Category Archives: transition and resilience

German Government Think-Tank Supports Fringe Change Agents

By John Thackara | Published: December 5, 2012

Good news from Germany: A ‘global transformation of values has already begun’. It’s proving tough to leverage changing attitudes into sustainable behaviour – but a transition to a more sustainable society ‘would be welcomed by a significant part of world society’. In a 400-page report called World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability, the [...]

Posted in transition and resilience | Leave a comment

Transition Dogville

By John Thackara | Published: October 4, 2012

In Lars von Trier’s 2003 film Dogville (below) there is almost no set. Buildings in the town are represented by a series of white outlines on the floor. Dogville was a to-the-limit exercise in what von Trier calls ‘pure cinema’ – a commitment to use only real locations, and no special effects or background music, when making [...]

Posted in transition and resilience | Leave a comment

The Transition Companion

By John Thackara | Published: March 4, 2012

We can do this the hard way or the easy way. The easy way is that you skip this post and buy the book now. The hard way is that your reviewer attempts to describe a 320 page book whose contents have been shaped by the infinitely varied experiences of self-organising initiatives around the world. [...]

Also posted in social innovation | Leave a comment

Zürich Eco Lab

By John Thackara | Published: February 27, 2012

As the guest last week of Zurich University of the Arts I set the following task to a group of sixteen masters students: “Create the plan for a social harvest festival that will reconnect Zurich with its natural ecosystems and grassroots social innovators.” The idea was to demonstrate, in practice, and at a city-wide scale, [...]

Also posted in city eco lab, locality & place | Leave a comment

The Five Skills Of A Resilience Impresario

By John Thackara | Published: February 4, 2012

Citizen co-design is time-intensive, and hard. Otherwise stated: design for resilience is an acorns business.

Also posted in Handouts | Leave a comment

100 Locally-Needed Skills

By John Thackara | Published: February 4, 2012

You could be a fish smoker, a knife maker, a charcoal burner, a hedge layer…

Also posted in Handouts | Leave a comment

How do you make a website for Transition?

By John Thackara | Published: November 23, 2011

“If we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late. If we act as individuals, it’ll be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time”. This month saw the launch of three new outputs from Transition Network. These are a new book,‘The Transition Companion’; an [...]

Posted in transition and resilience | Leave a comment

Lean Logic: A Dictionary For The Future and How To Survive It.

By John Thackara | Published: July 23, 2011

I have just received a quite extraordinary 736 page book called Lean Logic: A Dictionary For The Future and How To Survive It by the English ecologist David Fleming. The publisher describes it as a “community of essays”. In my words it’s half encyclopedia, half commonplace book, half a secular bible, half survival guide, half [...]

Posted in transition and resilience | Leave a comment