This is a CTP of initiative: Transition Town Tooting (UK)
This CTP involves the circumstances which led to the establishment of TTT. It is a CTP because without the formation of the group none of the other activities or CTPs would have taken place.
The formation of Transition Town Tooting was an important personal turning point for Lucy Neal. She had stopped doing a big full-time job – running the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) which took up every minute of her life for 25 years. She stopped doing this and decided to “hang lose and absorb what was going on in the world”. She saw the Al Gore film Inconvenient Truth, read the Upside of Down by Thomas Homer Dixon, found out about Peak Oil, etc.
The end of 2006/7 was an important time in terms of drawing people to the peak oil movement (for example the film End of Suburbia, books, etc.). There was an unfolding cultural shift – a widespread realization of global environmental problems.
As part of this personally-experienced shift, autumn 2007 found the interviewee undertaking a week-long course at Schumacher College at Dartington near Totnes on the topic of learning. One evening, they took the cohort into Totnes to a Transition Towns education meeting. Rob Hopkins was speaking, along with the head teacher of KEVICS (the secondary school in Totnes along with some students). She noticed that a different language was being used that was principally defined by the framing the global problems of our era with some positivity – at least in terms of moving beyond doomsday scenarios and also focusing on practical solutions for action. She brought that newly-gained knowledge with her back to London and started “making noises”: reading more the topic and possible civil society actions, putting things on the internet, etc. At core, she wanted to get stuck in – adopting appropriate actions. Simultaneously, though, she wanted to follow something – drawing on pre-existing initiatives and attempts to overcome global environmental issues. Hence, she quickly turned to pre-existing Transition Town initiatives and activists. Specifically, she went to see Duncan Law who had set-up Transition Brixton – whom he found very helpful when trying to set-0up TTT.
Furthermore, in trying to set-up TTT, she was a great believer in collaboration. First, she contacted her friend Hilary Jennings who she swam with at the Tooting Bec Lido. She had not heard of Transition but she agreed to be a co-Chair.
Second, she wrote to Sadiq Kahn and he invited anyone who had ever written to him on environmental issues to the House of Commons for a reception. At the meeting, she tentatively mentioned Transition Towns and 8 or 9 people suddenly gathered around her. This was, above all, a real moment of “terror” and realization: the next day, she was walking down the road and she realized that “I am who I am looking for” – that it was up to her to become the change she wanted in the world. She, thus, called a meeting at her house and, technically, that is how TTT started.
Third, she also met with the local MP Sadiq Kahn and asked him who they should speak to in order to talk across and include the whole local community. He was very supportive and always has been. He came to the 2009 Conference in Battersea and brought Ed Milliband with him. They are proud of the dialogue that they have with him.
Fourth, and finally, through her professional engagement in the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), she had been involved in an arts project in the town and through that she had met two people shaping her approach to transition activism: Indrajit Patel (who ran a chemist) and one who called Naseem Aboubaker who ran an organization called Mushkil Aasaa. Though their contact, she became a great believer in the concept of “Nemawashi”: a Japanese term for ‘loosening the roots’ or laying the foundations for something. She considered these contacts as “wise owls” in the town. She thought that if this makes sense to them, then it was worth pursuing. They both said that it accorded with how they saw the local community.
The course at Schumacher college was a significant event in that it exposed Lucy to the Transition model.
All subsequent TTT events follow on from this CTP.
One important issue has been the lack of public space to hold community events. Tooting has no cinema or arts centre. There are a lot of faith houses, but there is no common place for different communities. They had the idea, early on, of moving around. This was manifested in the Trashcatchers Carnival (see CTP 115) which was communal, collective and in the street. It is quite a radical thing – the community taking-up space
There have been some difficulties and contestation. Hence, every year, they have a vision and pathways day where they take stock of these. Jenny Walker came up with an idea when they were talking about the difficult things, where she said that there is a horrible feeling where you are the last pin standing. And they all knew what she meant. These things come about through the pressure of what you are trying to do.
The momentum of the project as a whole has not yet stopped it in its tracks. For the rhythms, requirements and dynamics of the initiative often undermine the initiative and its development:
Interpersonal conflict and distrust are a key area of contestation identified by the interviewee. Issues like not fulfilling expectations and hurtful conversations were, thus, outlined by the interviewee who recalls instances whereby people would utter things like: “You said you would be there”, “Did you realize you hurt me when you said that?” ).
Moreover, people would sometimes come into a meeting and accuse them of not doing enough, but those people would only come to a few meetings and not come again. For it was like a natural law, that if they didn’t find what they were looking for they left. Hence, the initiative is a very human affair and very fragile. As a remedy, the interviewee suggests that they need to keep a sense of humour and perspective about it all.
Furthermore, in the early days of the initiative, they would have meetings where somebody new came along and became agitated and said that they weren’t dealing with particular issues. They turned it around and said “You could deal with that, we will support you”. For they are just a bunch of people who can’t deal with lots of stuff at the same time.
In addition, she doesn’t even know whether it should be called an organization: there is something very fluid about it as transition is more a set of energies. Hence, the initiative is, broadly, defined by the fact that some people move away, fall away, don’t reply to an email for six months, etc. Finally, they now have small amounts of money and there are things to be worked through about how decisions are being made etc. (Not a conflict per se, but they do need to go through a challenging process of reaching an agreement on certain processes (see CTP119)).
It felt very significant at the time for her – and especially the speed at which you got drawn into things. Within weeks, she was on a platform with Polly Higgins, Rob Hopkins and with people from Transition Brixton at the Conway Hall.
For the first couple of years, it felt like a roller coaster but it was exciting.
In terms of change ambitions, and at a personal level, she was trying to find a coherent way of living: where she wasn’t upset every day by a sense of what the future would be for herself and her family. She found it frightening that she couldn’t narrate a future with any sense of conviction about her place and her world.
Against this backdrop, and as an outcome of her engagement, Lucy discovered that creativity was really important to Transition which is then where the idea for her book Playing for Time came from. She was very focused on that for a couple of years. Part of that book comes from what she has learned from Tooting. And the book contains quite a lot of details on the establishment of TTT – seeing it as a creative process that has to be collectively imagined as a public act.
Furthermore, through her engagement, she gradually discovered that the thing that interests her the most is how we might find new stories and ways that can be acted upon. The greatest pleasure she has is when you can see people connect to something. If she had a magic wand, she would want everyone to see that they have a part to play. It does come back to this courage needed to step up and stand out.
Moreover, she learned that this is what she is going to do for the rest of her life. When we connect intentional change to creativity, all kinds of things that were not previously possible become possible. The key is what happens between us. This is, sometimes, a difficult, precarious and providential process of learning to become community creatures with all the ups and downs this involves – being a novel thing for us to do as humans. They are reclaiming a traditional role for the artist in the local community as a truth teller and agent for change. She has learned that it’s not nonsense to speak like this and she can put it into action and try it out.
At a broader level, the interviewee realized that Transition, as a whole, is all about learning – and societal learning currently has to be very rapid. For her, it can best be captured through the image of learning to ride a bicycle: trying to figure it out, experimenting, piloting. She, thus, thinks that they are still in the foothills. Hence, whilst she initially thought that she had to learn in detail about the new economy and peak oil, she realized that she only had to learn about them to a point where this theoretical knowledge would inform the context in which she can then work, experiment and learn.
Moreover, whilst they initially sweated about not having a community energy project or a community currency, she realizes that it is a process of relaxing and forgiving yourself: Are you doing what can be done with the people that are there? For she has learned that change happens slowly:
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