Dear {usertag:name}

Happy New Year. Hopefully it has been a time for rounding off 2012 refreshing and gathering inspiration for the year ahead.

Here is a short presentation by Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins’ which is inspiring for what it shows about how local communities can achieve through the Transition Towns movement. Enjoy.
http://transitionculture.org/2013/01/03/welcome-back-and-a-vision-for-2013/

Certainly what Rob talks about reflects the local experience with how effective and fun working locally turns out to be. Yesterday some of the leaders of Transition Towns in the North-West region of Brisbane met and shared some of the highlights. Each Transition Town has its own local flavour and they are all having wonderful outcomes.

Here are some examples:

• St John’s Wood Sustainability: Focus on “Re-neighbourliness”. They’ve planted a community orchard set up a local outlet for FoodConnect have monthly creek clean-ups are writing a social history of the area and have worked to have events happening for Neighbour Day is nearly every street in St John’s Wood! They produce a neighbourhood 2-page e-Newsletter and have regular social & celebratory dinners in local homes. As dinners have been held in more and more homes it has totally changed the experience of living in “The Woods”. Once you’ve been in someone’s home you have a different feeling. It links people up more. Everyone brings something to contribute to the meal. At the most recent dinner there were about 20 people and as part of the evening they went ‘around the circle’ and people shared about their environmental/sustainability concerns. Transition draws people from a wide spectrum of the community. Involvement in local community is also energising participants to be active in bigger movements such as coal seam gas campaigning and bridging the gap between city food consumers and farmers.

• Transition The Gap: Their initial Transition project focussed on getting a community garden going and this is proving wildly successful now it is fully operational as the Yooralla St Community Garden. Between 10 and 40 people come there every Sunday morning to work in the garden talk share information and produce and generally have a wonderful community time. There are a lot of families and children involved. It is very informal and social. Once again there is a wide spectrum of people from across the community and the ability to talk about whatever you want. They are strong on singing and recognise the power of singing together to heal and connect people. At the Yooralla St Community Garden on the 4^th Saturday of each month from 10am-noon they have a Transition Picnic and Singalong with the “Kerbside Pickups” (under the big tree if the weather suits or in the SOWN clubhouse if not). All welcome. They have developed an approach to Transition which might be described as “Being in a connected way”. When the being’s right the doing is happening.

• Transition Enoggera (Enoggera Mitchelton Gaythorne Everton Park): Every 2^nd year a big sustainability fair is held at Hillbrook Anglican College – the Hillbrook Sustainability Day. This is being organised again for this year on Saturday 1^st June. This fair showcases a wide range of region groups and activities and also has terrific speakers and workshops along with all the stalls and great food. Worth putting in your calendar! Also active in this area is one of the leading voices in Australia on peak oil regularly involved in liaison with government and as a guest speaker. Leaders in this area also play a key part in inputting a community voice into regional health planning.

• Samford Valley: Has heaps happening and some great leaders who are active in their own community and more widely for example putting a lot of work into the Hillbrook Sustainability Day or leading the Alternative Technology Association. GreenStreets is from Samford. This area is also home to many leaders in organic gardening biodynamics Permaculture and food forests. The old CSIRO glasshouse buildings are now going to be converted to a community arts centre and a community garden. Samford featured in the Greenhouse at Woodford Folk Festival this year.

