Time for a change? Transition Town explained
IMAGINE Hebden Bridge in 20 years' time? What will it be like? What can we do between now and then to make this town an even better place to live? And what steps can we take to build a stronger community?
A group of us has been getting together for a year or so to discuss these very questions. We are not town planners or councillors. But we are keen to get this town talking to try and find it's own answers.
We started meeting because we share concerns about the challenges we face from accelerating climate change and the dwindling supplies of the oil and gas that fuels our lifestyles. These are big, complex and – let's face it – depressing issues that it is often easy to ignore when you live somewhere as lovely as this.
But the more we think about the changes we could make to meet these demands, the more positive we feel that this could be an opportunity to adjust to a better way of living as a community.
We started looking at the ideas behind the Transition Town movement which are catching on fast around the country and we think they have a lot to offer a place like this.
The term Transition Town sounds technical but basically it means a community taking practical steps to move towards what it wants to be like in the future. It means starting to put in place the kind of reality we would like to live in 20 years from now, knowing what we know about the changing world around us. It seems to us we need to become less reliant on food, energy, goods and expertise from far away. Gradually, we need to meet many more of our needs much closer to our own streets and doorsteps.
Transition ideas first took shape in Kinsale in Ireland where a community group devised a realistic long-term plan of how it could decrease its use of fossil fuels and create its own renewable energy.
There are already hundreds of villages, towns and cities who are taking on these basic principles in some sort of organised way including Keighley, Huddersfield, Ilkley, Marsden and Slaithwaite, Bradford, Leeds and Manchester to name just a few round here. They are even doing it in Ambridge, home to Radio 4's "The Archers". Totnes in Devon is the most advanced example of transition ideas in action.
There is so much already going on in this area around sustainability, and so much expertise to draw on. Organisations like the Alternative Technology Centre, the Upper Valley Renaissance Project and Treesponsibility have been working hard for a long time and there are new groups starting up all the time with new energy and ideas. We want to help pull all this together and get the community involved in the widest possible sense.
Over the next few months we will be talking to as many community groups as we can in the hope of working together to set Hebden Bridge off on its transition to being a carbon neutral area. We believe that the journey can make this community closer, stronger and more able to meet everyone’s needs in the future.
Watch this monthly space for more details, contact us with your ideas, and visit our website (when it is finished – address to be printed next month).
To find out more about the Transition Town telephone 07841004127.
For the transition town national website visit www.transitiontowns.org
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Weather for Halifax
Thursday 17 May 2012
Today
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Temperature: 6 C to 11 C
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