Upstream - Transition Towns with Rob Hopkins

Episode Date: March 29, 2016

In this interview, we hear from Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition movement, a radically hopeful community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel. We chatted about transition towns and how they resemble cell membranes, the power of stories, and craft beer. (Listen closely you'll hear the ambient sounds of whistling and laughter of the students of Schumacher College!)Thank you to Jacob Rask for conducting this interview. This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Hello, you are listening to an Upstream interview, which is part of the Economics for Transition project. In this interview, Jacob Rosk speaks with Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition Town Movement. To hear more interviews and episodes, please visit www.economicsfortransition.org Welcome. Thank you. Maybe we can just begin by you telling a little bit about yourself for people who are not aware of Transition Towns and Rob Hopkins as a way of introduction. So my name is Rob Hopkins. I live just over the road here in Dartington in Devon. I'm one of the co-founders of Transition Town Totnes, which is the initiative here. I'm one of the co-founders of Transition Network, which is the organization that now supports transition

in more than 50 countries around the world and is an organization of about 12 people that provides inspiration and training and networking and support for transition groups around the world. I'm a director of the Totnes Community Development Society, which is the organisation doing the Atmos project here in Totnes, which is a hugely exciting community-led development. I'm a director of the New Lyon Brewery, which is a fantastic craft brewery here in Totnes. It's a social enterprise brewery. I've written several books, and I blog a lot, and I'm on Twitter, and I've got kids,

and I have a garden, and I grow food, and I ride a bicycle. And so if we walk back in time to when you first came to Totnes and when you started Transition Town, can you tell a bit about how you got that idea and what sparked it? Well, I moved to Totnes in 2005 kind of with the seeds of transition in my mind but it wasn't called transition at that point because before then I'd been teaching in a in a college in Kinsale in Ireland and teaching the first two-year full-time permaculture course in the world there that we set up in a college and in the last year that I was there I set the students a project which was to design a kind of an intentional

pathway by which Kinsale could wean itself off its oil dependency and end up in a better place than it was and that idea we kind of we published it and put it online and it generated a lot of interest so I moved to Tottenham with that kind of in my mind as something I wanted to take further and deepen and explore. So for the first year that I was here, I met with a guy just at the cot in just over the road here. I met with a guy called Naresh Jangrande, who was the only other person, I think, in the town at the time who'd heard the words peak oil and who seemed to be thinking about it. In those days, when you met somebody else who was interested in those kind of issues you kind of made a beeline for them and and so we we spent a lot of time just sort of hanging out and talking about uh the stuff i'd

done in kinsale and what it might look like if it was scaled up and we started doing film screenings and talks and just just floating the idea i suppose and then we started to meet other people like sophie banks and hillary prentice and people who started to bring other pieces of the puzzle fiona ward uh who started to bring other bits it was always a very porous kind of idea open to new inputs and new ideas and then that all kind of built up to then in September 2006 we held what we called the official unleashing of Transition Town Totnes which was the kind of launch event and to our huge surprise about 450 people came and among the people who came were people from Falmouth and Tooting in London and Stroud and a few other places who then went home and started transition

groups as a result of it. And then very quickly people were coming to us and saying, what is this transition thing? How do you do it? How does it work? It's still at a point where we were really trying to figure out even, we'd only just start calling it transition. out even we'd only just start calling it transition so it was very much it was sort of a growing community of communities trying to figure out how to do it and sharing through blogs and videos and stuff what they were doing

and then and then it just grew and grew and grew I think that speaks very much to my own experience of coming across transition as actually more of a story or a narrative than where I could point at specific places saying they are you know they are great examples of yeah so it yeah maybe it's in the word transition as well then it's an it's an intention and the story more than, I don't know the end goal or you can showcase, this is how great we are So I didn't think of the word transition for this movement, so there was a woman so after I left Ireland

in Kinsale there was a woman called Louise Rooney who was a former student of mine there who was working with another former student of mine called Catherine Dunn and the two of them picked up the Kinsale this Project we did had done there with the students and they said actually Oh, then they took it to the Kinsale town council and said well, how about you adopt this?

