[energiadecreixent] Being the Anchor (Pausing for Reflection on the Transition Conference)

[Fun Peace]

 Great post after the Transition Conference in Liverpool from Charlotte Du Cann: 


Being the Anchor (Pausing for Reflection on the Transition Conference)(vids at 
blog post, also posted on transitionnetwork.org and transition norwich)


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.

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, 
theopen mike session,  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, theroving storytellers,  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.

When I stopped running and accepted my small role in the whole pattern, that’s 
when everything started to make sense.

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.

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.



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 made that journey)  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' eloquent 
talk about wildness felt strangely academic.

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 political stories from Transition Heathrow and from 
Transition Barcelona 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.


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.

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.

(click play on vid and press cc for English subtitles)

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.

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.

Time to stand up and speak. Time to become our own media.
-------------- part següent --------------
Un document HTML ha estat eliminat...
URL: <http://llistes.moviments.net/pipermail/energiadecreixent/attachments/20110720/3db01d93/attachment.htm>