#1 Initial Steering Team
Set up a steering group and design the demise from outset

This stage puts a core team in place to drive the project forward during the initial phase. We recommend that you form your Steering Group with the aim of getting through stages two through five. Once a minimum of four sub-groups is formed, the Steering Group disbands and forms again with a person from each of those groups. This requires a degree of humility, but is very important in order to put the success of the project above the individuals involved. Ultimately your Steering Group should be made up of one representative from each subgroup.

#2 Awareness Raising

This stage will identify your key allies, build crucial networks and prepare the community in general for the launch of your Transition Town initiative. For an effective Energy Descent Action plan to evolve, participants must understand the potential effects of both Peak Oil and Climate Change – the former demanding a drive to increase community resilience, the later a reduction in the carbon footprint. Screenings of movies (Inconvenient Truth, End of Suburbia, Crude Awakening, Power of Community) along with a panel of “experts” to answer questions following each film are very effective.

#3 Lay the Foundations

This stage is about networking with existing groups, organizations, and individuals in your community making clear that the Transition Town initiative is designed to incorporate their previous efforts and future contributions by looking at the future in a new way. Acknowledge and honor their work and stress that they play a vital role. Give them a concise and accessible overview of peak oil, what it means, how it relates to climate change, how it might affect the community in question, and the key challenges presented. Set out your thinking about how a Transition Town process might act as a catalyst for getting the community to explore solutions and begin thinking about grassroots strategies. We found David Holmgren’s Permaculture Flower very effective as a guide around what to focus on and with whom we would collaborate.

#4 Organize a Great Unleashing

This stage marks a milestone for the project’s “coming of age”. The momentum gained moves out into the community, and propels your initiative forward for the next period of work. This is a celebration of your community’s commitment to take action. In terms of timing, the unleashing occurs within six months to a year of the first movie night. The Official Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes was held in September 2006, preceded by about 10 months of talks, films and events. Regarding content, it is important to bring people up to speed on Peak Oil and Climate Change, but in the spirit of “we can do something about this” rather than a doom and gloom scenario. A key area of content that works well is a presentation on the practical and psychological barriers to personal change; after all, this is all about what we do as individuals.

#5 Form Subgroups

Part of the process of developing an Energy Descent Action Plan is tapping into the collective genius of the community. Crucial for this is to set up a number of smaller groups to focus on specific aspects of the process. Each of these groups will develop their own ways of working and their own activities, but will all fall under the umbrella of the project as a whole. Ideally, subgroups are needed for all aspects of life that are required by your community to sustain it and thrive. Examples are: food, waste, energy, education, youth, economics, transportation, water, and local government. Each of the sub groups is looking at their area in order to determine the best way to build community resilience and reducing the carbon footprint. Their solutions will form the backbone of the Energy Descent Action Plan.

#6 Use Open Space

We’ve found Open Space Technology to be a highly effective approach to running meetings for Transition Town initiatives. In theory it ought not to work. A large group of people comes together to explore a particular topic or issue, with no agenda, no timetable, no obvious coordinator and no minute takers. However, we have run separate Open Spaces for Food, Energy, Housing, Economics and the Psychology of Change. By the end of each meeting, everyone has said what they need to say, extensive notes have been taken and typed up, lots of networking has taken place, and a huge number of ideas have been identified with visions set out. The essential reading on Open Space is Harrison Owens' Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, or Peggy Holman and Tom Devane’s The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future an invaluable reference on the wider range of such tools.

#7 Implement Visual Manifestations of the Project

It is essential that you avoid any sense that your project is just a talking shop where people sit around and draw up wish lists. Your project needs, from an early stage, to begin to create practical, high visibility manifestations in your community. These will significantly enhance people’s perceptions of the project and also their willingness to participate. There’s a difficult balance to achieve here during these early stages. You need to demonstrate visible progress, without embarking on projects that will ultimately have no place on the Energy Descent Action Plan. In Transition Town Totnes, the Food Group launched a project called ‘”Totnes: The Nut Capital of Britain” which aimed to get as much infrastructure of edible nut bearing trees into town as possible. With the help of the mayor, we recently planted some trees in the center of town, and made it a high profile event.

