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But Beginning to Buzz.Our First Year Has Been Very Nuts and Boltsy, Building a Website and Awareness

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How is your initiative doing, activity-wise? :-) ...but beginning to buzz.Our first year has been very nuts and boltsy, building a website and awareness. We are about to have a group visioning day to see where the next year will take us. ...or half way to buzzing...lots planned...not a lot of people to do it...no one else seems excited...it all seems low key! We are looking to go official in the spring... "lurker" only - nearest initiative is about 100 miles away "ticking over" is not used as a phrase in the US. 2010 and onwards it's been a real drought in attendants - it's only the website that is happening 37 attendees at recent Raising Poultry workshop :) Charlotte has about 3000 residents ... A few people work very hard and achieve results. Community- wide interest is not strong. My own involvement is peripheral as I concentrate on specific things, such as waste and recycling, composting and local food growing, and an ongoing complaint with the Council! After one enthusiastic year, one year of winding down, we are basically now not doing much. after two years slow burn, momentum is starting to build.. Always looking to raise levels of awareness and profile. Onwards and upwards. Area too big - I've long wanted it to devolve to smaller local groups. No one has enough time to devote to it. Many members already involved in local green and community initiatives anyway, sometimes difficult to see where TT group fits in to existing initiatives. As long as I am not pushing, nothing happens (partly because I'm in the communication heart of the initiative dealing with newsletter and website). I've had a break of about half a year searching a new home. Meanwhile there's some potential developing which I hope will flower when I put the flame under it again. As to question 2, I've just been talking about T I since 2008. Fortunately there is a non official movement to get started next semester. We'll sure let you know about it. At least an event by one or two of the four local groups in Newcastle each month. Meetings monthly & strategy group too. Trying to secure funding for a peak oil report. Austin is moving ahead, with Dallas buzzing, San Antonio is just now coming on the radar. Some neighborhoods in Austin are far ahead of others... large metro areas of the USA are going to be enlightened neighborhoods first with lower education neighborhoods last. basically, it's just my family, and then it's only me.. my kids go to school, so they have no time to help. my son works nights and sleeps all day. it's just me and i wish there was someone else in leland nc that could help. the closest initiative on your list is 4 hours drive away. Because of a concert we just held. Bee keeping of course! + community orchard/ garden/ park veg growing partnership/ renewable energy project Been going 3 years; generally good 'doing' energy; regular group meetings (food, energy etc); weekly bulletin, lots of events, collaboration with other local groups etc www.transitioncambridge.org Big event this week with over 100 people coming! The Future of Local food and Farming But I am just lurking. But still not fully mainstream in the town. Community allotment, fruit sharing days, awareness raising, green drinks, community visioning event, ecohome open days - now starting a PV panel and home retrofit project. constantly do research on the net regarding , sustainable housing, PV, wind, earthship housing, salt water green housing. … TT has only just got going. There are early teething problems; control issues spring to mind with a couple of the core team. Currently mulling but planning an unleashing within the year. Dana Lyons is coming to town in March, workshops are starting, navel gazing is progressing Define terms! just started to do stuff. Apple day, Peak Oil dinner, film night after a year of talking - feels good, but still too slow! Derby ticking over, Belper buzzing, Eaven distracted by opposing open cast coal projects. Difficult to get more than the core half dozen or so activists involved regularly. Others help out for events etc and there are probably hundreds doing their own fairly 'green' things. Difficult to translate great ideas into action, though, with committed but over-busy volunteers difficulty reaching outside the usual suspects. doing okay but not getting forward traction Don't like the word ticking over. We are more than ticking over but not really buzzing at the moment. Dormant & Buzzing Early days yet. We've just had our first meeting. I used to be involved in one in Stratford upon Avon when i lived there and that is doing really well. Excerpt from recent letter would give you the best idea of where we are. <<When you return to town, what I would like to do is talk to the people of Pednet, Farmer's Market, Energy Issues, and Green Belt about where they are going and what they see as a help/obstacle in their future. Then I would like us to consider how prepared the town is or is not for living on less energy as the fossil fuel supplies continue declining. I'm going to send the results, a kind of checklist for this town, both to the papers and to the Transition US headquarters in this country and to the Transition Network in England, to add to, change and/or comment on the questions, essentially converting them to a more broadly based checklist for all towns. >> feels like ther is a newish influx of people energy and ideas. many of the original steerring group are busy with other things now ( new families for at least 2 I can think of!) Finally ... in a phase of rebirth! Finding it hard to engage young people Finding people still wanting to be 'fed' rather than initiate First 8 months we focussed on a few "food" related topics and now we are broadening the domains and having some more action based days trying to maintain momentum. First mooted several years ago - by myself - in context of supermarket threats to local shops. Still slow... five months of informational talks set up. Working with Council to develop steering group re education and developing a community project Following a difficulty in the group several people said they would prefer to respond to community led initiatives rather than projects through meetings. This is such a precis of a challenging situation. Would like to see new young members - not the same old same old who are always at the forefront of local sustainability projects. Free heat is in experimenting stages, and still requires more infrastructure work, having this profile keeps the fire going through much of the more difficult hoops to jump through, Funds are very tight, but we are near to making a break through wit our first community renewable energy project, so long as government do not review the FIT! Garden project has most interest. Energy projects - non existent. getting hits on the web site and much interest at my first PO talk getting our story defined so we can network getting serious Going Ok. Please use simple expressions... I don't know those ones... =) Gone 'guerilla' to avoid the control freaks. Growing fast, needing to thinking about structure (or non- structure)/communication/capacity/resources Growing interests from various sector of the municipality had a good first year, a rather stuck second year and hope we are getting going again now. Had reasonable interest in film shows etc 1st 6 months, putting together a good prog for next 6, 4 local groups up and running Hard to attract new people with continued commitment Hard to get enthusiasm in TT as a movement, ,but lots of stuff happening around the area, all TT type things, regeneration of community halls, allotments atc, but not under the banner of TT.Its almost as if we have the ideas and someone elso, nothing to do with TT does it! 100th Monkey syndrome? Hard to sustain momentum have been organizing meetings, debates, film projections of Transition 1.0 since november 2009 at local eco-festivals etc. We are opening a local producers café, May 2011 website:http://www.court-circuit-cafe.org/spip.php?article1 Have not found any kindred spirits in the area willing to help in carrying a transition initiative forward haven't attached myself to an initiative yet, nor launched one, am trying to see what is going on in my area TW1 (Twickenham), and will be thinking about what I can do Having frustratingly little success with reaching outside "The choir". Changing our approach this year. … is an aspiring, affluent, C/conservative town. Most of the residents are dominantly loyal to Thatcherite principles and feel extremely threatened by serious green initiatives. We work hard to tailor our activities to this culture, trying to make ourselves accessible to it by talking their language. In some ways, therefore, it feels like we are being very slow. We have participated heavily in Town Council policy development, have run the town's first Eco FilmFest and are planning the second in September, both with District Council financial support and practical involvement, and we have recently started regular film nights. We ran an Apple Day in October and we are considering starting a Community Tapestry, focusing on Hertford Past, Present and Future, using sustainable approaches (like growing the plants to make the dyes) but playing down in the publicity the green agenda and not overtly raising green issues until the last section, Hertford Future, once we will have built relationships of trust.
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