This is a CTP of initiative: Transition Norwich (UK)
This critical turning point relates to the end of regular core group meetings within Transition Norwich. The core group within a Transition initiative is intended to provide some kind of co-ordination and leadership, although their role vary across different initiatives.
The interviewee suggested that the process was more a ‘petering out’: a gradual process consisting of small events over time, rather than a specific critical turning point. However, the disbandment of the core group was, overall, a significant event within the overall history and development of Transition Norwich. The interviewee joined the Transition Norwich core group when they were trying to get some ‘new blood’ into the core group [along with Tom Harper and Jane Chittenden]. He thinks that this was about six months to a year after the Great Unleashing (see CTP 109), towards the end of 2009. Then, he was on the core group for about a year.
Over the course of about a year, they met monthly. During this period there was an ambiguity about what the role of the core group was which was never resolved. The interviewee felt that this made the core group fairly ineffective and led to frustration: ‘Nobody really grasped that elephant in the room and took us beyond it...so we got stuck in that place.’
This resulted in a situation where several people wanted to leave the core group at the same time. It wasn’t actually disbanded at this point. What happened was that it was handed over to a younger inexperienced group of volunteers who the interviewee thinks were quite daunted by the responsibility. They asked him to stay on but he had decided to end his participation.
The new core group decided to have an open meeting that anyone could come to. However, this did not resolve the situation and led to some personality clashes, resulting in the core group petering out.
Local ‘green’ cultural milieu: Geographically, there was always a widely felt view that Norwich was an ideal place to have a transition initiative and that it should prosper in such an environment.
The ambiguity within the original Transition Handbook (Hopkins, 2008) - also reflected within Transition Norwich - as to whether there should be a core group. The handbook suggested that the core group should disbanded after the initiative had been established and that the initiative should then nurture itself. This was a structural tension which related to the overall role, function and mandate of the core group.
The lack of “cohesive bottom up leadership”: No-one showed leadership in taking the group beyond the dilemma that they faced, for example by proposing and implementing an organisational model. Collectively, they were unable to clarify the role of the core group or come up with an alternative. It created a vacuum which meant that Transition Norwich petered out. However, some activities carried on and still carry on today.
A lack of structure and decision-making processes made the making of a decision about the role of the group and the overall function of the Transition initiative challenging. For example, there was no established format for holding the meetings. The group contained some very talented people but they collectively were naive about how groups work and function.
Social tensions and personal tensions existed in Transition Norwich at the time. There was a lack of gelling in the group. The newer members of the core group felt disempowered to a certain extent. It felt like the power resided with the longer standing members but they did not want to show leadership perhaps because they were exhausted from the work that they had already done on Transition Norwich. The group dynamics didn’t really work and people didn’t feel ownership of the task.
A challenging framing of the issues: Transition Norwich was primarily framed as a response to a world in crisis. So, being in a situation where you feel that you have to show leadership of Transition Norwich is emotionally daunting. It was a scary and hard thing to commit to do. You need people who are grounded or who gel in a group and are supporting each other. The anxiety about the magnitude of the task was quite a present factor. It was talked about, but not in the context of the dysfunction of the core group. This was coupled to people’s need to make a living. Some people left the core group because of time constraints. E.g. some people wanted to focus on their business or livelihood.
A tension about whether Transition Norwich was a grassroots organisation independent of government versus receiving grants so that they could employ people. This was illustrated by a planned funding bid to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) bid. A first stage bid was submitted and DEFRA were keen that they put in a full application which could secure around £100,000 for the initiative. However, this created an internal dilemma as to whether they were ‘selling out’. The interviewee felt that it wasn’t even that different people were on different sides of this dilemma, it was that several of the people were conflicted about whether they should accept the money. On the other hand, there were people who wanted to secure the funding so that they could develop projects and activities. On the other there was a feeling that they should remain independent and grassroots focused. They tried to collectively agree how to deal with this but it got nowhere so it was abandoned. Again this was an example of the inability to make strategic decisions.
Transition Norwich had gone through a start-up process and had a public ‘Great Unleashing’ (see CTPs 108 and 109 respectively).
After the Great Unleashing (CTP 109), they developed a set of theme groups. There was also a set of proposals being developed including a Lottery proposal for the Farmshare.
Following this, they still had some regular core group meetings. Some of the founders want to leave so they brought in some new people which is when the interviewee got involved.
A situation developed where one or two difficult people alienated a lot of people in Transition Norwich and there was no social mechanism to address that.
Subsequent activities were then petering out. For, in the opinion of the interviewee, there was a loss or dispersion of energy. However, some people did gravitate towards particular projects such as Farmshare (see also CTP 110) where they put their energy. The interviewee thinks that there might have been some attempts to restart Transition Norwich, but has not heard that these have been successful.
There was a primary contestation about whether there should be a core group or not (as discussed above).
Then there were a set of secondary contestations – for example, how anti-capitalist they should be. There was definitely a contestation about how radical and ‘hard green’ Transition Norwich should be, and what it meant to be in Transition Norwich. So, there were some group ‘forming’ issues – particularly in the context of anti-capitalist and hard green versus soft green values.
There was also contestation around some specific issues. For example, there were discussions going on around whether people who took air-flights shouldn’t be in Transition Norwich. Some people felt very strongly about this on both sides of the argument.
There was a contestation on how imminent the collapse of society was. People had different views on that and that alienated people.
Then there were social/personality conflicts between different people which didn’t help, but were not fundamental to the disbandment of the core group.
The primary contestation was not overcome but one resolution was that people who did have energy got involved in projects such as Farmshare (see also CTP 110). So, some of the practical issues were worked out in this project. So, a lot of the talented people got involved in that project.
The interviewee felt that members of the core group did realise that it was a critical turning point at the time but they tried to convince themselves that it wasn’t and that everything would be OK if they withdrew from the initiative. So there was a degree of self-deception / self-denial going on amongst the key protagonists.
Everyone was aware of the existence of the tension around the core group function. Maybe they weren’t aware of how significant and damaging it was but everyone could see the issue.
People within the core group could see it coming. It wasn’t discussed or reflected upon though.
The end of the core group clearly had a negative effect on the ability of Transition Norwich to deliver its objectives. If the core group had existed and functioned effectively, that could have led to some positive impacts. However, the interview also suggested that if they had disbanded the core group straight away and empowered the groups to show more leadership and perhaps having social functions (like Transition Cambridge), that might have led to more activity. However, having a core group that did exist but was uncertain of its role was not helpful.
The key learning point is that the ambiguity in the organisational model is a problem. As a hypothesis, either way could work (i.e. strong core group or no core group), but they need certain social relations and contextual factors to make them possible. In some settings, the bottom up model might be fine, but it needs to be implemented as a bottom up model and people need to be empowered to work within that. In other settings, having a strong central core group could work well. Given the sort of people who are involved in community activism in the UK, any town that starts a Transition initiative will attract people who are for and against both models.
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