Five of us from TTL went to Liverpool for a long weekend at the Transition Towns annual conference.  Something like 250 people attended, from countries as far afield as Hong Kong, South Africa and the USA as well as many Europeans. It was an inspiring event and fun to be with so many like-minded yet very different people.

Themes for the conference included how to make projects economically sustainable with social enterprises, running successful groups, how to scale up our projects and personal inner transition. 

For me the interesting aspect was how to get people in groups engaged and make the whole process enjoyable. I came away with an interesting observation that successful groups spend about 25% of their time on looking after the group and how it was run, not just working on projects. Several of the workshops involved role play and games to make us think how the group dynamics worked, which in itself made us relate to each other and enjoy ourselves. The way we welcome new people and integrate them within groups came through as a crucially important way for us in Lewes to expand our activities. More information here…

Here’s a recording of the closing session of the UK Transition Network Conference which ended on 11th July 2011.

Julia Waterlow of TTL