot is on the Low Carbon Cookbook table," said John, who had brought the giant vegetable from his home four miles away. I went to have a look. Bee had arranged a smashing display of locally grown vegetables, cooking utensils and a fresh salad. But that beetroot took the biscuit (sic).

"I've brought those seeds," said Cathy, and handed me a small white envelope. I’d forgotten about the cigar plants I found so exciting in her garden a few months back.

"Here's that Echinacea plant," said Lesley, handing me a small pot with wilting leaves. We both laughed. "It'll be fine for the medicine plant bed next year," she said.

This all happened within ten minutes of my arriving at the Transition Norwich 3rd birthday celebrations on 15th November. I felt like it was my birthday with all those gifts. Throughout the evening I talked and laughed with over thirty people I knew from both Transition Norwich and Sustainable Bungay, and several others I hadn’t met before, including Rob Hopkins who’d come up from Totnes to speak about Transition and The Transition Companion.

I’m not saying this to let you all know what a socialite I am, though I love a good party (probably more than a protest march!). It’s just that I wouldn’t be having any of these conversations if Transition had not entered my life in the summer of 2008 in the form of Sustainable Bungay. Before then I was living in increasingly unsplendid isolation down a country lane in Suffolk, immersed in plants and places but with little human contact. And it wasn't like the world (or my own prospects) were getting any better. Maybe I needed to join in with others. A community-led response to Peak Oil and Climate Change? It wasn't environmental activism or a religious group or anything like anything else. After a major attack of resistance to DOING ANYTHING I decided to give it a go.


And three and a half years further down the peak oil path, I can say that for me Transition is the People. Whether it's being part of the Transition Norwich bloggers group, This Low Carbon Life, since it began in 2009, co-producing the Norwich and Bungay newsletters and bulletins, communicating with people by email or phone, or meeting up at Sustainable Bungay's yearly summer and Christmas parties, it's us, the people that make it happen. No people, no transition.

The movement is like a great social network bringing people together to build resilience in the face of global and local energy depletion, climate change and economic meltdown. These are the common threads and they affect all of us. Transition connects a huge diversity of people and we would probably never otherwise have met in the dominant, conventional money-driven, class-obsessed, hierarchical and compartmentalised culture. It encourages us to develop a different, more equable system of values. It opens things out.

It also challenges all those in-built structures inside oneself. Replacing the lifelong held idea of limitless energy with the fact of finite resources can lead to tension between people who accept the latter and those who don't. And that's just one shift. Sometimes you fall out with people. Sometimes, as Ann said Saturday, you hold events where only "three people and a horse's head attended". Some meetings go smoothly and are joyful and some really don't. It gets on my nerves when people talk about transition as if it has to be perfectly formed and presented (mostly by you, with no effort on their part), when it really is a work-in-progress. And a lot of it is about holding on in there and learning to be and work with people in harmony and co-operation and with no hierarchy.

Yesterday morning the phone rang. It was Lesley from Sustainable Bungay. Would we like to go for a walk by the sea? She arrived bearing two huge and delicious pears from the tree in her garden and after the walk we sat round the fire at dusk with hot tea and talked about everything from autism to growing food to the difficulty of finding decent work and navigating the benefits system, which we're all on.

Lesley told us about her Open University degree in Environmental Studies (Hons), and how she had been gardening and growing plants since she was a child. And about how bringing up an autistic son made you tolerant and open-minded about the differences between people.

We told her about our neighbours who gave us a laptop and access to their studio to do our Transition communications work last year. And how those same neighbours, Philip and Irene, now share their second car with us after our old one took its final trip to the scrapyard. (And I'm talking from within the context of an isolated and underpopulated rural area where whole bus routes have been scrapped over the past year). It's a happy arrangement, we share the running costs and take care of the plants and birds when they are away. Philip and Irene are not in transition themselves, but they were motivated by our involvement to give us a hand.

Lesley said she’d be happy to grow more plants for the Medicine Plant Bed at Bungay Library next year, as well as an amazing tri-coloured amaranth called Chinese spinach. I'm really looking forward to the project.

I was really struck by the human warmth in Sarah's introductory post about her friendship with the late David Fleming, its feeling for relationship. I asked Lesley yesterday did she feel her life had changed since she got involved with Sustainable Bungay.

"It's great that there are other people who feel like I do about the planet and want to do something about it together. You don't feel so on your own."

I know just what she means.