This is great. And the council said yeah This is really good and adopted unanimously adopted it and gave them some money to progress it a bit further And so they they spent so by then I was over here so we were kind of in communication and after a few months they came up with this idea of uh it was a whole discussion about what what we should call this thing whatever it was and they said transition town and i thought that is just genius that's so brilliant so so we started using it here so although strictly speaking Kinsale is the first transition town I think Totnes is the first place that did transition in the way that

we now um teach it and promote it you know I think the model went much deeper here yeah no I for me a lot of what I do is really around storytelling i go to visit lots of different transition places i'm like a bee and i go oh that's interesting and then i'll take that story over here and then i'll take a story from there and so we did a for cop 21 we did a whole project called 21 stories of transition and i bought some copies along today and that was 21 stories from all over the world of different aspects of transition. And a lot of it is really around the stories. The stories are really what resonate with people, I think, because they give people a lot of energy.

And I particularly like telling the stories that are the quite kind of, that are the slightly naughty stories. So, you know, the kind of places printing their own money stories people really like. It's like, you can't do that, can you? Can you really? Ooh, you know, the kind of places printing their own money stories people really like. It's like, you can't do that, can you? Can you really? Ooh.

You know. And the stories that kind of undermine people's expectations of what's possible and kind of what's allowed, really. You know, like groups who just go and make gardens in places that they shouldn't or who just do things that are kind of not expected. That's what I really love. So yeah, for me, I guess a lot of transition, transition is something you can look at in lots of different ways.

So you can look at transition and say, it's about story. And you'd be right. You could look at it, you could say it's about modeling a new economy. You could look at it, you could say it's a it's about process you know it's about groups and dynamics and process and how those groups work you could look at it and say it's it's a political movement i suppose you know you can look at it lots of different ways but i think i think story is definitely one of the one of the most useful lenses to look at it through absolutely and in fact yeah and so largely more and more i think my role has become being a storyteller in transition

and what's so beautiful about it is there are just so many stories you can tell because there's so much stuff happening in so many places and always listening out for stories about this place where they did this or that or the other yeah it's very exciting if you were to try and tell that story about what is it that transition is what's the crisis that transition is responding to and what is the response how would you tell that i think there's been a really interesting shift in transition over the last 18 months. So we always framed, initially we said transition was a response to climate change and a response to peak oil and then it became a response to climate change, peak oil and the economic crisis and then various other people would sort of add in different things, you know, sort of inequality and social justice.

And there was a kind of becomes a danger that you just start throwing in every kind of cause that, you know, there's so many. And we reached a stage, I think, about four years ago here in Totnes, where we kind of realised that all the people who were motivated by climate change, who were going to get involved in transition, were already involved. And there were some people who were motivated by climate change who were going to get involved in transition were already involved and there were

some people who were motivated by climate change but who didn't get involved in transition because they thought it was not enough or too much or whatever to click who knows why people don't um but then there were also lots and lots of people in the town who love the town who love its history who love its culture who are gifted business people who love its young people working with these young people but who aren't motivated by climate change so for them yeah i'm not really i don't get it really i'm not getting involved in transition and that felt like a real shame and so about four years ago four and a half years ago in transition transition time Totnes, there was a really conscious shift to say, actually, we are about building a new economy in this town,

and we want to create a culture of entrepreneurship, we want to make the new economy happen, and we're going to step up to do that. And we kind of changed that language, and all these people started getting involved who hadn't got involved before who were kind of sitting on the edge thing well this is potentially interesting but let's see where it goes and that was their kind of moment to come in you know we started running the local entrepreneur forum every year we started a business and livelihoods group we you know people started

were starting businesses and start trying to kind of connect them together so that felt like a really important shift so in transition network now we did a whole big project over the last year called the transition story you'll find stuff on the transition network website about it where we work with a guy called john alexander at the new citizenship project and and did a lot of work as an organization about saying, well, is it actually still appropriate to always be saying, starting every discussion with what we're in response to? Is it actually really very, is it helpful? And actually where we came to out at the end of that was to say, was a shift in how we message transition.