• Transition The Grove (Ferny Grove Upper Kedron Ferny Hills Arana Hills Keperra – 30000 residents): 2012 was a year of steady progress around the themes of “Local” “Community Building” and “Resilience”. Visits to the website at www.transitionthegrove.org.au continue to grow (699 in the last month) and some Forum threads have been visited thousands of times. Only registered members can reply or input to the Forum keeping it as a local voice. 110 members are now registered through the website many of whom are active in the community generally. The website seeks to promote understanding of where and who the community is in this Upper Kedron Brook valley. A key approach is nurturing and supporting projects and networking groups and individuals in the local community who are actively involved in building local community resilience. Generally this involves joining local groups and then ‘rolling up sleeves and getting to work’ whether collecting rubbish along the Brook on Clean Up Australia Day or planting trees or getting in the Brook doing the annual fish survey with the Creek Rangers or working as Treasurer or taking minutes or supporting a funding application or nominating someone local for an award or being part of a communitygarden information day or organising insurance for a school fete or working in a school tuckshop or working with people with a disability or organising a church Environment Day service or repairing machinery at the Tramway Museum or making noticeboards for the local shopping centre or delivering Neighbourhood Watch newsletters or going out on SES call-outs or running some school holiday activities. The list is almost endless as our members are so active in many ways in the local community. An information-rich directory of local community information has been built up on the website. Local health was a big focus and apart from participation for community input on health committees and regional forums we partnered with QLD Health & Metro North Medicare Local to organise a Healthy Lifestyles Expo showcasing many of our wonderful local health providers. We’ve collected lots of local health ideas on the web-Forum and are well on the way to becoming authorities on the question: How can we keep well locally without big pharma big health insurance big hospitals? (The answer is that much of the answer to good health is there locally if we know where to look.) Lots of work was put into having a big display at the Ferny Grove Festival which was sadly rained out but a lot of display boards and signage are now available for future involvement thanks to members sharing their design and organisational skills. Regular monthly meetings on the theme of sustainable energy were held at Ferny Grove State High School with films guest speakers and networking over delicious suppers. Food growing in many of our own gardens and working steadily towards getting approval for a community garden site locally has deepened connections among some members and looks like it will consolidate into more productive outcomes this year. We’ve built up excellent links with regional food bodies active through the Emergency Food Network and have been playing an active part in discussions about community nutrition and getting local groups connected into the Network. Community radio through Radio YYY 87.6 FM continued with the Transition The Grove Hour – the energy is now redirected but the talks and interviews are still available as podcasts on the TTG website. A number of most pleasant walks and picnics were organised in local parks and near water features such as Enoggera Reservoir and Kedron Brook. We maintain links with Lifelong Learning QLD and have been monitoring progress of local schools’ NAPLAN results on the MySchool website – see the web-Forum. Monitoring petrol prices at local stations and putting the details on the web-Forum has also been popular (but needs more people involved in collecting the information). We’ve been acting as a distribution hub for event announcements on sustainability events happening locally or regionally and members of Transition The Grove regularly attend and return better informed to feed into the local area. We’ve been able to have regular input into local transport issues through the Ferny Grove line CRG. In the coming year there is opportunity to have more community input through the Ferny Grove Active Community Project. Working through local social justice group we were able to help network all the local churches into thinking about prisoner’s families in the local community and how to ensure dignity for all our community. It was a joy to be part of buying Christmas presents for local children with a parent in prison. A keen community-minded manager at Ferny Grove Shopping Village opened up opportunities to work closely with them to get workshops and events and facilities happening. Many of our members are working hard for this community in local businesses especially health or tree-planting or are busy parents putting a lot of effort into their families and schools and churches. We’ve opened conversations about local community currency with the local shops and hope to progress this further. It continues to be a challenge to work across the political boundaries that divide our community and valley along the Brook – not a natural border as the earlier indigenous inhabitants recognises – they made the mountain ridges the boundaries. Upper Kedron Ferny Grove and Keperra are not a recognised part of what is widely known as The Hills District and working locally has identified a deep need to unite our valley-hills community into a whole.

Generally the take-away message all the Transition movement has been learning so far is how huge the potential is to achieve valuable things locally for the local community and to have a lot of fun and enrich the lives of those involved in the process.

The steady gradual on-going work is in deepening and expanding the involvement of more and more locals in the process of active citizenship in our local community with an eye on resilience. The Transition groups in the North-West Region of Brisbane look likely to work closely together to share information about events and successful projects they undertake.

Another aim is to fill in the gaps to get more Transition Towns started in areas which are currently lacking one. The Downfall Creek area centred on the Downfall Creek Environment Centre and another around Albany Creek are two that would be good to get people who are prepared to help start them with support. Do you know anyone who could do this?

Here are some questions for you to consider:

• Do you have a vision for our local community that you’d like help in realising?

• Do you have local news event announcements or community information that could go on the website or web-Forum?

• Do you want to meet other locals around local community interests?

• Would you enjoy re-neighbouring locally and sharing a meal at a local home?

• Do you have skills or time that you would be prepared to put into the local community?

• Would you be available to host an event for Neighbour Day in your street?

• How about sharing your story about what you are involved in locally?

So Happy New Year again. Local is meaningful organic growth with the focus on local needs local strengths living well together. Let’s count our successes in the number of our neighbours we can greet by name smile to help out chat with comfort or enjoy life with and work with to build deep community strength for the future.