A visit to Totnes: the first ever Transition Town

On Wednesday 18th January two members of Transition Heathrow made the 220 mile trip out west to Totnes; a small town in Devon that has the distinction of being the first ever town to become a Transition Town back in 2006. We had been invited to come and present the story of Transition Heathrow, Grow Heathrow, and the Heathrow Villages communities.

The talk gave us the opportunity to go back a few years and speak about the different factors that came together to create Transition Heathrow. We began at the Heathrow Climate Camp in 2007 around the same time that Plane Stupid came to prominence and then went on to talk more about the No Third Runway campaign and how activists ended up living in the Heathrow Villages. Then we told the story of Grow Heathrow and how the site has been transformed since it was occupied on the 1st March 2010.

The following day we got to see Totnes for ourselves. We were given a full tour of the town and got to hang out in the offices shared between Transition Town Totnes and the Transition Network, where we heard about what the Transition group members had been up to in Totnes. The main focus was on their successful Transition Streets project, which is something we hope to bring to the Heathrow Villages in the near future. This project has involved roughly 500 residents, who have come together in groups to discuss how they could save money by reducing their carbon emissions. The most obvious result of the project is the installation of solar PV panels on over 150 households and the town’s Civic Centre, but the biggest benefit as reported by residents who have taken part is how it has allowed them to get to know their neighbours better.

After lunch we caught a lift up to Landmatters, just outside Totnes, where we were given a tour round their site that drew comparisons with Grow Heathrow – although they are far more established and are based on a 40 acre site deep in rural Devon. Their grounding in a permaculture approach to living on their site had led them to build some very comfortable and homely benders, install a 2kW solar PV system, herd sheep and goats, harvest oak timbers from their wood, and cultivate productive vegetable beds. Even on a cold and windy January afternoon it was a delight and a privilege to be given an insight into their chosen lifestyle.

Later, we enjoyed walking around Totnes and remarking on the abundance of independent shops on the high street, the focus on local produce, and noticing the shop windows carrying stickers saying “We accept the Totnes pound”; an initiative co-ordinated by the Totnes group to increase the resilience of the local economy by encouraging the circulation of money between businesses and consumers within the community.

Thankyou to everyone for making us so welcome, especially to Chris Bird for acting as our host for the duration of our visit, and you should all come and visit us if you’re ever in London!

Whose land? Our land

More and more people are becoming interested in growing their own food. But our ability to take this essential step towards a sustainable future is being stifled by the radical inequalities of land distribution, in a country where patterns of land-ownership have changed little since feudal times, and the access to land of those who don’t own it has actually diminished. We will not be able to succeed in our Transition aims without challenging these inequalities and improving access to land for the many.

At a recent Transition discussion I was at, there was much talk of the value and importance of local food growing to a sustainable future. The merits of small-scale organic farming are many – reducing the oil-dependency of our food-chains, and reducing our own dependence on systems which destroy biodiversity and alienate us from our environment. Rising food prices are a direct result of climate change and decreasing oil supplies, and are a key aspect of the social injustices embedded within these twin crises as the poorest suffer most – both globally and in our own country. For these reasons, and for many others (perhaps mostly just because it’s fun), more and more people are starting to grow their own food, which is a fantastic thing.

But there is a problem: there doesn’t seem to be enough land. Allotment waiting lists have been rising rapidly across the country, in some places as much as 15 years long, and the price of land is also on the rise. More of us than ever live in apartments, without any garden to dig, and those who vision the future of our cities seem determined that this trend should continue.

There are some really useful initiatives going on to mitigate this situation. Some Transition Town run garden-sharing projects, to match up those who want to grow with those who haven’t got the time to keep up their garden; and there’s an interesting project originating in Manchester called Allotment Finder, which is trying to get the data about the different waiting lists for different sites and inform people who are searching for space where they might be able to find it more quickly.

But fundamentally, these are just sticking plasters for a crippling disease. In the UK, 0.3% of people own 67% of all the land in the country. It’s no wonder that the other 99.7% struggle to share out the remainder between us: to find enough space for our lettuces or for our community spaces. Not only is the ownership of land centralised in the hands of a tiny group of aristocrats, little changed over hundreds of years, but large swathes of land are desperately under-used and ill-managed. The UK consists of about 60 million acres. Admittedly not all of this is cultivable, but we do not lack in fertile land on this island. Even in an inner-city borough, a little walk around your neighbourhood will probably reveal numerous empty plots and scraps, going to waste. Without enabling people to access this land, there is no way that they can start to transition to a more sustainable way of life.