So we now don't say we do transition in response to, we say there is an international movement of people around the world who are doing remarkable things. And let us tell you about it. Get involved. Become part of it. And I find it really interesting in terms of when I speak about transition to not have to start with my 15 minutes of slides of graphs going catastrophically up and down and to convince people why we need to do it.

I don't think we need to do that anymore. Most people, for whatever reason, have a profound sense that something really isn't right. And here in the UK, we now have what sociologists call an epidemic of loneliness you know the sort of world around us the society around us its connections are kind of unraveling really and so actually so so we just start with with saying actually transition is a movement of communities around the world who are reimagining and rebuilding the world around them and that's enough and then from then then we just tell the stories about what people are doing and actually it becomes obvious when you hear those stories that they're motivated by climate

change but they're also motivated by love of place and livelihoods and a whole range of different things so i think that's been a real shift in terms of how we you know that doesn't mean that we have decided that we don't need to do anything about climate change anymore or that any of those issues aren't issues anymore there's a lovely expression in buddhism where they're called skillful means which is actually you know that uh this the most skillful way to achieve something might might not be the most obvious way or the most kind of logical way you know so that actually people who have some degree of insight are able to use

skillful meeting what are they doing but actually and so for me that's that's kind of the shift you know do we don't or it's for me it's a good it's skillful means to not always be having to because also you run this risk of saying uh here's a checklist and you get it a lot in kind of alternative green campaign stuff you know actually you can join in this if you agree with all these things actually for me the beauty of transition is that it's really about the art of finding common ground with people and trying to find common ground in as many different settings as possible so something like the atmos project for example on the board of the five of us who are making that happen

there are people from all different political spectrums and economic perspectives all different kinds of things but we're all focused on making that project happen and it's not always possible but actually where possible we should really be working very hard to find common ground and as soon as soon as you set up your your shop and you say you can get involved if you agree in climate change uh oil depletion and that the economy is screwed then actually you lose a lot of people so maybe we just put that stuff around the back and we welcome people in with how exciting the stories we have to tell are yeah because it seems that the things that you were talking about like localization and a lot of the you could say the ideas that you're drawing upon come from a tradition maybe of which is which is politicized a lot so yeah i think it's interesting how do you

work consciously with not alienating people is there something i mean you already talked about it but yeah what are the other experiences you have in drawing in different people and not starting from a you could say a party political or an ideological well i think i mean i'll talk a bit today about the 21 stories this book we did for cop 21 you know those stories are almost all you know the story is is what it leads on not what's behind it so there's a cafe so in fishguard in wales they started a a surplus food cafe they realized there was loads and loads of food being thrown away by supermarkets and shops in the town. It was perfectly good.

So they started a cafe where they collected that food from the cafes and then they cooked with those food and they make food available at reasonable cost to people. And it's a social enterprise. They train young people. They very much see what they're doing as a response to climate change. But it doesn't say on the outside of the cafe,

the climate change cafe or anything. It's it's the transition cafe in in and it's very good food and its reputation is for good food um and i mean i guess for me you know that i mentioned before the new lime brewery for me is is not about is a new economy project it's about a resilient economy it's about how we celebrate this town and its story and its culture how you might have a vibrant enterprise which is supporting other enterprises that come through in the town but actually you know what is it that really motivates a lot of people is it climate change is it economic issues is that really motivates a lot of people? Is it climate change? Is it economic issues? Is it beer? For quite a lot of people, it's beer, actually.

