During my talks, I often invite people to time travel in their imagination to a 2030 that’s not utopia, or dystopia, but rather is the result of our having done everything we could possibly have done in those intervening years. We do it because, as Walidah Imarisha puts it, “we can’t build what we can’t […]
Food Up Front, TreeMobile and more.
“Radical imagination isn’t something that individuals have, but something that people do together.”
Rob Hopkins was joined by Yumna Hussen and Lottie Cooke to discuss what a reimagined education system could be like.
Rob Hopkins shares the story of how his podcast series was born, and shares some of his highlights from the journey so far… It all started with the first lockdown. All of a sudden, weeks of work that lay ahead of me, travelling here and there to give workshops and talks, evaporated. I needed to […]
“If we change, the community changes. If the community changes, the world changes.”
Rob Hopkins tells the story of how it unfolded, with videos of the sessions and some reflections. Between March 3rd and 20th 2021, the Transition: Bounce Forward team hosted the ‘What Next Summit’, billed as “building community power through imagination and action”. While its focus was on Britain (due to the funding that enabled it) […]
Rob Hopkins interviews Drucilla Cornell – professor of law, women’s studies and political science at Rutgers University
How a community co-created a vision of 2030 on the front page of their local newspaper.
“…a deep commitment to meaningful and ambitious transition is growing across France”
Launching today, for online streaming, Rob Hopkins offers a review of This Good Earth.
I allowed myself to imagine how our political debates might look if they had ‘Yes, and’ at their heart.
Last month Transition Network took a dive into ‘What Is’, an inspiring, fascinating, and at times challenging immersion in the Transition movement and the challenges that lie ahead for us.
News, articles, interviews and stories from Rob Hopkins’ recent tour.
The Imagination Sundial could be used effectively over a range of scales, from small community groups to organisations, to movements to institutions, to the basis of a national imagination act.
So many times, in conversations with friends reflecting on things we see happening in the world, someone will say “well, basically we’re all shit aren’t we?” Or “human beings are basically vile aren’t they?” Or words to that effect. This belief in a selfish, destructive, greedy, violent core to our being is deeply pervasive and […]
In 2015, Zoe Moyden and Chris Bettles set off on a journey to visit Transition groups in the UK, Canada and the US to document them for a film. They were welcomed by Transition groups in towns, cities, villages and deserts, who hosted them, shared their stories, their projects, their hopes and fears, their learnings. […]
US Transitioner Beth Lively shares her reflections on what lockdown looks like for her. I’ve had a lot of uncertainty in my life over the last six years. Now everyone on the planet is feeling it too and, despite the public health and financial hardships we’re all facing, it’s comforting to have the company. I […]
Inspired by our recent post by Rob Hopkins, Sebastian Gahan of Transition Town West Kirby shares some reflections on what lockdown looks like for him. “Build positively and be ready for the next challenge!” he writes. Being lucky enough to live in close proximity to natural woodlands and beaches, I was about to set off […]
These days of the coronavirus lockdown have been, to paraphrase Charles Dickens, the best of times, and the worst of times. My intention in this piece isn’t to share my thoughts on what should come next, on how society might be rebuilt following all of this. Rather I want to give you a snapshot of […]
The declarations of ‘climate emergency’ by almost 70% of UK local authorities is creating intriguing opportunities for municipalities to work alongside community groups. Debbie Bourne and Farhana Yamin share the story of the Camden ‘Think and Do‘.
Graham Truscott tells the story of how Melbourne Area Transition bought a redundant cabbage field and turned it back into biodiverse, fruitful, community-owned land.
Imagining future towns and communities at ‘Pop Up Tomorrow’ in London
I spent most of this festive break on the Moon. I wandered amongst its vast craters, scaled its gently curving hills to get better views, sat on top of Moon boulders, left my footprints upon its fine grey dust. I sat and watched the Earth rise from behind the horizon, a green and blue marble […]
Given the scale and urgency of the climate emergency, why are we are proposing an activity which supports dreaming, imagination and creativity?