John Heaser is a Transition Norwich blogger, caretaker of the local toad population and advocate of cycle paths and has been growing organic food at home since the 70s

Cathy Proudlove is Sustainable Bungay’s treasurer and leads SB’s Abundance project, giving freely from her garden and orchard all kinds of produce from chard to Norfolk Biffin apples (to cigar plant seeds!)

Lesley Hartley is a gardener and food grower with a degree in Sustainable Technology who is actively involved in several Sustainable Bungay projects including Happy Mondays.

Pics: Bee and Charlotte with Giant Beetroot at the Low Carbon Cookbook table, Transition Norwich 3rd Birthday celebrations; Transition Norwich Bloggers meeting at The Greenhouse, clockwise from left: Simeon, Jon, Charlotte, Chris, John, Helen and me; Lesley, me, Charlotte, Rita at Happy Mondays, Bungay, November 2011

The Dawnbloggers

Props* to Jon for yesterday's description of the work that goes into writing blogposts. I know it's not just me who undergoes 'frantic typing at dawn' or who stares blankly at the computer screen for what seems like an aeon, fingers frozen half an inch above the keyboard, looking like some dreadful waxwork from the Hammer house of horror (Are you ready for... The Dawnbloggers?) and wondering whether ANYTHING will EVER happen! It just feels like that when you're sitting alone in a crepuscular bed.

Now to the week's brief - best blogs. But first I need coffee.

That's better.

The Social Reporting blog on the Transition Network site is now in its tenth week and is the blog I read daily along with This Low Carbon Life which it's modelled on.

This is because in the years I've been involved in Transition these are the only places where I can journey alongside fellow travellers on the Transition road (or cycle path!) as they are being lived within their initiatives.

We live in a world of marketing and ideas, where the idea of how something should be takes precedence over what actually is. Physical, lived experience gets short shrift in such a world. Everything conspires to make us want to escape from our bodies, our feelings, the people around us (who are never quite as we imagine they should be), the actual moment with all its difficulties and joys and aspire to some ideal never-never state. But that is not where the real treasure lies. It’s to be found within our physical, biological beings, without which we wouldn't be here to tell our stories.

Real-life stories is what the Social Reporting project is all about: local market gardening on a shoestring on rented land in Wales where the majority of transitioners are not Welsh (Ann Owen); Feeling the fear of getting things wrong and planting those tomatoes anyway (Rachel, Transition Cam & Dursley); Squatting and regenerating derelict land and creating a vibrant community in Transition for squatters, villagers and visitors - and facing court eviction (Joe Rake, Transition Heathrow); the challenges of getting people interested in transition ideas in a small town in Northern Ireland and forgetting to brush your hair (Marella Fyffe, Transition Omagh); writing a transition book called Local Food at the same time as providing your daughter with leukaemia with proper healthy meals every day and avoiding all hospital junk (Tamzin Pinkerton, guest editor).

These are just a few of nearly seventy posts to date on the Social Reporters blog, written by a regular crew of twelve transitioners from initiatives all over the UK, with guest editors introducing a particular Transition theme each Sunday (e.g. being in transition, economics, the big picture) which is then expanded throughout the week. The majority of the pieces speak straight from the no-frills experience of being in Transition and are funny, practical, bitter, moving, deep and light all at the same time.

I don't want to overload you with links here, so I'll just pull three pieces out of a hat which illustrate for me the value of writing about real experience and why the social reporting project is so key. They are not the only three by any means, ALL the posts would show it! So do have a decko at the others:

Catriona from Scotland's Black Isle reports from the hospital bed on the link between personal mental health and that of communities in Under The Rocks and Stones. Jay Tompt looks with a newcomer's eye at What's New and Renewing in Totnes and Ann Owen talks about her market garden and earning her living on the edge in Permaculture on a Budget.

So why does it matter that we write about our real experience and read that of others? For me it matters because I want to live in a culture where if the "show must go on" it's not at the cost of our common humanity and the planet we live on.

That's why I liked Jon's intro yesterday (see below). I think fellow social reporters would relate too...

*US colloquial for respect, recognition

Pic: Are you ready for... The Dawnbloggers by Mark Watson

Occupying the House with the Cat

“I just read you were alone with the cat and thought I’d give you a ring,” said Josiah on the phone. Nick had picked Charlotte up in the afternoon and they’d gone to Occupy Norwich for the night.