When the MST visited Grow Heathrow

It is not a coincidence that access to land is a core issue in the achievement of our aims: the removal of access was a core element in the onward march of capitalism which has brought us into the unsustainable present. As land was gradually claimed and enclosed from the commons, those who were left without land had to find other means to earn money, in order to buy food and to rent back the space to live in from the landowners who had taken it all. In some parts of the world, this process is happening right now, igniting resistance from indigenous groups such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement.

The ZAD, in Nantes, France

Internationally, many groups are struggling on this issue. Reclaim the Fields, for example, is a Europe-wide network of community food growers who are very concerned about access to land, and Grow Heathrow – the squatted market garden where I live – is part of this network. In May last year I joined a RtF event in France, where about 200 people took over and cleared an abandoned field that lies in the path of another proposed airport near Nantes – you can read more about it HERE. The current government’s attempts to criminalise squatting will make it even more difficult for people to reclaim land to grow and live on, reinforcing the existing injustices at a time when a radical rethink is more necessary than ever.

This blog was taken from the Transition Network website as part of their social reporting pilot project.

Help Energise Grow Heathrow!

When it comes to electricity, Grow Heathrow is entirely off-grid, meaning all the electrical power used is generated on site.

With our friends at Cambridge Greentech, we have arranged a four day workshop to design, construct and install a small DIY wind turbine, using basic materials and tools. We’ll be following the design guidelines laid out in Hugh Piggott’s book: “A Wind Turbine Recipe Book”.

To make this possible, we’ll need to raise some funds. So Transition Heathrow is launching it’s first ever crowdfunding campaign. If you want to help energise Grow Heathrow for the winter, then use the Donate button on our website to make a contribution.

But that’s not all! The workshop is designed to teach the skills needed to make your own wind turbine, and we’re looking for people to join in. Participants will learn woodcraft, metalcraft, electronics, and more. The workshop will be over four days, from the 2nd to the 5th of November. If you’d like to attend, please email info@transitionheathrow.com or call our site number 07890751568.

We’re hoping to raise £1000 in the next two weeks. We rely on donations to fund these kind of projects, so if you’d like Grow Heathrow to continue doing what it does, please donate what you can.

And if you don’t have any spare cash, please send this on to someone who you think might!

Learning to live off-grid

One of the many challenges facing those who commit to low-impact living is how far they should compromise when it comes to the use of modern conveniences. We may reject the excesses of our consumerist society, but at the same time we aren’t about turning back the clock to a less-connected, less-aware age. How many transitionistas do you know who aren’t engaged in a close personal relationship with their laptops or smart phones?

At Grow Heathrow, we live without a TV, microwave or fridge, so going off-grid seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision to take. Being able to generate our own energy would allow us to meet our modest electrical needs without contributing to the problems associated with large scale centralised energy generation from nuclear or fossil fuels, and would future-proof us from rising energy costs.

We decided to install a relatively small solar system. This compromised four 190 Watt solar panels connected to four 120 Amp hour deep cycle batteries, with a charge controller and inverter to manage the inputs and outputs. Scouring the internet for good deals kept the price low, but without compromising on quality. If we’d decided to install a grid-tied system, the installation would have required a professional electrician, but because our system is entirely off-grid, our basic knowledge of electrics was enough to set the whole thing up ourselves, which meant we could avoid the kind of hefty installation costs you see on most domestic solar systems.

The technical challenges of solar power are, as we’ve been discovering, minor compared to the necessary adjustments in attitude and behaviour that anyone choosing to go off-grid will face. Since our panels went up, barely a day goes by without someone checking the weather report for the next few days. Because our supply of energy is dependant on the amount of sunlight hitting the solar cells, we are having to adapt our usage patterns. Sunny days mean we can crank up the volume on the stereo, get out our power tools, and keep the lights burning well into the early morning. But a string of grey overcast skies means having to ration our use to the barest of essentials – rapid bursts of internet usage and a solitary string of LED bulbs in the living space after sunset.