It's a really good way to people, and particularly if you make better, more delicious, more unusual beers than everybody else. I mean, I love, for me, the whole craft beer movement is really fascinating because at a time when you have an awful government whose everything is about economic growth. You know, democracy is being sacrificed on the shrine of making economic growth happen. And as soon as you start a business, the first question is, well, when do you start to export? Where do your export markets come from? when do you start to export where do your export markets come from in the craft beer movement you have you have an industry you have something that has grown from nothing to now seven percent of all

beer sales in this country are local independent craft breweries growing rapidly because the beer is better not because you have to sign up to some political uh a kind of treaties before you can drink it just because it's better and once you've tried it you wouldn't go back and drink any of the other stuff so for me that's what a lot of transition projects are doing it's like if you strip out that stuff up front which is

counterintuitive I think for a lot of activists I think then you get into a much more interesting world then I guess then the question of the people then would ask is there something which in your experience from working with transition where you feel um this is not transition or is there a limit is there something where you've you had discussions about on the other end of the spectrum or is it just everything goes? Because you're working in the network with people all over the world.

I think it's funny. I went to a thing, I remember, about six years ago. I got invited up to London to this meeting of social entrepreneurs. Well, no, of people who'd done very well in business and who wanted to do their thing, give something back, you know. So the idea was you went, you pitched your social enterprise to them for 15 minutes. They asked you questions for 15 minutes. And if they liked what you did, then individually some of them might say, let me help you develop your marketing.

Let me help you develop whatever, you know. And I went and talked about transition. And I spoke for about 15 minutes, had some questions. And I went and talked about transition and I spoke for about 15 minutes, had some questions. And then the first question was, this guy said, so what you've done is you've created a really powerful brand and then given it away for nothing to people all over the world over whom you have absolutely no control. I said, yeah, that's about it. And he said, that's mad. I said, well, in your world, that's about it and he said that's mad I said well in your world that's mad but in my world it works

so actually and part of that is there's a huge amount of trust anyone anywhere in the world can start a transition group and they could do awful things with it if they chose to do so but I don't know of any examples where that

has ever happened you know i think there is a lot to be said for i think one of the things that we got right at the beginning of transition was that balance between um uh being over prescriptive and under prescriptive so basically we have a set of values and some principles and we say if these resonate with you then you're doing transition and then we have a very simple kind of light touch procedure for becoming an official transition initiative

but beyond that people just do what they want to do but then they're kind of answerable to the people around them and the community of other transition groups around them and uh and if they do it wrong then people won't come you know it has a lovely sort of self-regulating element to it if you become a total egomaniac sort of messiah everyone's going to go off and start another group you know so you have to for transition to work together you have to work with other people and you have to demonstrate some humility and you have to otherwise it doesn't work you know why are you going to put your time into something that doesn't work so um yeah that

seems to have worked quite well you know um i thought i thought if i've answered the question or if i went off on no i think yeah, the question was about if there's a limit or if you had experiences of somewhere where you felt this is not transition. No, I can't think of anywhere. I mean, I've certainly gone to places where I've thought, ooh, you could be doing this a lot better. And I've certainly been to places where, you know, and there have been some transition groups that haven't worked.

And there have been a couple that have fallen to bits very acrimoniously. But not many, given how many there are. It's a very low rate of ones that really, you know, there's quite a few that go for a couple of years and then find it hard to sustain that momentum. But then there are new ones and then some of those groups that don't last then actually come back again after a while.

So, yeah, but I can't think of... I don't have any horror story transition initiatives, no. Ones that became infiltrated by Nazis or something, no. I don't know of any of those. Here at Schumacher College, we talk a lot about learning from nature in how we do things and about looking at ecosystems and the principles. And a word that you use a lot in transition is resilience, or at least it was, especially in the beginning, a key concept.