#8 Facilitate the Great Reskilling

If we are to respond to peak oil and climate change by moving to a lower energy future and relocalizing our communities, then we’ll need many of the skills that our grandparents took for granted. One of the most useful things a Transition Town project can do is to reverse the “great deskilling” of the last forty years by offering training in a range of such lost skills. Research among the older members of our communities is instructive, as they lived before the throwaway society took hold. They understand what a lower energy society might look like. Some examples of courses are: repairing, cooking, cycle maintenance, natural building, loft insulation, dyeing, herbal walks, gardening, basic home energy efficiency, making sour dough, practical food growing (the list is endless). Your Great Reskiillng program will give people a powerful realization of their own ability to solve problems, to achieve practical results and to work cooperatively alongside others. They’ll also appreciate that learning can truly be fun.

#9 Build a Bridge to Local Government

Whatever the degree of groundswell your Transition Town initiative manages to generate, however many practical projects you’ve initiated and however wonderful your Energy Descent Plan is, you will not progress too far unless you have cultivated a positive and productive relationship with your local authority. Whether it is planning issues, funding issues or providing connections, you need them on board. Contrary to your expectations, you may well find that you are pushing against an open door. We are exploring how we might draft up an Energy Descent Action Plan for Totnes in a format similar to the current Community Development Plan. Perhaps, one day, council planners will be sitting at a table with two documents in front of them – a conventional Community Plan and a beautifully presented Energy Descent Action Plan. For example, it’s sometime in 2008 on the day when oil prices first break the $100 a barrel ceiling… the hope is that the planners look from one document to the other and conclude that only the Energy Descent Action Plan actually addresses the challenges facing them. And as that document moves center stage, the community plan slides gently into the bin (we can dream!).

#10 Honor our Elders

LegacysGift.com

For many born in the 1960’s when cheap oil was a way of life, it might be difficult to picture a life with less oil. To envision a society fueled by clean energy, we have to engage with those who experienced the transitional years toward cheap oil. Although this new paradigm is not about clinging to the past or abandoning key technologies, there is much to be learned from our elders about how things were done, how daily life was supported. This knowledge can be deeply illuminating, and leads to an integration of past and present as we find our way “back to the future”.
Michele McCormick, Ph.D.

#11 Let it Go Where it Wants to Go: Don’t Push the River

Although you may start out developing your Transition Town process with a clear idea of where it will go, it will inevitably go elsewhere. If you try and hold onto a rigid vision, it will begin to sap your energy and appear to stall. Your role is not to come up with all the answers, but to act as a catalyst for the community to design their own transition. If you keep your focus on the key design criteria – building community resilience and reducing the carbon footprint – you’ll watch as the collective genius of the community enables a feasible, practical and highly inventive solution.

#12 Create an Energy Descent Plan

Each subgroup will have been focusing on practical actions to increase community resilience and reduce the carbon footprint. Combined, these actions form the Energy Descent Action Plan. That’s where the collective genius of the community has designed its own future to take account of the potential threats from Peak Oil and Climate Change. So far, we have taken many practical actions in Totnes. However, they add up to just a mere fraction of the final range and scope of initiatives that are currently being devised by our community. Regarding specific timescales for Energy Descent Action Plans, here’s part of a presentation made to Glastonbury at their inaugural meeting in April 2007: “Shall we become a Transition Town?” You may be wondering about timelines for Energy Descent Action Plans. There are no rules - each community will embark on a plan that’s right for them. Kinsale took a window of 15 years, Lewes is looking at 20. If you're looking for greater precision and specified dates, here's my response: When I recognize the effort that's gone into setting today's meeting up and the effort that each of us has made in getting here and devoting most of our Saturday to these pressing issues, when I think of all the wonderful efforts of pre-existing groups in Glastonbury that hopefully will be incorporated into, and reenergized by, a wider "transitioning" initiative, I say that the work has already started. And if I look at what we need to do to create the communities that we're happy for our grandchildren and their grandchildren to grow up in, then that work certainly won’t finish in our lifetimes…" Incidentally, the embryonic steering group at Glastonbury decided at the end of that day to indeed adopt the Transition Town model for designing their lower energy and more resilient future.

Source: “The Transition Town Handbook: From Oil Dependence to Local Resilience” - R. Hopkins (2008).