On July 13th in Totnes, an event was held which brought together local Transition, XR and other local groups to ask how best to respond to local government ‘climate emergency’ declarations. Rob Hopkins reports on the day, on its learnings, and how you might run your own.
Transition Marlborough wanted to help save the bees so they started joining up landscapes to connect pollinators and people.
A review of last week’s event in the Alumni Auditorium at the University of Exeter, hosted by the Global Systems Institute, called ‘So you’ve declared a Climate Emergency, now what?’
I’ve written this so that when my grandchildren ask me where I was when the great rebellion was sparked, when the great Transition began its inevitable momentum, I can show them this blog post capturing a remarkable week in France. I set off for France on what came to be known as the ‘Transition Tour […]
Last weekend, Transition Network’s Rob Hopkins and Filipa Pimentel travelled to Brest in France to take part in an event called Village Climate Déclic (which according to Google Translate means “Climate Village Click”). It was a weekend event organised by Brest Metropole and Ener’gence (local energy and climate agency), who had created an amazing weekend celebration […]
Rob Hopkins looks at the impact of the most recent IPCC report through the lens of imagination. For those who care about the world and the people and creatures we share it with, the last 6 weeks has offered a barrage of dire news. The new IPCC report called for “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented […]
One of the questions we are often asked at Transition Network is “how did it all start?” The story of the emergence of Transition in Kinsale in Ireland has been explored in the past, for example in ‘The Transition Handbook‘ or in blogs, but never in great depth. It is a delight therefore to be […]
A fascinating new piece of research on Transition has just been published, entitled Transitioning towards Sustainability: What are we waiting for?. It is the work of Keigo Arai, Kristopher Le Ray Armstrong and Fernanda Pia of the Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona in Sweden. The Masters thesis explores Transition in Ungersheim, a fascinating village in the Alsace in France which is […]
This is one in a series of blogs exploring imagination that you will find at Rob Hopkins’ website. Listening to Drew Dellinger‘s poetry regularly gives me goosebumps. Very shortly it will give you goosebumps too. He is a US-based writer, poet, speaker and teacher whose passions revolve around ecology, social justice, cosmology, social change and transformation. He […]
The late John Peel once said of The Fall that they were “always the same, always different”. The same could be said of Ted Trainer’s critiques of Transition. He just published another one, many of the points in which he has made before, and I have already responded to here and here. But there are […]
Finding creative, playful ways to get people thinking about ecological issues is one of the things that always fires my curiosity. So, when I was in Brussels recently, I was intrigued to be invited to attend the final dress rehearsal of a musical called ‘Urinetown’ put on by Brussels Light Opera Company (BLOC). Yes, odd […]
‘21 Stories of Transition‘, the book we published for COP 21 in Paris in December 2015, is now available here as a free download, both in English and in French. The book, comprising stories harvested by Rob Hopkins from many Transition groups around the world, and designed by Jane Brady, has been out of print […]
When I was recently at the #CTRLshift conference in Wigan, one project that many people were talking about was Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn’s ‘The Bank Job’, currently underway in a former bank in Walthamstow. It had just been featured in The Guardian under the headline ‘The rebel bank, printing its own notes and buying back […]
Rob Hopkins gets up at the crack of dawn to hear the dawn chorus, and reflects here on why it matters for our imagination, our curiosity, our empathy. [Originally published at robhopkins.net].
Rob Hopkins reflects on what it looks like when the economy begins to turn in favour of the local. [Originally posted at RobHopkins.net].
To mark the release of ‘Resilience, Community Action and Societal Transformation’, the new book edited by Thomas Henfrey and Gil Penha-Lopes, we hear from some of the book’s contributors. For the first one, Andrea Connell, Cheryl Lyon and Dave Sumner of Transition Town Peterborough in Canada discuss their chapter. This interview is published with thanks to Gesa Maschkowski, […]
[Originally posted at robhopkins.net] Rob Hopkins visits Arles, and reflects on what Van Gogh’s painting ‘The Yellow House’ can teach us about Transition.
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