So how would you say that you are learning from from nature and the way it works and permaculture as well seems to be a key inspiration from that um or how conscious is it how yeah there's a there's a little booklet that you might find useful to have a look at that we did that you can find online there's a pdf of it called who we are and what we do that was a document that was a kind of founding document of transition network when we were at that early stage of trying to think about what is this thing you know transition was just taking off all over the place and we felt we needed a network to to it. And so we designed that organisation, actually inspired a lot by things like Fritjof Capra's Web of Life

and that idea of how cells work, how the membranes around cells work and how they let things in and out and sort of give the thing its identity, but they grow with it and so we we really imagined transition network as a cell membrane around a self-organizing kind of a cell and that was a kind of a metaphor that worked really well for us so for us that was really one of the founding principles of what we do and yeah i mean with a background in permaculture i mean there's

lots of ways in which i mean just one example is for example the way that we talk about economies as being like a of money being like a nutrient in a forest you know in permaculture it's always that thing if you have a forest how does a forest deal relate to and deal with nutrients you know they don't kind of come in one end and go out the other or just flow through forests and ecosystems have become incredibly sophisticated how they trap nutrients and store nutrients whether catching it in the wind or in the water or whatever and then cycling it as many times as possible you know nobody goes through a forest with bags of nitrogen to kind of

fertilize it you know it the way that it holds that nitrogen and then in the leaves and then circulates it and all that kind of thing you know and actually that's the model we take for our model for local economies that the money money should be retained and circulated as many times as possible before it leaves that's not to say that no money should come in or out but that's the fundamental principle and for me that that analogy of talking about a forest in that way is something people go oh i see you know you could talk about economic models and people just glaze over but you say it's like a forest and nutrients and people go oh i see i think when i came here to study and i went to top nest and i wanted to learn all about Transition Town, Totnes,

it was kind of like, so where is it? And I think, yeah, that tells a lot. It's all about the relationships and you could almost say it's invisible. And on this question of the, I think there's something about appropriate scale, which seems a very important thing. I heard recently someone describe it this way, and I'd be interested to see what you think, that in a way you could say that transition towns is permaculture applied to a town scale,

transition towns is permaculture applied to a town scale but also you can think of of it applied to a regional scale and that's for some the most the interesting next level to begin to look at in terms of localization because it seems some things are not viable to do at a town scale, it can be quite hard to grow food, for example, inside a town. And so how do you see that the next, or maybe also looking into the future of where transition town can go in terms of bioregions? I think it's interesting what you say about when you come and you know transition in tottenham's being invisible um there's a really interesting book by a guy called luigi russi who was a student here i've met him in gardens which i started reading and i thought oh it's just going to be a bit too academic for me and i didn't really quite relate to it. But actually I think it's brilliant because what he did was he just came

and immersed himself in it for a year and he got involved in different projects. And he, it's a brilliant book I think because he really puts his finger on lots of things about transition and how it works. And you know, people say sometimes, you know, I came to Tottenham so I couldn't see any evidence of any transition, but it's like, well, what did you did you expect and what were you what did you imagine you were going to come and there

were going to be goats on all the roofs and you know no car well there was a member a very angry German guy who came into the office one time said I've come all the way from Totnes to see the famous transition town and you still have cars it's like well what do you expect? I mean, it's not Shangri-La. It's a market town in Devon. But actually, when you really... So it's one of the reasons why Hal now does his tours on Fridays, not every Friday, but quite regularly, does his transition tours, which are really good in terms of giving people a sense of what's happening

and how it's all starting to tie together. And if you just and walk up the high street how would you kind of come across that you know and a lot of the things that people imagine when they think oh i'm going to a transition town and you know the things that they imagine they would see like big wind turbines on the hills and really cool kind of eco design projects they take time. You know, we've been going for 10 years, and Transition Homes only just submitted its planning application two weeks ago. That's a project that's been going for five years. Atmos will be coming up for the referendum to decide Atmos in June this year. That's a project that's been going since 2007.

