Rethinking Lifestyle

What can a Transition Town really achieve? That was the question a colleague asked me the other day when I said I was writing an article on behalf of the South Eastman Transition Initiative.

It is a good question, and one I ask myself quite often when a small group of us are sitting in a local coffee shop sharing ideas and experiences (mostly about our gardens at this time of year). I feel the need for South Eastman Transition Initiative to get its teeth into something in one of our local communities, but what can we do?

So I started looking around the world at some of the examples of what other Transition Towns have done, and I thought I would share with you some examples of what I found:

Brixton, a district in London UK, raised the finances to build a community owned solar power station. They are now selling shares in phase 3 in a project that will bring solar power to low income homes, reducing energy consumption and household energy bills in a country that gets half the sunshine of Manitoba.

The town of Deventer in Holland, set up a repair café. A small team of handy people set up a café at a recycling centre or community centre, and people bring items such as small appliances, bicycles, clothing, small items of furniture and computers. A donation towards to refreshment fund is made for each item successfully repaired.

In the town of Salies de Béarn in France, they built a community garden on disused railway land, using large fruit crates to build raised beds. They tried a range of gardening techniques, taught school children how to cook with fresh vegetables, and the garden provides therapy for elderly residents from a local care home.

A sewing group in Lancashire, UK set themselves up in the library. People bring items needing repair, and those projects they just haven’t got started yet, and the members share their skills to help other learn.

A weekly, local foods breakfast salon fundraiser, in Detroit USA, raises money to offer micro-loans to local farmers to purchase four season hoop house kits to grow food year around. The hoops are built in one day by volunteers, similar to barn raising events.

In an east London town in UK, a group of architects and engineers have a bold idea of building a pedal powered community cinema in a shipping container. They have a wind turbine up and running and are working on the bike powered projector!

These are all small schemes, and most involve just a handful of inspired individuals to get things started, but each is at the heart of a local community. The projects that have been completed have all had unexpected benefits, and by being shared throughout the world-wide Transition Town community, others are being encouraged to get up off the couch and do something in their neighbourhood!

Now that has me thinking about what we need in South East Manitoba.