Jersey is officially a transition island!
Well done, all.
From: "Ben Brangwyn" <benbrangwyn@transitionnetwork.org>
Date: Sun, Oct 23, 2011 08:53
Subject: Jersey now "official" initiative
To: <nigel@mistweb.net>
Nigel,
Great news - congrats to you and your team. There are a lot of islands now from all parts of the world, particularly New Zealand, Canada and Scotland. We've often wondered whether a kind of sub-network of island transitioners would emerge - many of the challenges and opportunities are specific to the island environment.
I'll send a more formal email shortly, in the meantime, you're very much "official".
Regards.
Ben.
Summer Fiesta
10th September 4.00 - 7.00 at Brian Adiar's farm.
The Summer Fiesta is only 2 weeks away, how time has flown! Here's a reminder of the event and a few things to bring. We would like to encourage people to come on public transport, bikes or walk. There is a bus stop right outside the farm; the route 25 bus leaves town at 4.15 and the route 27 leaves the farm at 18.49 and 19.49. There is parking on site but please... consider car sharing; perhaps post your offer or request on the Jersey Car Share Facebook page. The idea is to bring a picnic to share; in the spirit of Jersey in Transition we would like people to bring something they have grown, made and/or swapped. There will be a bbq to use and a fire on site. Please bring a blanket/cushion to sit on and a torch. There will also be music and dancing, please feel free to bring your instruments including your voice too. We also hope to have a wishing tree on site so please bring something to hang on it. To minismise the impact on the site please take away your rubbish and re-cycle what you can.
We are going to be setting up on the Friday night and also on the morning of the party; any help you can offer would be fantastic. Get in contact with Maz and she can let you know the details.
Most of all it would be great to see you at the party! Please come and enjoy ;o)
Maz
Eco kids
Do you want your children to grow up in a community that supports them & encourages them to flourish...in a world that values their special talents? Would you like them to play outside, get muddy, laugh & not worry about if they are wearing the right pair of trainers? Would you rather your children were having water fights & playing in the sun ...than glued to a computer screen? ...Yup me too.
"If you want to clean up this town you have to begin by sweeping the floor" ~ Back to the future : )
What are your talents? I've got lots of ideas folks but I'm going to need your help to keep the ball rolling
Eco kids is a group which aims to build community, get kids interested in and respecting the environment and have some good old fashioned fun. We would like to be as inclusive as possible...everyone is welcome... We would like all our events to be free ...so if you have any skills you can share with the group or can get access to a free venue or you just have a great idea for an event please get in touch.
We are a sub group of Jersey in Transition so you may like to check out the facebook page or website, which has info about loads of exciting stuff.
Michelle
The work that re-connects
Report from the workshop held at Reg's Garden, 13 August 2011, led by Clare Carré.
I might have been slightly apprehensive about being dragged into some new age thinking, had I not been briefed that this workshop was based on the work of Joanna Macy and how this had evolved. Accepting that there will be transition - you may call this a great turning or unravelling - this will involve holding actions(e.g. conservation of species), alternative structures and a change of consciousness.
After introducing ourselves, we did several milling exercises, stopping in pairs, holding hands, looking into each others eyes and expressing gratitude towards the other person. After a feedback and tea break, we walked backwards in a circle, remembering our ancestors all the way back to the first neolithic farmers, then forwards again to the "me" in our times, giving thanks to all that our forebearers had bestowed on us. In small groups we talked about our feelings and what we would do for the healing of earth if we could do anything. As the rains came tumbling down, we sheltered and spread out a wonderful bring-and-share picnic.
For me, the most memorable thing came at the end. We were standing in a field by a bonfire, giving thanks to the winds of the North, the South, the East and the West, each time facing in that direction. We were throwing twigs on the fire, when two flares went up in the distance, one after the other. We phoned the Coastguard to report this. Funnily, when asked in which direction we had seen these flares, nobody knew for sure.
All in all, I found this workshop a useful exercise for transitionists. Only by connecting with each other and with the environment in a loving and honest way, can we hope to achieve healing.
