South Cheshire Transition Network

Have you noticed how important storytelling is to politicians and marketeers ?

Politicians use stories to explain their vision of the future and why we should vote for them. The rise of New Labour with the ‘third way’, or the case for supporting the invasion of Iraq are two recent examples in the UK  and, of course, the  election of President Obama was the result of a carefully crafted narrative  combined with his exceptional ability to conjure a mood and capture an audience.

Creating a story that inspires a vision of the future that your audience bonds with and wants to be part of creating is absolutely vital, particularly one where a revolutionary change is required to overcome existing inertia.

Rob Hopkins, the principal architect and visionary behind the Transition Movement has recently clearly set out the ‘Why Transition’ story in his 18 minute presentation to TED¹ on the 23^rd July (see Rob’s Blog, www.TransitionCulture.org  and specifically the TED talk notes on http://tinyurl.com/l4yonc).

One of the difficulties I have had with the Transition Movement is, to put it simply, “the problem is so big and overwhelming , what on earth can I do that will make any appreciable difference”. Rob addresses this common feeling directly:

“Two of the important stories we tell ourselves are either that someone else will sort it all out for us, or that we are all doomed, I’d like to share with you a very different story, and like all stories it has a beginning.”

He goes on to set out the current stories for the future i.e.  business as usual (it will all be OK); everything will collapse (the one favoured by media as it sells more papers); or technology will rescue us (but we cannot create new land or energy systems so the world will continue to be constrained).

Rob then outlines the creation of a different story :

My work has been involved in the creation of a different story, the Transition story. It is the story of the generation that looked peak oil and climate change in the face and responded with creativity, imagination and adaptability. It is the story of seeing that living with less, moving from Gross Domestic Product to Real National Happiness is a step forward not a step back. It is about seeing this inevitable change in direction for humanity as an enormous opportunity rather than an enormous crisis. It is that story I want to share with you today.

Rob then describes how the Transition movement has rapidly expanded, illustrating, with examples, how local groups have taken the initiative and are making changes across their communities in a whole range of ways – enabling the Transition story to gain a hold:

“In our culture we have a dearth of stories that speak of the generation that adapted to challenges such as those we fact today. I see one of the key roles of Transition as being to tell those stories. The story of the town that prints its own £21 notes. The story of the community creating its own energy company. The story of school carparks being turned into food gardens. We have seen recently the story of Michelle Obama making an organic vegetable garden on the lawn of the White House. The last time that happened, when Elinor Roosevelt did that, it led to the creation of 20 million ‘Victory Gardens’ across the US. The question I would like to leave you with is “for all those aspects of life that your community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how are we going to:

• significantly rebuild resilience (in response to peak oil)
• drastically reduce carbon emissions (in response to climate change)

I argue that the only way we can respond the challenges we face, of peak oil, climate change and economic contraction, is by shifting our focus to rebuilding the local economies ravaged by years of economic globalisation, rebuilding networks to support local food production and local manufacturing, and that therein lies the potential for the creation of skilled, resilient local jobs and businesses that will actually sustain us into the future. Personally I feel deeply grateful to have lived through the Age of Cheap Oil and all the opportunities it has brought me. I have been astonishingly lucky. Let us honour what it has brought us and move on. The only future it can offer us now is profoundly unmanageable and not a place we want to go. By loving, and then leaving, all that it has done for us, we are able to begin the creation of a new, more resilient, more nourishing world in which we find ourselves fitter, more skilled and more connected to each other.

If we wait for Government to act, it will be too little, too late. If we do it on our own, it will be too little. But if we do it as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.”

¹ TED (Technology Entertainment Design) which brings together  the World’s most inspired thinkers to engage and enable the spread of ideas that attitudes,  lives and ultimately the World (see www.TED.com).