The days where power is in short supply are becoming more common as the days grow shorter. As a group, we’re having to make decisions about how to share the power out between us, which can sometimes be difficult. It’s interesting to see how visitors to the site react when they’re told that there isn’t enough power to charge up their ipod because Joe needs to finish writing his fortnightly blog for the Transition Network, but that’s all part of building resilience and learning to plan ahead.

Ideally, we wouldn’t be so reliant on a single source for our electrical needs. Diversification would reduce our exposure to energy droughts. Right now the wind is rattling the panes in the greenhouse around me, and my thoughts keep turning to the power that could be charging up our batteries with a small wind turbine spinning in the air above.

But our change in attitude isn’t just about the way our energy is generated, it’s also about the way it gets used. Out go the kettles, toasters and electric showers, and instead we burn wood to cook our food, heat our living spaces and provide us with hot water. Any electrical appliances we still use tend to be small and efficient. We still manage to keep ourselves clean, comfortable, well connected and well fed, and our voyages in off-grid living are only just beginning.

Building our own media alternatives

The corporate media empire have too much power. Not just power but increasingly political influence. We need to break out and build our own media alternatives… this social reporting pilot project is a good start.

We are too reliant on the mainstream media. Any campaigner will tell you that it is essential to send out a press release to the mainstream media when organising a protest or any kind of event. It would be foolish not to – by disengaging with the mainstream media you would be missing out on an entire audience – an entire nation potentially waiting to hear your story. And that is part of the problem. The mainstream media needs us but at the moment we also need them too.

Like many across the country I love reading the Guardian on a Saturday morning with a cup of tea. But one thing I recognise is that although better than most news outlets, the Guardian are definitely not on our side – they need to be swept aside too. Take climate change for example. Most would agree that the Guardian have got it right on climate change and that they understand the implications and need for action. But then you turn the page and see a full page Ryanair advertisement for cheap short-haul flights. To me this highlights how the Guardian, when it comes down to it, are just another capitalist money making machine. The Guardian are so built in to the system that they will always put profits before balanced news stories and so therefore cannot be on our side.

Any transition to a new world has got to involve radically addressing and reclaiming our media. This is why I am most excited about taking part in this social reporting pilot. Independent platforms such as this, Indymedia, the Manchester Mule and Schnews are some examples which have started to re-evaluate how and why we do media – but we need to build them up. Just Do It – the new climate change documentary is another good example. The film shows a journey activists went on from being worried about climate change and simply wanting to ‘bring down emissions’, to a position where they see capitalism as the system perpetuating climate change. What was different about this film was that that it was made possible through crowd funding and hours of volunteering. This was important because the message of the film matched with the ideals on which it was made.

This weekend just gone London hosted the Rebellious Media Conference, a gathering which aimed to explore “inspiring examples of radical media practice and to further develop radical critiques of the mainstream media.” Post Murdoch hacking scandal this conference couldn’t have come at a better time. A hot topic for debate at the conference was inevitably social-media and the digital revolution. #Arab Spring and #OccupyWallStreet are just two examples of how social-media is re-framing how news is told to the world. Twitter and Facebook have definitely revolutionised our ways of doing media but how much we can trust these new forms of media is debatable.

Although we use it as a tool we cannot rely on the mainstream media as a means to getting our media out. When it comes down to it the powers we are fighting against have more media control than we do – some of them own the media after all. So what can we do instead? “10 steps to a hard hitting action media team” (published by some ex climate campers) advise this:

• Communicating to other groups in the movement through your website, social-media, meetings/gatherings/conferences and through existing networks.
• Produce your own media: news-sheets, e-mail bulletins, blogs, zines
• Use independent media to distribute and get news. Check out: Occupulse, Indymedia,Manchester Mule, SchNews, Dissident Island, Reelnews

This blog was taken from the Transition Network website as part of their new social reporting pilot project.

How the transition town movement found Transition Heathrow

Transition Heathrow jumped on board the transition town movement at a very different stage to most. Where did it all begin?