“Ah the value of twitter,” I laughed. “I didn’t sound sorry for myself, did I? It was very tongue in cheek. The cat’s gone out now too!”

It is ten to seven in the morning and I am typing this in bed. Outside it’s raining slightly, there’s a light mist on the fields in the grey dawn and it suddenly feels like November. The cat has come in from the night, bounded around the house, washed herself and jumped from the bedside table onto me knocking over pens and pencils and making it as hard as she can for me to get to the keyboard.

So that’s where I am. I have a list in front of me of the things I’ve been considering all week for these posts but it's the Occupy movement that keeps occupying the space! Two pieces really stuck in my mind, one about confronting the demand to always have to have demands; and the other Erik Curren's on how it's not just the bankers we need to be looking at but also Big Oil.

In a few hours Charlotte will be back from her night on the streets of Norwich. She’s coming with Tom, who’s interviewing us about This Low Carbon Life and Transition Norwich communications as part of a short film he’s making for the 3rd birthday celebrations on the 15th of this month. And I've got stage (or film) fright.

So I need to get the house in order and myself prepared. I’ll let you know how it goes in Part 2 later...

Part 2 Later

Well, that wasn't so bad. Tom arrived with Charlotte and his two small daughters and he filmed us talking about communications and the blog. In fact it was really good fun. Tom's a sympathetic director who told me my performance nerves were a good sign - it meant I cared about what I was doing - and who really lets you be yourself. Although I am slightly worried that second cup of coffee will have made me come across like a mad professor on acid.

Meanwhile the girls and the cat happily occupied the bed together, whilst Charlotte and I took it in turns to read them stories so Tom could film.

Haven't spoken with Charlotte yet about what went on at Occupy Norwich last night. I'm busy finishing this post and she is attending to the Social Reporting project. But she'll be writing about it herself next week, either on the One World Column or for This Low Carbon Life's Transition Themes week. Watch these spaces!

I forgot to take photos of our filming session with Tom, damn! But here's Nick and Charlotte by the garden tent just before they set off yesterday for a more concrete sort of tent experience!

More News From The Engine Room - Transition Network Social Reporters

I first published the post below, News from the Engine Room, on the Transition Network Social Reporting blog.

This nationwide blog, created by Ed Mitchell and Charlotte Du Cann during the summer and launched in September is based on our own This Low Carbon Life. Like the Norwich blog, there is a daily post - today will be the 49th - and like ours too it's full of great writing, variety, poignancy and humour. It's the place to read firsthand experiences of transitioners from all over the UK.

From Omagh (Northern Ireland) to Heathrow, Artist's Valley (Wales) to Glasgow and the Black Isle, Lewes to Bungay and Norwich, Totnes to Lancaster to Dursley near Bristol to Finsbury Park, we're talking from behind the transition scenes about what it's like to be in the thick of it, full-on, night and day. We're talking about:

bad hair on vital communications days (Marella)

the ethics of squatting and revitalising vacant land (Joe)

permaculture on a (very low) budget (Ann)

the practical struggle between the values of transition and the norms of society (Kerry)

control of the land and the islanders of Eigg (Catriona)

going locavore - finding and eating food from where you live (Adrienne)

a low carbon cookbook for transition times (Charlotte)

transition as social permaculture (Jay)

the joys and sorrows of putting on the 'big picture' (Caroline)

feeling the fear and growing things anyway (Rachel) and

community building in an urban edible landscape (Jo)

So here's mine from the Communicating Transition theme week:

NEWS FROM THE ENGINE ROOM (Mark)

When I signed up to contribute to the Communicating Transition theme this week, I thought writing it would be a cinch. I should know by now after years of 5am starts (with prep beforehand) and hours wondering whether I'll be able to string more than one intelligible sentence next to another, that cinch doesn't come into it.

But hey Transition is just about getting together with others within the context of global peaking fossil fuels, climate change and economic downturn/ instability/crisis/chaos and systems meltdown and building community resilience, isn’t it? About responding to these things as individuals and as social and planetary beings. About working together on parallel infrastructures whilst the present dominant global industrial one breaks up. About finding alternative ways of inhabiting the planet to the business-as-usual one. And having some fun (hopefully) at the same time. What's so hard to communicate about that? We all GET IT, don't we?

The problem comes when you start trying to define communications or transition as one thing (or when I do). They are such multi-dimensional affairs. They are ten thousand things.

