About TT Bolton
Transition Town Bolton (TTB) are part of a movement founded in England in 2005 that now has hundreds of UK towns involved and thousands of towns involved across 34 countries.
The starting point is reality – not an ideological political bias, but the strength of evidence: peak oil is now upon us & will lead sooner or later, but soon, to trauma in the life of our society that is deeply dependent on oil: typically volatile & higher fuel prices and electricity, disruption of food supplies that currently pass through long-distance supply chains, business closures, creeping or galloping poverty of much of the population & spiral of recession. We are better off forwarned and that is why we each have to fully come to terms with the practical implications that are starting to manifest across this island and across this lovely town Bolton.
Transition is a way to encourage citizens of an area (village, town, city, district, territory, island, forest …) to become more aware of peak oil and climate change, and their profound implications for our way of life. The central concept of transition is the movement of resilience is the ability to respond in a more positive way to the constant wave of economic crises and to become more autonomous.
TTB is community-led. Anyone can be involved. Everyone is needed. People involved so far are wide-ranging in backgrounds, ages, and experiences. Why not join in with any of our projects and groups?
We aim:
- to raise local awareness amongst business, council and civic leaders about the imminent challenges of a future with less oil and a changing climate, and
- to work within the wider community to strengthen and design a more local economy, reduce the cost of living (in every sense, not just monetary) and develop a low-carbon, sustainable and resilient future for Bolton. We can’t do this without the understanding and engagement of leaders from civic, business, community, landowners, lawyers, musicians to make our day cheery, farmers to teach us about local climate and growing our food local, young old small and tall all getting involved. PS it isn’t a rehearsal it’s new and inspiring way of life with you at the centre as an informed citizen. We are all the same because we are all different – however the realities above are for real. We all have to take a more active part in our local village town society, peak oil and climate change aren’t spectator sports.
Transition is the positive change we need to make in our hearts and minds in order to prepare for a changed world. Climate change and peak oil means we have to change, but if we start building a more resilient community and economy now, a sustainable future can also be a very bright future. Crisis = opportunity.
The idea of resilience is central to the transition movement, which starts from the understanding that our current dependence on oil makes our economy and entire way of life very vulnerable. Transition is about finding ways through local community initiatives to develop our local strengths and become less dependent on oil.
In reality Transition is about a lot more than that. It is about people taking a more informed and active interest in their present and future needs; being more aware of the world in which they live and the consequences of their actions; thinking about the way they really want to live, and getting stuck in to make that happen, in whatever ways work for them. (based on http://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/content/what-transition)
What is the best way for people to link in with Transition Town?
There are several ways to get involved. First make sure that you join the e-mail list to find out what is happening and who is doing what.
Join us on Twitter and Facebook lets hear you voices please 
Come along to the TT Cafe meetings and join in
Browse the many videos and links below on this site and so you know what is what… It will help you to start thinking about what you like doing.
You might then want to meetup with others at local events and you might want to get started on some project locally – this is how you’ll work out who you get on with and who is doing what. If you find there is no one doing what you want to do, you might be interested in starting a group around a specific project yourself and again we can put a call out for anyone else interested in joining you and you’d get going with the help of others in the town.
By Sharing information across the town, there are hundreds of people from all walks of life on our mailing list, they are always keen to hear about what’s going on in your part of town so let them know by emailing us tell us about your local project so we can promote it through the TTB website and mailing list.
You may want to think about starting a group where you are, talk to your Councillors and MP’s – they are busy and won’t understand peak oil unless you make an effort to explain the local consequences. Type in your postcode here and it tells you who your local councillors and MP is – go on try it.
We have a film library & TT Bolton can help you to raise awareness across the town with film nights (equipment, setting up, films etc) and talking at any meetings you may call. You can use our website to publicise your events.
Why aren’t the government doing this? – Well, there is a parliamentary group that has been set up but guess what ‘no one can print cheap oil’ that’s it. When you understand that, you understand that as far as the old oil driven economy goes – it’s gone and not one ‘government’ from now on will change that so they too are in transition phase – and globally. So we now have to prepare our own lives for something different rather than argue (one group v’s another) about what we could have done or should have done and by waiting for ‘government’ we avoid doing positive things ourselves, if we try by ourselves we’ll get frustrated and angry but if we work together we’ll build a strong trust in ourselves and our way of dealing with it & that is the backbone of the transition town economy – it’s not top down economy any more we simply have to find our own voice, become confident that there are alternative ways of providing services in the town that might at first seem a bit different but if they work…. We welcome any expertise local authorities have in moving towards a lower energy Bolton and especially if it comes from the heart of the ‘corporate department’ that is in charge of the town purse and who would otherwise persue Bolton’s ‘core strategy’ ‘designs’ for the town that even the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) “the UK’s leading planning body….” Authority say are simply not peak oil resilient.
What is the origin of Transition Towns?
The idea emerged in 2005, in a project run by a permaculture [2] teacher called Rob Hopkins in Kinsale, Ireland, and then developed in Totnes as the first Transition Town. It has since grown into a worldwide grassroots movement, involving thousands of communities seeking to strengthen local economies and livelihoods by avoiding the repeated global- economic- collapse model that we have become accustomed to and moving towards a new model of a more ‘permanent culture’. This is a more stable and permanent way of organising the needs & aspirations of a village, a town, a city and ultimately a planet.
- Rob Hopkins explains resilience
What do we do?
We show transition or ‘new economy’ films to groups and business’s across the town that show examples of how to live a more resilient and satisfying life by doing things differently & by gradually eliminating time-wasting and resource-wasting activities. As a group we support each other, and raise awareness amongst individuals, local business, local government organisations and other groups, while also offering this website as a place to find links to local businesses, groups and organisations that promote a resilient local community and economy. Only the people of Bolton can organise this.
Michelle Long from BALLE explains how communities are using locally owned businesses to create a safe space outside the dominant system for the next economy to develop.
Michelle Long, Executive Director, BALLE, Charleston, South Carolina, May 21, 2010 from BALLE on Vimeo.
Michelle Long, on growing local sustainable business, May 21, 2010
Contact
Please use the contact page above.
Transition groups are forming in Horwich, Bolton, Bury, Adlington, Wigan, Lancaster, Clitheroe and are moving gently beyond ‘business as usual’.
We have a small group who meet up and organise local projects.
Ann, Sue, Elizabeth, Boyd, Vicky, John, Elspeth, Lorraine
With special thanks to Angus & Rod Everett for providing permaculture insight.
This short video is from a lecture by Richard Heinberg & explains how the oil prices are killing the old global economies and how we might begin to think about helping families across Bolton. To deny this is now happening in Bolton is to deny that you are in touch with global reality.
Even Richard Branson is working hard on this.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-sWEXYKEMY
http://live.edie.net/_Richard-Branson-on-peak-oil/VIDEO/913890/25995.html
Richard Talks about his work to accelerate entrepreneurial responses and there are other videos on this page that talk about the economy in more detail.
http://www.transitionlinks.org/?page_id=803
[2] [1] based originally on Bill Mollison’s seminal Permaculture, a Designers Manual published in 1988, the Transition Towns brand of permaculture uses David Holmgren’s 2003 book, Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transition_Towns#cite_note-1