Four years ago in the small village of Sipson 700 homes faced being completely wiped off the map by a third runway at Heathrow making Heathrow Airport the biggest single source of emissions in the country . In August 2007, the now famous Climate Camp set up in Sipson – one of the three Heathrow villages (alongside Harlington and Harmondsworth) which faced destruction and the loss of livelihoods. Was there support for the camp? Yes there was, as Christine Taylor local resident explains here:

 “It came at a time when the campaign against the third runway needed a boost. Local people had battled against expansion plans for years, mostly with passive petitions, polite letters and a little genteel placard waving. It wasn’t until 2002, when hundreds of homes were threatened, that the No Third Runway Action Group (NoTRAG) was formed. Yet we were still playing by the rules, while BAA and the government appeared to be planning to move the goalposts.”

Plane Stupid shuts down Stansted Airport

Another key group which needs to be mentioned when thinking about where Transition Heathrow originates from is Plane Stupid. Plane Stupid – a direct action network against airport expansion and short haul flights, played a big role in the successful campaign to get the third runway stopped – amongst other victories which included scrapped expansion plans at our other major airports; Gatwick and Stansted. As part of the anti third runway campaign one of Plane Stupid’s projects was Adopt-a-Resident; a scheme which partnered local residents with activists from across the country – the idea being that if the bulldozers showed up activists and residents would stand side by side to stop them. This is when we really started to get to know the area – the people, the community, the history.

Of course we need to stand up to corporate climate criminals such as BAA but for many we didn’t feel like this was enough. It is daring, brave and scary facing arrest by putting your body on the line to create change but a far more overwhelming task is creating more longer lasting change. The need for a long term vision based on community resilience in the Heathrow villages was clear and luckily enough someone had a plan. As part of a university project someone from Plane Stupid had drawn up a long term vision for the Heathrow villages – and the vision was called Transition Heathrow. All it needed was some people to move down there.

And so six of us did. In October 2009 six Plane Stupid members moved into Harlington and set about setting up a Transition Town – a very daunting task having only read Rob Hopkins’ “Transition Handbook” and not knowing much else. Firstly we just observed. We went to all the local meetings and found out what made the community tick, what people’s interests were and more importantly where we should be putting our time and energy. One thing that was immediately clear was that there were no community spaces – nowhere for people to come and discuss all the plans and ideas that people had while the runway was still on the cards.

We had been cycling past this abandoned plot of land every week with three broken greenhouses on it when one day we decided to stop and have a look – the site was in a state but looked perfect for everything we wanted to do; growing, setting up a community space etc. We asked the local community about the idea of squatting it and to our surprise we were overwhelmingly told to go and do it.

Grow Heathrow before and after

And this is where I sit now writing this blog. On land that was to be tarmaced we have created Grow Heathrow – a squatted community market garden which offers a positive alternative to the power structures that build runways on peoples homes for profit. We now have a base from which everything happens and where the ideas of making the transition to a low-carbon post-oil future spring off from. A year and a half on and the site has been transformed from a derelict mess into a thriving hub for local residents and activists to meet up, share knowledge and share practical skills for a future threatened by climate change and peak oil.

This blog was taken from the Transition Network website as part of their new social reporting pilot project.

Waiting for Alice

We have finally received some photos from when Grow Heathrow hosted ‘Waiting for Alice’ two weekends ago. The play was great and was beautifully set up in the backlands making for a very picturesque setting – here are the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/47991844@N06/sets/72157627597309451/

Thankyou to Jabberwocky Theatre Productions for the amazing performance.

At the 2011 Transition Network Gathering – Part 1

Last Friday 8th July, Dai and myself caught the train to Liverpool to attend the 2011 Transition Network Conference, which this year was held in the impressively tranquil grounds of Liverpool Hope University. This event provides an opportunity to catch up with recent developments from Transition Initiatives across the Transition Network, and is always well attended.

Friday evening was a chance to catch up with old friends and familiar faces. For me, one of the joys of being a transitioner (or transitionista as they say in Barcelona) is being able to pick the brains of people who are pioneering the new approaches to social change that will be needed in a future dominated by climate change and peak oil. Even though Friday was meant to be a relaxing way to break the ice and ease into the weekend, simply having a beer at the bar got me involved in a lively group discussion that managed to take in most of the hot topics that had been making noises in the network recently. One of which being the link between Transition and activism… but more on that later.