Today I'm going focus on practical communications and talk about the blogs and websites we've developed in Transition Norwich and Sustainable Bungay as part of creating the alternative media Joe was writing about on Monday.

Communications are the flyers Marella wrote about yesterday, the visits Charlotte spoke about the day before, the phone conversation I had with a farmer’s wife recently who told me top-down agricultural bureaucracy ignores the actual lived experience of people, like herself, who have lived on the land all their lives and know it intimately.

Providing an outlet to give voice to our experiences of being in (and going through!) transition as it happened was what originally inspired This Low Carbon Life. This was a Transition first.

Charlotte, together with Andy, a graphic designer and Jon, also an ex-journalist, pooled their editorial experience and created this community blog (on Blogger) in October 2009. Since then about twenty bloggers, of all different backgrounds and ages, have written between us more than 650 posts on everything from the low carbon growing, cooking and sharing of food to downshifting in style to reducing fossil fuel usage to half the national average. Many posts take a good, considered look at the bigger picture: reconnection with nature, politics, the industrial food system and inner resilience, whilst others explore the kinds of people we are becoming/need to become as we navigate the times. We also take our own photographs.

As well as the regular writers we feature crossposts from fellow transitioners in other initiatives and guest slots on transition-related themes. We meet every three months, sort out the rota and decide the topic and theme weeks for the coming quarter. We keep in touch with each other via a googlegroup in case someone wants to swap days or forgets to post. Charlotte and I both look at the blog daily to check photo and text alignment and I proof the copy. But we don't edit the content, it's a no censorship blog. Everyone’s voice remains free to be what it is. It’s a bit like a feral choir.

The structure of This Low Carbon Life is also what Ed and Charlotte have used to develop this very social reporting project we're all now engaged in.

As I write this I feel like a Transition Communications maintenance engineer: I spend a lot of time caretaking! As well as This Low Carbon Life, I co-produce the monthly Transition Norwich News bulletin and the quarterly Sustainable Bungay newsletter. I use the word co-produce because none of us do any of these things on our own (even though it sometimes feels like that at 5 in the morning, or when someone who's NOT DOING THE WORK dismissively remarks "you missed a comma there" or "you need to get your marketing sorted. I've never heard of...")

Transition Norwich News is also a community Blogger-based website. A crew of 15 people from the various groups and projects in the initiative upload their copy each month and we organise it and make sure the calendar is up-to-date. The bulletin is edited and sent out to all TN subscribers (yes, I know Network, we call it that too) with links to the news items and latest This Low Carbon Life posts.

Sustainable Bungay's newsletter is likewise a collaborative publication with people from the theme groups sending in copy to Charlotte (editor), Kris (designer) and myself (sub) which we then collate, typeset and publish both online and in a printed version. The latter we distribute to Bungay library and local shops and services. This works well for people who do not have internet access and adds a physical dimension to SB’s presence in the town.

In early 2010 Josiah set up Sustainable Bungay's website using Wordpress and showed us how to publish posts about SB’s activities - both announcements and write-ups of our events. It's a shared thing. We each have a password and we write when there’s news to report, whether it’s about Give and Take Day, Happy Mondays, Bungay Community Bees, Film Nights, the Library Courtyard Garden or the Give and Grow and Abundance events. The great thing about it is you can see the thumbnails for the recent posts on the home page so all the projects and events are displayed.

For intergroup communication we have a googlegroup and speak to each other on the phone when the emails just get too much. Never underestimate the power of giving good phone!

I realise there is so much more to say about how we communicate transition: by word of mouth, by tweeting, by meeting, by Green Drinks, at community events (our own and others)... Here's a picture of Lesley and Kris arranging the new SB display boards at the All Under One Roof event this July.

Down in the engine room it's sometimes hard to see where all this is going. Is anybody out there reading me? Is the message getting through? I can't tell. But I think it's key in transition that we're as consistent as the mainstream. That we keep the rhythm going. That we keep writing, reporting and photographing. Every quarter, every month, every day.

Pics: Preparing the Transition Norwich monthly bulletin down at the community centre; Transition Norwich Bloggers on the Bench August 2011; Transition Norwich 2nd birthday poster October 2010 by Andy Croft; Notebook from The Sea Kale Project by Charlotte Du Cann; Josiah holds his daughter Iris AND shows me how to upload posts on SB's website; Lesley and Kris arrange the new SB display boards, July 2011