There is a lot to keep us awake at night. War, signs of environmental collapse, rising inequality. Then there’s the countless personal daily worries demanding our attention – bills; stressful work; children and elders needing support; getting the healthcare we need.
It can be an overwhelming mix, inducing anxiety and making our world feel unstable and insecure. Burying your head in the sand, and narrowing your focus to what you can control in your own household or shopping basket seems like a perfectly rational response.
Then this summer, many communities were rocked by racist violence and protests, and a wave of community mobilisations saying everyone is welcome. Many white people realised we can’t ignore what’s happening around us; that if our neighbours aren’t OK, then neither are we.
What has all this got to do with Transition? At its heart, Transition is about reimagining and reshaping our world, responding to big global challenges as well as those specific to our place, through local, practical, human-scale action, together with other people. It’s an antidote to feeling over-whelmed and under-powered in the face of the complex problems of our times.
Here’s a short video some Transitioners involved across the country helped us make to explain more:
We have a new government, new people in key roles. No matter your political views, in some ways that marks a fresh start for many of the things we care about. We wrote before the election, that the work of building community connection and power needs to go on all year round. And we, ordinary people, need to be involved. It cannot be left to the politicians to articulate our needs, solve our problems or bring people together.
We’re told that public sector funding is facing huge challenges – while councils and public bodies still hold substantial resources and capacity, we see them retreat from more and more services. It makes them cautious and discourages risk taking and the fresh thinking that’s so badly needed right now.
This reality check, along with signs of climate and community breakdown, make this an important moment to get involved in Transition. It’s an invitation to bring back some positive imagination around our future – and then find practical, collective action we can take to step closer to it.
Transition groups offer an invitation to everyone interested in a fairer, thriving, more connected future to build a shared vision. Exploring it and making it a reality is work we need to do on the ground, with our neighbours, in our towns, villages and neighbourhoods. It can’t be delivered by the national media or a central government policy. We need more channels for ordinary folks to shape the future of their places – measures like Citizen’s Assemblies and the right to take over land and buildings and run them for the community, because local people often know what’s most needed.
What difference can Transition groups and others doing this work make? It often starts with some small initiative like planting trees or wildflowers, sharing food at a community fridge or bringing people together to talk about the future. We see how often this cascades, as people get to know and trust each other, to see what they can achieve together, and learn from other groups and places what else is possible.
Transition groups have set up farmers’ markets, community food-growing, waste-food cafes, nature recovery projects, cycling and electric car clubs and community-owned renewable energy generation. Here’s a flavour of what’s going on around the country:
What they all have in common is they are locally-rooted, people-led, creative, resourceful responses to what’s happening around us. The trouble this summer didn’t come out of nowhere, and was made possible by disconnection in our communities. As my colleague and our Transition Together Training lead Daniel Balla reflected:
“Fear, blame and hate breed in the cracks caused by division. What the reaction to the violence reminds us is that working together can fill the gaps.”
We need places to come together with our neighbours, despite our differences of circumstances, life experience and outlook – indeed, because of them. We need spaces to meet, to share, to get to know each other or become re-acquainted with folks who don’t think or look like us and to do everyday things together.
Transition groups seek to hold these spaces – whether in a permanent community centre, like Zero Guildford’s or Sero Carmarthen’s community climate hubs or outdoor spaces like Transition Wilmslow’s Oakenclough garden on an estate in Cheshire, or Transition Town Dorchester’s community farm, used by lots of local groups and people healing from poor mental health.
Transitioners also hold space in regular community events and projects which seek to welcome everyone, gathering around food, or a common purpose like a repair cafe, gleaning vegetables or running a youth club or a play street, where neighbours shut their road to traffic for a morning, and spill out to let young ones run wild and adults to sip tea and talk. One off festivals and fairs create focal points for groups and individuals to gather and celebrate the talent and activity going on in your community.
It turns out that ignoring what worries you about the future is much less powerful than engaging with it – not just for the world around you, but for you too. When we asked Transitioners what gives them hope for the future, they shared that getting together with other people and doing something collective and practical, no matter how small, was part of what kept them going in the face of the challenges in the world. Hear what they have to say:
We are a small movement in the grand scheme of things, and just one of many doing useful and important work to reimagine and rebuild the world. It’s precisely when things seem too big, too late or too complex that you might find calm, support and purpose by getting involved. And collectively, our nimble, local, human-scale initiatives can inspire other communities and all add up to a sea change.
Start your Transition journey
Find out if there is a Transition group already near you here. Go along and get involved.
Or join our Launch Training to find out more about starting a group, and get tooled up to make positive change in your community. It’s free, online and runs over three short sessions, kicking off on 24 September. Find out more and sign up here.