Anna
Local farms and farmshops
The following response to the item on the left, which appeared in the JEP, was written by JiT members Bernard and Françoise Carré.
We are responding to your invitation as shoppers who have been using farm shops for many years, for several reasons.
Firstly, on points of principle, we consider that the commercial survival of farm shops is essential to the survival of small farms, such as exist in Jersey. These farms have very high running costs, simply because Jersey has become a high-cost environment for any kind of production, and they do not have the advantages of scale of farms in the UK or continental Europe. So at present they cannot compete in purely financial terms, as suppliers of Jersey supermarkets; to survive they must be able to sell their produce themselves.
But why should the Jersey small farming industry survive? To sum up the several reasons in a single word: resilience. Specifically,
- Resilience of the local economy, which already depends too much on a single finance industry, which is becoming increasingly fragile. Jersey is still well-placed to have a quality food industry, with its excellent soil and climate and a magnificent agricultural heritage.
- Security of healthy food supply requires a multiplicity of local growers. There is mounting evidence that the globalisation of food production, distribution and retailing through supermarket chains involves substantial risk to small communities. How often are the supermarket shelves going to have to be cleared, not in just one country but at least twelve? There are now countless examples, with the turkeys from Hungary, bird flu, swine flu, foot-and-mouth, and now German bean-sprouts which have wiped out large-scale Spanish vegetable farming. For good reason people everywhere want to buy local, they want to know what they are eating. More and more they will want access to the source of their foods. It is a matter of Public Health.
- Resilience in a world of rapidly escalating fuel costs (with immediate knock-on effects on fertilizer, refrigeration and transport costs) and climate change, resulting in water shortages. These are all reasons for returning to relatively small-scale, more organic farming, as promoted by the rapidly growing Transition movement. Think global, act local.
There are other reasons why Farm Shops are precious, less tangible or easy to express. The joy of buying really fresh produce, from a farmer one knows: the farm shop serves an important social function, enriching one’s sense of community – and our dependence on our planet!
At the JiT general meeting (Thursday 28 July 2011, 7.30 pm, JAAC, La Rue de la Pouclée et des Quatre Chemins, Saint Martin), we hope to hear 10 minutes on this subject from John Hamon of Vermont Organic Farm.
The constitution
The Constitution of Jersey in Transition was approved by a vote at the general meeting held at the Town House on 27 June 2011. The steering group had drafted the text, and there were two amendments proposed. All of this was duly voted on and the document is now as official as it can be. Details of the meeting, the amendments and the votes are all recorded in the minutes of the meeting if you are interested. This means that we can go ahead with other steering group business. We intend to persue charitable status and getting Jersey recognised as an official transition town, or more properly an official transition island.
Other jobs in hand include establishing a proper membership form and membership process, so that when we are asked how many members we have, we can give a realistic answer. The debate goes on as to whether there should be a membership fee. The new constitution allows for one, but says that it may be set at zero. One option is to set it at zero, and ask that those who wish make a donation, possibly in the region of £5 to £20 a year, when they join. Now that we have a constitution, we can apply for charitable status, so that you will know your money is safely held, and we will be opening a bank account to keep it in. At the moment, the main benefit that membership will bring you is the right to vote at general meetings—like the one that adopted the constitution—but we hope that there will be more tangible benefits as well in the near future.
There was talk at the last meeting about the fact that there are no easy contact details on this website, particularly for the groups that meet around the island as described in the News column on the left. We are aware of this. The truth is that some of the people who organise these goups are naturally reluctant to make their personal e-mail addresses public. We are looking into getting specific JiT e-mail addresses into use. There is still the issue that any e-mail address put in plain text onto a public website such as this can be 'harvested' by spammers and sold on, which can result in dozens or hundreds of nonsense e-mails a day being directed at it for years to come. There are tricks to prevent this, and we shall be setting it all up soon, using the best techniques we know about.
In the meantime, please do get in touch: most of the chatter and the planning of JiT goes on on Facebook. If you don't already have an account there, we are sorry that it is a commercial operation, but it is very convenient, and free to use. When you create an account there, you don't have to answer most of the questions you are asked, and you can also set privacy controls that mean that very little information about you 'escapes'. Once you are there, head over to the Jersey in Transition group page, and become a member to be kept in the loop.
