Everything Gardens and Other Stories. UNIV PLYMOUTH
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of Transition, rather than explicit. The variety of expressions and experiments pertaining to Inner Transition allows to lower the threshold for gaining an awareness of the importance of ‘inner work’, making sure that people from as broad a background of inclinations as possible may be able to connect with some of the qualities that Inner Transition amplifies. This became intensely evident to me when, at the end of a meeting of the Totnes Pound working group (hence squarely in the realm of ‘outer’ Transition), a conversation took place, where the ‘process’ of the meeting was scrutinised in the light of a growing awareness of the importance of the subtle qualities of interaction as a group. More specifically, the need was raised to make sure that the style of working together would respond not merely to the immediate challenge which the working group was meeting to address (tending to a complementary currency scheme), but also to the other animating concerns pushing the development of Transition (such as to nurture empathy and care, as a way for Transitioners to ‘resource themselves’ while doing their work) so as to enable resonance across the range of realms of experience that are simultaneously enfolded in its moving. Inner Transition, in that exchange, manifested itself to me as a qualitatively prominent area of engagement that was being made recognisable and woven into the moving of Transition, starting from something as seemingly simple and commonplace as how to hold a ‘mindful’ meeting.
Along similar lines, the quality of being ‘Inner Transition-type’ can be equally recognised in another project called Transition Streets.34 Transition Streets was an attempt to facilitate the meeting of neighbours living in the same area, by offering them a blueprint of questions that could be of common concern. It drew inspiration from an earlier project that had been developed with Inner Transition input, where a large event set in motion a number of self-facilitating ‘home groups’ trying ‘to share information about the need for transition’.35 In a similar fashion, Transition Streets endeavoured to bring people living in the same neighbourhood together to discuss everyday problems, such as how to save money on heating or water. As groups worked their way through a programme of weekly topics for discussion, more lifestyle-related issues were introduced – such as in terms of food consumption and transport decisions – bringing the focus closer to routines that would be relevant to the issues of climate change and peak oil. By giving groups something to talk about, to which anyone could connect, a collective process of relating was set in motion. As part of this process, people became embroiled in group-dynamics through which to explore the implications of a deepening awareness of peak oil and climate change for their everyday practical choices. This is another example of how practices like group awareness-raising and the facilitation of peer support, which bear some lineage to the ‘inner work’ of Inner Transition, have become inextricably entwined into the wider mesh of projects that constellate the moving of Transition as a whole, and are often focal aspects of interventions initiated also outside of the purview of Inner Transition groups.
As is the case with gardening groups discussed in ch. 3, Transition Streets curates pre-formed, ‘furnished’ spaces, where people can experience conviviality and neighbourliness as a collateral aspect of tending to a particular practice or material attachment (such as working through the talking points outlined in a booklet). Moreover, by facilitating the experience of being in a group as part of a lightly assembled setting, this makes it possible that people will take on more of an inclination to engage in groups again in the future, building on the confidence earned from previous experiences: this is how ‘sociable’ subjectivities are nurtured. In addition, by creating individuals that take the risk to be together with others, the need can be felt for a ‘Transition’ culture of acting together, offering discursive and embodied practices to use and bring into that realm of experience. In other words, incipiently assembled spaces of interaction, where people are brought together in order to do something practical they can connect to in advance, can serve to entangle one in relationships that are there to be leveraged again when support may be needed in other respects as well. Further, the deeper the involvement in a community of shared concern(s), the greater the chance that an interest arises into the process of relating itself, and questions be asked of it (such as about the consistency of ends with means) that nudge one closer to the focus of Inner Transition.36
Conclusion
Inner Transition is perhaps best understood as yet a work in progress: one having to do with disclosing continuity across the difference between ‘inner work’ and ‘outer change’. This is a process that, like all experiments, unfolds by attempts. On the one hand, one finds endeavours to bring ‘inner work’ directly within Transition, such as by organising sessions and meetings where practices – such as the Work that Reconnects – can be cultivated explicitly. On the other hand, this is a pathway that has its limits, in that certain practices may resonate more with particular demographics, differentiated by age group, or by ‘spiritual’ (or secular) persuasion. This seems to carry ‘inner work’ only so far in the moving of Transition. Stumbling blocks, however, are part of the process and, in many of the conversations I held, there seems to be a very clear sense that the focus in Transition on ‘process’ and ‘inner work’ is one of the reasons that enthused several among those I interviewed. Even if they are not necessarily involved in the Inner Transition group, they may disclose various degrees of vicinity to ‘Inner Transition-type’ activities, and everyone seems to reiterate the importance of what Inner Transition ‘holds’ for the moving of Transition as a whole.
Moreover, alongside spaces for the explicit, conscious cultivation of alternative forms of embodiment and discursive self-understandings, Inner Transition is also about (implicit) openings where ‘inner work’ transpires in the process of focusing attention to the subtle negotiations and motions involved in the practice of relating to one another. This translates in a degree of reflexivity (for instance the reflection at the end of the Totnes Pound meeting described earlier) about the extent to which the functioning of Transition groups and initiatives expresses itself through forms of relating that honour a concern for the importance of ‘inner work’. The making explicit of this concern, I suggest, is a distinctive signpost of the space of Inner Transition. Another instance of Inner Transition practices surfacing in other activities not explicitly connected to an Inner Transition group is the case of Transition Streets. As part of that project, ‘holding’ spaces were developed, where the raising of awareness around common concerns could take place in the support of a peer group that can act as a catalyst for attempting lifestyle changes (such as in terms of transport or travel). In all these ‘implicit’ ways, Inner Transition manages to lower the threshold for gaining some awareness of the importance of being mindful to the nuances of relating to each other in the process of addressing shared concerns.
The relatedness of ‘inner work’ to the moving of Transition as a whole seems, to me, to have been best articulated by Sophy Banks who, in an interview, explained:
In Transition the two things absolutely go together. We come together and do stuff, and out of that we get a different experience of community and a new sense of ourselves in the context of our culture. And when we reflect on that, you know, we see the next thing that needs doing.
In my reading of it, this appears like a suggestion that the concern for cultivating new self-understandings, forms of embodiment and practices of relating emerges almost organically from the engagements that happen in the doing of ‘Transition things’. And as this concern becomes recognisable, so can various offerings and experiments, which are available to help tend to this emergent interest, begin to disclose a new fold – Inner Transition – continuous with the moving of Transition as a whole.
5. Transition Money
Currency projects are some of the most iconic initiatives to spring up as part of the moving of Transition: the Totnes Pound, the Lewes Pound, the Brixton and Bristol Pounds being the most significant currency offshoots of local Transition initiatives. These have also played a key role in popularising the practice of experimentation with currencies, at least in the UK, even though dabbling in complementary currencies and alternative trading schemes has a long history that pre-dates the inception of Transition.1
However, the same could equally be said of permaculture, which pre-existed Transition, and for the milieu of ‘inner work’ in which particular discursive and bodily orientations have been cultivated