And that's with really good people working on it you know these things take a lot of time and then we've got to build the things and that's going to take longer again you know so um uh so in terms of the next kind of step up you know i i think as a model for how communities organize and do this kind of stuff, I think transition is great. And I think something like Atmos actually is sort of modeling a kind of an important sort of plug-in to transition. I'm trying to think of a sort of analogy you know it's like a an extension of of of transition about communities owning assets and atmos is a brilliant example of

that you know that actually by the time that's done we'll have a development down there of like a 60 million pound development of housing and workspace and energy community energy and food production and all that new public space energy health center and so on all built using predominantly local materials using local labor held in a community land trust. And so the community starts to build a reserve of assets, a resource of assets. And that's a really, really important next part of it. I think for the next step up, I mean, I would look to things like

what's happening in Preston, in Lancashire, where Preston City Council, who are a Labour council, who their response to the austerity cuts has been uh to get an organization called the center for local economic strategies to come in and do a study for them looking at where they spend their money so they got together the seven key stakeholders in preston so that's the hospitals the universities the schools the police and so on and together they spend £750 million every year on goods and services so CLES mapped where does the money go?

where does it go? and they were horrified to find that only 4% of what they spend is actually spent into the economy of Preston and only about 35% is spent into the economy of the whole county the rest of it just leaves and for me that analysis like we did with

the economic blueprint here in Totnes but on the scale of a county or a town is a really really powerful way of concentrating minds and I think bioregionalism is really interesting, but I think I kind of wonder about its relevance here. Because as a movement, bioregionalism started in the US where maps for political decision making were basically just people sat down 150 years ago with a ruler

and just drew lines across maps that bore no relation to topography, to geography, to hydrology or whatever. You know, whereas here, kind of political boundaries have evolved over hundreds thousands of years and are much more like that i guess for me at a county scale it's taking there's something in that preston work which is saying actually if you really want the economy of this place to flourish you need to also look at a sort of transition approach on that scale as being a public health strategy you know we need to be looking at public health together with sustainability and climate change together with employment creation and when you bring those things together actually taking an approach which is about strengthening local economies rather than just handing them over

to big corporations to come in and do what they want to is a much better way of meeting our needs as communities we need work we need uh control over what's happening and all of that stuff can be done better that feels to me the case we need to be making if we want to really step all this stuff up is rather than saying economic growth will solve all our problems we need to be saying actually we could take a more localised approach and actually meet our needs better. Who are you speaking to and who are feeling drawn to transition? And it seems there has been a change.

So I think it's not surprising that in the beginning, it's the, in Danish we'd call them the fire souls, but the people who are burning to make a change in the world, the activists and so on. But how do you see who has been drawn historically and also who is missing from transition? Who would you like to become a part of it? Who are not, I guess? There's a very good piece of research that was done at the University of Reading, which was a very good kind of analysis of transition and the people who got involved, Roedd ymchwil yma wedi cael ei wneud yn y Brifysgol o Reading, a oedd yn gweithio i ddysgu ymchwil a'r bobl sy'n ymwneud â hynny.

Yn ymwneud â cyfnod cyfnod, mae ymchwil wedi bod yn ddigon llwyddiannus. Roedd ymchwil yn y Norwich yn d ystod y ddysg wedi'i wneud yn Norwich amser yn ôl, a dweud bod yn y cyfnod y cyfnod, y tair o bobl yw pobl sydd â hanes ddwylo o fod yn gweithwyr. Maen nhw'n ymddangosol, os ydych chi'n ei hoffi. Y tair o bobl yw pobl a oedd wedi bod yn rhan o beth a oedd wedi gadael amser yn ôl, maen nhw wedi cael eu llwyddo ac wedi'u hwyl, a dyna'r cyfnod yw'r peth a'u gafodd nhw yn ôl. Ac yna y tair o bobl oedd pobl i aelodau and transition was what brought them back in. And then a third of people were people for whom any kind of activism was a new experience. I think transition hasn't been so effective in engaging marginalised communities,

you know, like poor white working class communities. Transition hasn't really had that much of an impact there. And in BME communities, I don't think it's really had that much of an impact necessarily although certainly some of the London groups there's kind of good levels of diversity in some of those groups I think sometimes there's a there's a risk that people tend to transition tend to be people who are drawn to the idea who feel a lack of feeling part of a community in their life and so transition is a kind of transition is transition is their attempt in the place where

they live that they might not have lived for very long to meet people and to build community to build a sense of community because so many people these days are moving with work and they're here and everywhere and they live somewhere but they don't really feel they belong there, they don't feel they're from there. So transition is kind of their attempt to root themselves in that place. So sometimes there can be a kind of a tension between that and the people who've lived there for a long, long time.

