The emergence of an idea: a potted history of Transition

I am often asked "So how did this whole Transition thing start?" So often, in fact, that I often consider having the following couple of paragraphs printed on a T-shirt. The poor souls who share an office with me have heard this so many times that I can see their eyes glaze over when they hear someone ask me. Anyway, given that what follows is a history of how the Transition idea emerged and evolved, I must start at the beginning. If you too have heard it dozens of times, do leap forward a few paragraphs to the highlight, the first crowd ...

I was a teacher of permaculture at a wonderful, very progressive adult education college in Kinsale, Ireland, where I had set up and taught the world's first two-year full-time permaculture course. The course proved to be, and still is, wildly popular, turning one of the largest areas of lawn in the town into a mixture of ponds, gardens, polytunnels, forest gardens, a cob-and-cordwood amphitheatre and much else, while producing many inspired and enthusiastic students. At the start of term in October 2004, I showed the students the film The End of Suburbia, and the following day Dr Colin Campbell came in to talk to them about peak oil. This combination put a bomb under both me and the students, and so I set the second-year students a project to create a plan for the intentional weaning of Kinsale off its oil dependency (for more about permaculture see Tools for Transition No.1: Permaculture design.

The resulting document, entitled 'Kinsale 2021: an Energy Descent Action Plan', a compilation of the students' work and a few other bits and pieces, was finished in time for a conference we held in June 2005 at the college, called 'Fuelling the Future'. We didn't see that we had created anything especially meaningful, and the document wasn't even formally launched; rather, it was almost apologetically on sale at the back of the room. Luckily, others, including Richard Heinberg, who spoke at the event, picked it up and saw something of importance in it.

The 500 printed copies were rapidly sold (I remember over 100 going off in one box to Australia), and the pdf was downloaded many thousands of times. A few months later, Kinsale Town Council unanimously voted to support the plan and its findings. In the meantime I had moved to Totnes in Devon, where I met Naresh Giangrande, a fellow peak oil educator, and the two of us set about investigating what a better and deeper version of the Kinsale EDAP in Totnes might look like. We began showing films together and giving talks, and they generated a great deal of interest. Other people started getting involved and bringing pieces from systems thinking, psychology, business development and the power of the internet to spread ideas. The right people seemed to turn up at the right time. In September 2006, after eight months of awareness raising and networking, we held an event called the 'Unleashing of Transition Town Totnes', where over 400 people turned up at Totnes Civic Hall to launch a process that had barely been designed in any detail. At that event were people from a few other communities, including Falmouth, Penzance and Lewes, who went back home and tried to figure out if this might work there too.

Shortly afterwards, at Schumacher College in Dartington, a course was held called 'Life After Oil', whose teachers included Dr David Fleming and Richard Heinberg, and I also taught a day about Transition. One of the participants, Ben Brangwyn, described me as looking like "a man standing under a tsunami that was building faster and higher than he could imagine". He offered to help set up an organisation designed to support the other places where Transition was emerging. The idea of something called 'Transition Network' emerged, and within a short time we had secured core funding to get it under way – just in time, as it turned out, as pretty soon after that everything started going bonkers. Over the four years since then, there have been regular events or occurrences that have made us stop and go "wow!" Anyone reading this who has been involved in Transition will have his or her own list, but here are some of my highlights.

The first crowd-translation ofThe Transition Handbook. In the Netherlands a group of around 50 people decided there needed to be a Dutch translation of The Transition Handbook, so they divided the book into 50 bits and collectively translated it. The result, Het Transitie Handboek, has helped greatly in establishing a thriving network of Transition initiatives across the Netherlands.

The passing of the Transition Somerset resolution. We got a call one day from Somerset County Council, saying they had just passed a resolution supporting their local Transition initiatives (of which there are many) and pledging to support them, which caused great excitement and inspired others to follow suit. Somerset has since had a change of administration and abandoned much of its sustainability work (see Daring to dream 1: Policies for Transition), but at the time this felt like a very significant development.

The spread of Transition Training. Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks designed Transition Training as a two-day total immersion course. Since the first course in Totnes in October 2007, 106 training courses worldwide have been organised by Transition Training, with local organisers, and presented by members of a dedicated team of 16 UK trainers to over 2,500 participants. Courses have been run throughout the UK, as well as in Eire, Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Flanders. Dozens more are being organised and run by local organising hubs in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, parts of South America and Asia, led by a team of multilingual trainers.

The Lewes Pound Launch. I have been to many extraordinary events put on by Transition groups across the UK, but one that most sticks in my memory is the launch of the first Lewes Pound. It was a celebration of Lewes, of its independent nature, of its local traders, and of the potential of its Transitioned future. Hundreds of people and traders packed the town hall, and the moment when the notes were first unveiled nearly took the roof off. The 10,000 notes they had printed were sold out within three days and were selling on eBay for as much as £50 each! The scheme settled down again after a few days and the currency is now...