In Transition film - online now

I've just watched the online screening of the "In Transition" film. It's not the final version, but it looked pretty good to me, a little bit of tweaking and I'm sure it will be a brilliant. It's only online for a few days, so catch it now, or else you'll have to wait for the finished product. It's about an hour long.

I'm familiar with the "Transition" concept, so I'd be really interested to hear what anyone who is new to the subject thinks of the film.

The idea of creating a positive vision of the future I think is powerful and necessary, but for me methodology the transition movement is generally using to get people to think about the future is a bit "new age" - but granted it does work (it tends to revolve around group meditation, which, if you are not used to meditation, either on your own or in a group, is uncomfortable - I just can't imagine that going down well with the majority of the people in my town!). The practical aspects, great. Some fantastic projects highlighted in the film.

By the way the film didn't play in Firefox. It was fine in Internet Explorer.

If you want to comment on the film to Rob, post your comments on the Transition Culture In Transition Film blog post.

If you want to watch the full 350 degrees animation, you can find it at www.350.org/animation.

'In Transition' film

"In Transition" is an hour long film about the worldwide Transition movement. It will premiere online at 1.45pm on the May 23rd - but there is nothing to see at that link yet...

For those of you not in the UK, here are the dates and times for your part of the world. I hope you can make it.

In the meantime here is the trailer.

Eat well and help save the planet

A meeting about a new local food initiative. It sounded just up my street so I went along.

It was my first experience of a Chamber of Commerce meeting, and I really should have remembered that when it got to the questions and answers part...

However, the speakers were really good:

• Sally Bendall from Hollow Trees farm shop (and recent chairman of FARMA),


• Stella Burton, from Beaumont school (an eco-school, also taking part in a european sustainable food project),


• Karen Kenney, area rep of the National Society of Allotment Holders and Leisure Gardeners, (who was my favourite speaker of the evening for her enthusiam and impeccably varnished nails!), and


• Mark David from a local cookery course company (who decided that his talk was about promoting his business - rather than local food!!, but was entertaining nonetheless).

Then came the Q&A.

I was quite surprised, we were told by someone who admitted he was a local food producer that it can cost more to grow your own food! No vested interests there then!!

Then someone else tried to knowingly pass Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's land share idea off as his own. I suspect this because after he had described the project perfectly (without mentioning the national campaign) and that perhaps we should have somewhere, perhaps a website, where people could sign up to the idea, I naively stood up and spoke about Hugh's landshare project and website and how it's a national campaign and people in the area might already be signed up for it. The chap was smiling knowingly before I'd finished saying "Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall" - I guess he was a web designer.

Nevermind. The evening was generally postive. The idea of making our small town a centre for fresh, organic, local food is just fab and very "transitional". The meeting ended with a show of hands supporting the Local Food Initiative, based on the Fife diet. I hadn't heard of the fife diet, and no-one mentioned it during the evening, but basically people in an area sign up to eat food produced in that area for a year and therefore eating well and saving the planet.

For more information about transition towns see The Transition Handbook (I'm on page 61) or the Transition Towns wiki.