So sometimes people who've lived in a place for a long, long time rhwng hynny a'r bobl sydd wedi byw yno am ddwy hir o amser. Felly, mae rhai o'r bobl sydd wedi byw yno am ddwy hir o amser yn gallu cael ymdeimlad o, o, rydych chi'n dod yma i ddweud wrthym beth y dylid ein bod yn ei wneud. Fel yng Nghymru, rwy'n credu, yn y grwpiau trawsnewid cyntaf, rhai o'r grwpiau trawsnewid Cymru, y cyntaf o bobl a ddechreuwyd nhw oedd pobl Anglesydd sydd wedi symud yno, fel ffordd eu bod yn mynd i ymwneud â'r gymuned a chael eu teimlo yn rhan ohono. Ond yna mae yna ffyrdd o ddififfygau sy'n gallu dod o hynny. Ie, ond rwy'n credu y mae wedi bod yn ddigon llwyr mewn llawer o lefydd at cyflawni grwpiau eithaf gwahanol o bobl gyda'i gilydd, yn sicr o ran ystod oed.

Mae'n debyg ein bod ni'n ymlaen i'r diwedd, ond a yw unrhyw beth, unrhyw gwaith olaf neu unrhyw beth All right. It seems that we're about to end, but is there anything, any last words or anything that you would say to someone who maybe wants to get involved in transition or what you're doing now that if you want to learn more? Well, I think if you want to learn more about transition, have a look at the website, which is transitionnetwork.org. There's lots of resources and stories and things on there and there's also this book that we just produced called 21 stories of transition which has got a lot of those stories from around the world which are very exciting um i guess for me you know the thing that i i meet a lot of people who are doing transition in different places and

you know it brings it does bring something to people's life and people's experience of what they do. For me, I love the fact that I live in Tottenham and I can walk around the town and I can see things that have changed because of what we've been doing. I can walk up a street and I can see the nut trees that are there

because they were planted by TTT. And I can go to the station and there's food growing on the station because of TTT. And I can see the nut trees that are there because they were planted by TTT. And I can go to the station and there's food growing on the station because of TTT. And I can see solar panels that otherwise wouldn't be there. And there's something about that where you can see change happening. You can spend years and years and years lobbying to change some piece of legislation or to stop some, you know, to do some sort of campaign. And it's away and it's distant. am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am ddau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blynedd, am dau blyned, am dau blyned, am dau blyned, am dau blyned, am d you can see it unfolding on a daily basis. And that's something that as an activist gives you a kind of, it feeds you, which actually really reduces the risk of burnout and

exhaustion as an activist, because you can still see it happening around where you are. You've been listening to an Upstream interview, which is part of the Economics for Transition project. To listen to more interviews and episodes, please visit economicsfortransition.org. The that break to the morning we run to the shoreline calling us to speak of soil weights under the earth and throes

Fasting ghostly shadows Tall like giants As we set fire to the sea As we set fire to the sea As we set fire to the sea As we set fire to the sea Snowgates rising in the Hallways

The flowers Moving from our boats That break Into The morning We run To the Shoreline

Calling Us to speak To the shoreline Calling us to speak the sight Blades under the earth and pearls Passing mostly in shadows Sting of sleet shadows, tall like giants As we set fire to the sea As we set fire to the sea As we set fire to the sea Cause we set fire to the sea Cause we set fire to the sea

Cause we set fire to the sea Cause we set fire to the sea A O We are currently fundraising for this project, so if you like what you hear, please visit www.economicsfortransition.org to make a donation. Thank you.