<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;"><br><div> Great post after the Transition Conference in Liverpool from <a href="https://www.transitionnetwork.org/people/charlotte-du-cann">Charlotte Du Cann</a>: <br><h3 class="post-title entry-title"><a href="http://charlotteducann.blogspot.com/2011/07/being-anchor-pausing-for-reflection-on.html">Being the Anchor (Pausing for Reflection on the Transition Conference)</a></h3>(vids at blog post, also posted on <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/conference-reflection-charlotte-du-cann">transitionnetwork.org</a> and <a href="http://transitionnorwich.blogspot.com/2011/07/being-anchor-pausing-for-reflection-on.html">transition norwich</a>)<br><br>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRUaKdK_lWg/Thw0azg2hHI/AAAAAAAACX8/S6q3KI3-ruE/s1600/d39729c67d17ae6b7202ea99356af956-490x325.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628431269415519346" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 212px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRUaKdK_lWg/Thw0azg2hHI/AAAAAAAACX8/S6q3KI3-ruE/s320/d39729c67d17ae6b7202ea99356af956-490x325.jpg" border="0"></a>One
thing I learned from plants, I said to Dan as we headed home to Suffolk
and resumed our discussion about roadside herbs, is that whatever you
experience in the company of the plant that is the medicine. What makes
the medicine is the looking back on that experience afterwards, the
dialogue you hold about it and the story you then tell the world.<br><br>So
after the whirlwind three days in Liverpool what is that story? I
wanted to experience everything - the 90 minute workshops, the three
hour workshops, the<a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/bit-sing-song-open-mike"> open mike session</a>,
talking with the friends I’ve made in Transition who I can’t see
everyday - and like everyone else I couldn’t. I missed the Tree Walk,
the singing Flash Mob in the canteen, the<a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/telling-stories-transition-video-interview"> roving storytellers</a>,
the incredible bookshop in the foyer. I had a job to do: I was
disseminating all the publicity and media and comms work we do in
Transition. I took part in all the main events of the conference to keep
pace and then I returned to the Media Action Station, liaised with Ed
(web coordination), Mike (photographer), Chris (audio), David (video)
and all the conference bloggers who swung by.<br><br>When I stopped running and accepted my small role in the whole pattern, that’s when everything started to make sense.<br><br>To
be an anchor as a communications person means you are in the midst of
the action. You report back to the studio and that dialogue makes the
broadcast. Being an anchor in a medicine sense has another function: it
means you are prepared to put yourself in the eye of the storm and allow
that change to take place within you. You are grounding yourself
wherever you are, finding your bearings, and bringing the knowledge of
what you know into action. Harmonising all those different voices. And
that is not an easy position. It demands all your attention, all your
feelings, all your time.<br><br>We were here to enjoy ourselves, to
network, to celebrate, to engage in discussions and explorations. But we
were also here to work. And the work of the future means we have to
break out of the repeating patterns of the past and live life urgently
and for real and not as we have been taught as a theory in our heads.<br><br><br><br>The
conference was a metaphor for Transition, the kinds of pressures we
have to withstand, the break-out moves we have to make. Held in Hope
University (an ex-Catholic teaching college) the modern buildings kept
us in their scholastic corridors and meeting rooms. We spilled out onto
the lawns at midnight like noisy students and experienced a certain
pressure that in many ways felt like a final exam. You might not know
(unless you <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/report-visit-granby-triangle">made that journey</a>)
that you were actually in Liverpool. It was hard to find home, said Jo
and Inez at the final plenary in the chapel. Or feel close to the earth.
Even Jay Griffiths' <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/jay-griffiths-wild-talk-recording">eloquent talk about wildness</a> felt strangely academic.<br><br>We
were people in a fishbowl with ideas, responses, theories, we had
exercises and workshops and games that enabled us to come together and
design a future of energy descent. Beyond the glass windows and the air
conditioning lay the real world. What brought it into the room were the
messages that came from the outside, particularly those <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/transition-and-activism-interview">political stories from Transition Heathrow </a>and from <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/conference-2011/2011-07/democracy2-barcelona">Transition Barcelona</a>
who on Sunday night showed us videos of the extraordinary uprisings
that have been taking place in the main square. How thousands of people
in response to the financial and political crises of the times have come
together and started to discuss a different way of doing things. Earth
care, people care, fairshare.<br><br><br>This
is the story of our times: the people who have been working for years
persistently, in activism, in Transition, in permaculture and medicine,
who suddenly when the moment comes, bring those principles into action.
In the city squares of the world the people are gathering to design a
future that they want. A democracy that is not dictated from above. One
that comes out of neighbourhood, community ownership, sharing of
resources, consensus decision making, participation, communication. One
that is immediately local, but connects with people everywhere on the
planet in the same situation. It self-organises because the people who
hold those principles in place put themselves in anchor positions. They
hold the change. This is not leadership or control, nor is it random and
chaotic. It’s another function entirely.<br><br>Last year Nicole Foss
in her talk said there will be people in the future who you might not
have noticed before, because in the industrialised, push-and-shove,
hierarchical culture we inhabit, they are given no value or are taken
for granted. But in a time of turbulence their presence becomes known.
They are the anchor people who stabilise, who connect, who include, who
cohere, who make sense in a time when everything seems to be falling
apart. Who bring lightness and possibility in a a time which appears
heavy and dark. Who, because they know what to do, so does everyone
else.<br><br><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">(click play on vid and press cc for English subtitles)</span><br><br>When
the police forced the people out of the Plaza Catalunya the spirit of
what had taken place went into 23 neighbourhoods in the city and fired
everyone into discussions and community-based actions. People got
together to prevent the police evicting their neighbours (thousands of
homes have been repossessed by the banks). Groups went into the
countryside and took the news of what was happening which had not been
reported by the mass media. They are walking now through Spain, going
from village to village telling the story.<br><br>We met in Liverpool
and now we’re returning to our villages and towns and neighbourhoods,
telling the story of how things could be different in our words and
actions. There are many stories that emerged out of the conference and I
hope to relate all of them over the coming months. Today this was the
one I chose to tell. Because Transition happens for real when we go out
and join in the square with our fellows. When we put our feet on the
earth and make ourselves at home. That's not a given, it's a task for
everyone who longs for change. I could finally relax at the conference
about not experiencing everything because as people came by and told me
their experiences they became mine too. Transition is not an
individualist story: it's a composite one, many stories told by many
people.<br><br>Time to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">stand up and speak</span>. Time to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">become our own media</span>.</div><br></div><br><div><br></div>
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