Transition Town Shaftesbury Wiki

Article taken from the Western Gazette 21st August 2008

Cycle ride from Shaftesbury to Springhead.

Press Release 2nd June 2008 by Rachel Jackson

ON THE BUSES - TRANSITION TOWN SHAFTESBURY PICNIC AT BROOKLAND WOOD

Members of the Transiton Town Shaftesbury group enjoyed a day out on the buses last Saturday courtesy of Nordcat who offered free travel in North Dorset for the whole of May.

The incentive to use local transport offered by Nordcat seemed like too good an offer to pass up and TTS thought it the ideal opportunity to get out in the spectacular Dorset countryside and at the same time promote our local bus service. In a rural area where we are so dependant on our cars for getting to work, shopping, visits to hospital, etc, it feels very hard to make a start to wean ourselves off our addiction to our cars. Taking a day out seemed like a good way to start.

The day out to Brookland Wood in Fontmell Magna turned out to be the perfect antidote to 21st century living. A leisurely visit to a beautiful village, a picnic in the shade of a community woodland, paddling in the neighbouring stream, a visit to a Dorset Arts Week exhibition, a visit to the well equipped village play ground for the children and a swift half at the pub for the grown ups.

We all agreed that the day had been a great success, no driving, no traffic jams, no parking, and all for free. Where will the TTS group be off to next ? The possibilities are endless, bus and train trips, cycle and walking excursions. This lovely slowed down pace, simple pleasure, stress free, local kind of day trip could well catch on !!

Transition Town Shaftesbury are a group exploring ideas and actions that help to decrease our dependency on fossil fuels. In the months to come, the group will be looking at how Shaftesbury might “power down” in every aspect of life, whether that be food production, building, travel, waste management.

Rachel Jackson

Blackmore Vale Magazine April 25th 2008

A personal review of the film "The End of Suburbia" by Alan Binmore

On May 6th 2008 a film entitled 'The end of suburbia' was shown in Shaftesbury Primary School to an audience of around thirty five to forty people. It focusses on the issues raised by the peak oil phenomenon when applied to the self indulgent lifestyle engaged in by eighty per cent of Americans and to the inevitable decline that follows. The ending of cheap oil as it is suggested in the film, will cause the suburbs to collapse upon themselves as the population is forced into either a neo arcadian lifestyle in fortified villages or compressed urbanism in the cities. Personally one feels that the solution of new urbanism; artistically designed streets with leafy avenues and aesthetically created work opportunities just simply isn't viable given that the energy taken in creating such projects simply will not exist or will have been suborned for other purposes, namely an overburgeoning hysterical military or civilian adminstration. A more realistic outcome will see the development of tower blocks above and below ground to house the growing population always assuming of course that the latter pattern continues. One thing is for certain; there will be plenty of plagues to go round.

Some will say of course..'that's America..so what. We don't live like that so where's the relevance and it's these blinking yanks banging on again' or something along those lines. Whilst it is true that, apart from London and the major conurbations, most of the UK population resides in the familiar pattern of towns, villages and the odd pocket of isolation, we have to apply a different scale to our own situation. Consider how interdependent the local population is to the larger facilities both for employment and 'consumerist supply'. We may not build out for thirty of forty miles outward from our communities but, in the way that our lives are currently being lived, we might as well have. What is forty or fifty miles across the water is ten to fifteen here; it is all a question of proportion but unfortunately not of greed.

It is necessary to offer a word of caution. How tempting it would be if in order to achieve success with the seeming popular model of death, doom and destruction unless we observe a particular path of righteous withdrawal from technological opportunity, the very situation was to be directed into a draconian society feeding off the fear. Some very worrying elements are picking at the fringes of the transition movement which need to be assayed and dealt with. Otherwise the experience of last Wednesday only falls into the category marked whitewashing of the masses.