Werkstadthaus Tübingen
JiT member Ruth recently visited the Werkstadthaus community workshop in Germany. There are a few places like this on the continent, but we have not found any in the UK yet. The Make and Mend concept as part of Jersey in Transition is still nebulous, but many people are excited by the idea and would willingly get involved if we could get it off the ground. The problem remains finding suitable premises, no matter how small or far from ideal initially. There are a few possibilities, and one of them is the currently closed-down Le Seelleur building near the new Town Park in St Helier. This would be ideal in many ways and we are exploring ways to make approaches to the right people. With the best will in the world, we are unlikely to get the use of a major building such as that if we have no more than a vague idea of what we would do with it. Careful study of successful working models such as Werkstadthaus Tübingen could give us the answers to sensible questions we will be asked, and could fire the inspiration needed for the Make and Mend project here in Jersey.
Summer fiesta!
The first ever JiT Summer Fiesta will be held in the late summer at Brian Adiar’s farm; address to be posted later. This is a gathering for us to bond and celebrate our growing community. To make this event as exciting, and as representative of all of JiT as it can be, Maz is asking for a representative stall, workshop, talk, or whatever, from each of the JiT groups out there, and from anyone with Transition skills to share and pass on.
Please have a look on the Summer Fiesta Group page for further details and to make contact. Please remember, this is everyone's Transition: please join in the fun!
In Transition1.0
The In Transition1.0 film evening went very well on 24th November. There were about 50 people in the Members' Room at the Société Jersiaise, and there was a lively discussion afterwards. Many of those present said that they wanted to do more towards putting Transition principles into action in Jersey. We discussed points made in the film, that Transition is not about recruiting other people, nor about persuading politicians and businesses, to 'do something about it'. It is more about the fact that 50 people in a room are aware of problems, and so can work together to create and get on with positive initiatives and real changes in our own lives that actually make a difference. The film highlighted typical issues—peak oil, climate change, lack of local resilience, food miles, dependence on others for things that can be local—and described how simple personal and small community actions begin to build the social cohesion that can make a real difference. Right here, right now.
The feeling in the room was that another meeting should be called, and that key opportunities for change should identified to drive things forward. Christmas was already getting close, and people suggested that a daytime meeting would be good for active participation. So, the Société Jersiaise Members' Room was to be booked for 12.30 to 4.30 pm on Saturday 15 January 2011. At the time and over the next few days, we began to wonder if that meeting should involve people bringing lunch and food to share, if it should begin with a re-showing of the film to remind everyone of the important points, that we may arrange the room as chairs around tables to facilitate group discussion, we may base the proceedings on unconference or more specifically open space technology.
There were two more J-CAN meetings before 15 Jan, 30 November and 28 December, and people came along and help us finalise the organisational details. J-CAN did not, and did not want to, 'own' the Jersey in Transition initiative. J-CAN was only in a temporary role, facilitating and enabling the first steps, before JiT could run and one day fly by itself. People who wanted to be involved came along and helped formulate the ideas, and took them away to become reality in the Island.
Jersey in Transition
Jersey in Transition is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction.
It started when a small collection of motivated islanders came together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of peak oil, climate change, and increasingly, economic stagnation? They recognise several crucial points:
To a certain degree, we all experience a life disconnected from our living environment, disconnected from our communities and disconnected from our landbase:
- that our energy-profligate ways of living have depleted our resource base to critical levels that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope
- that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
- that we have to act now, rather than wait for the government or "someone else"
If we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.
We began by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative that is asking the BIG question:
"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"
Cheerful disclaimer!
Just in case you were under the impression that Transition is a process defined by people who have all the answers, you need to be aware of a key fact.
We truly don't know if this will work. Transition is a social experiment on a massive scale.
What we are convinced of is this:
- if we wait for the governments, it'll be too little, too late
- if we act as individuals, it'll be too little
- but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.
Excerpts taken from transitionnetwork.org.