Having made sure to check the list of workshops in the program and sign up to the ones that looked most interesting, Saturday started the conference proper. A group session in the spacious University chapel started the day, with attendees treated to fine words from Peter Lipman, Rob Hopkins, and others intimately involved in the Transition Network. Lucy Neal of Transition Town Tooting told the first part of the story of the conference. Then on to the obligatory mapping exercise, which involved some tricky manoeuvring around the chairs as we tried to work out where everyone hailed from. This year, as well as the usual turnout from groups around the UK, the representation of international Transition Initiatives was notable, with visitors from as far afield as the USA, Brazil, and Hong Kong.

The first of the workshops I attended was an update on Local Currencies, with contributions from Transition Totnes, Transition Lewes and Transition Brixton, which have been leading the way with their attempts to establish local alternative currencies in their respective areas. Just the fact that the idea of a local currency could be accepted to the point where a run of banknotes could be printed and issued was impressive enough, but we heard from each speaker about the ambitious plans they were still hoping to put into practice in the near future.

Next up was the Transition and Activism ‘Hot Topic’. Both Dai and myself attended this session, since whenever this topic is discussed, Transition Heathrow is inevitably brought up as an example of a Transition Initiative that’s managed to successfully blend the usual Transition approach to social change with a strong undercurrent of confrontational direct action. At our Regional Gathering a few weeks previously we had addressed the topic in detail, so I felt that we could contribute a lot to the discussion. It turned out to be an extremely productive session where we explored what it meant to be an activist. There was input from veteran activists from the anti-roads movement, and we heard from people involved in Transition groups in Spain who had been an integral part of the recent #spanishrevolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXBjfsECy7k

Saturday ended with a fascinating talk by Jay Griffiths who explained the links between wildness and kindness, trees and truth. Later we returned to the bar, where Moving Sounds were making music that got the audience dancing until closing time, at which point the crowd spilled out onto the grass outside to continue the party. Like Harry Potter, I’m going to leave you hanging for Part 2, which will include more from the second half of the Conference, along with some general reflections from the weekend.

Notes from the transition gathering

Last Saturday, the 11th June, Transition Town groups from across London and the Thames Valley region held a one day gathering at Grow Heathrow. Over 50 people attended throughout the day with representatives coming from transition groups as far afield as Hackney and Woking.

The day included speeches from Paddy Reynolds (Transition Heathrow) and Ben Brangwyn (Transition Network Co-Founder), 2 world cafe sessions, a workshop by Organic Lea on food growing, a direct action workshop from Seeds for Change and finally a discussion on the hot topic of the merging of transition and activism.

Ben Brangwyn has written a report on the Transition Network Website which can be read HERE. All the local papers have written stories on the day including the Heathrow Airport Newspaper ‘Skyport’ and here is our summarizing notes (with a big thank you to everyone who attended):

World Cafe 1 – What are the central issues for transition groups in our different areas?

• Not enough allotment land
• Time commitments
• Political vs non-political engagement
• Running before you can walk – small steps
• Ownership/hierachy/equality
• Accessing ethnic diversity
• Food growing – Guerilla garden
• Land sharing
• Bikes
• Movie nights
• Local money – Brixton
• A lack of resources
• Making links and defining a community

World Cafe 2 – How can we be most effective in tackling climate change and peak oil?

• Having a site/hub space works well
• A good balance between ages is good
• Thinking globally but acting locally
• Empowering your local community
• Building capacity to address time commitments
• Local food growing is the easiest way to attract people to transition
• Reskilling events to share the skills amongst your group

Activism and transition debate

• Political action needs to happen but not necessarily as part of transition town movement
• Transition is political just not party political
• Direct action and activism can alienate people
• Direct action often argues for dismantling of capitalist system. Transition doesn’t have a position on this view
• Transition is direct action and activism. We don’t rely on governments and take matters into our own hands
• Activism is a dirty word – it needs reclaiming
• Direct action and activism can be a part of the transition town movement as long as we build up our own positive alternatives at the same time
• It often depends on individual groups attitudes/feeling towards it
• A merging of the two is necessary due to the cuts in public services

Newsletter: Issue #3

With June approaching that can mean only one thing for Transition Heathrow. Time for another newsletter to let everyone know what we have been up to for the past couple of months. It was a struggle to fit everything in over 2 pages but we managed it. You can download a copy from HERE or if you want a shiny colourfully printed one then come down to Grow Heathrow to grab a copy. Enjoy!