Welcome to Transition Bookham!
In a nutshell the Transition Movement is a world-wide grass-roots community movement responding to the challenges of peak oil, climate change and sustainability and it is starting to make waves locally. Ashtead, Dorking, Reigate have started and now Bookham is taking the leap.
Let us face it; we have a few issues that may well interrupt the lifestyle a lot of us have become used to after WWII:
The end of cheap oil and gas and the fact that one day we will run out entirely.
Increasingly dodgy weather patterns very probably linked to our activities. As a farmers’ grand-daughter I have never forgotten just how essential the weather is for growing food.
Sustainability: I happen to immensely enjoy watching wildlife and feel that for everything we take we should leave or give something back. That is the essence of sustainability, keeping a balance.
We have with our giant footprint broken the equilibrium, so now it is time to scratch our heads and think.
Bad news often has this effect on us: it makes our minds shut down and makes us look for something fun to take our minds off it. If we think we have no hope of succeeding we sometimes feel it isn’t even worth trying, but it ain’t necessarily so and the Transition Movement can help get things moving.
What we are hoping will come out of Transition Bookham is a pool of volunteers and ideas. We all have skills, we all have particular areas of interests and we all enjoy living in a vibrant community. We will hopefully join together in groups and work towards making Bookham a more sustainable place.
The members of Transition Bookham will together decide on what to focus on. Other transition towns have looked at such things as:
Local food production – we have a village market where we have the possibility of selling local produce. Maybe introduce garden-sharing schemes as there are now long waiting lists for allotments.
Making and mending using reclaimed materials (arts and crafts).
Our use of energy. Yes I will say the dreaded word – REDUCING – our energy consumption. You want to stay fit: walk, cycle as much as you can. We can look at how to be smart about our energy use in the house or look at local energy production. There already is a group in Mole Valley looking at bio-mass generation.
Waste - for some strange reason we have for a while adopted an out of sight out of mind” approach with our waste but many a short-time fix is now coming back to haunt us. We throw thing away but where exactly is away? There is no away.
Youth. It will be their planet; they should be involved very much in these activities.
Bookham is your oyster, whatever YOU fancy as long as it makes sense…
We will be holding a first event soon, with a brief talk and a film. Above all we hope it will turn into a forum where people can come together, discuss things, plan and then start rolling their sleeves up!
In the hope that you too want to take part.
Launch Event
We are screening The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil as part of our launch event. This will take place at Bookham Baptist Church on Saturday 13th March from 7.30pm. Here is the evening's agenda, do come along -
- 7.30pm Bookham Vision to introduce Transition Bookham
- Outline of programme for the evening and introduction to the film
- The Power of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
- Briefly explore film's message and relevance
- Local Transition group members share their experiences
- Question and answer session with 'expert' panel
- Outline some possible interest groups within Transition Bookham
- Contribute to possible groups by jotting down ideas and doodling!
- 9.30pm Finish
As you can see it's quite a full schedule, so we'll have limited time to explore all aspects of Transition and will only scratch the surface. Make sure you put the follow-up meeting in your diary now - 7.30pm, Wednesday 21st April, St Nicolas Pastoral Centre.
In the last few minutes, as people begin to leave, there will be a number of designated tables (food, energy, recycling, etc.), with a big sheet of paper and felt tip pens on each, for people to contribute ideas. Below is an example (ignore the lines and circles!) produced at a Training for Transition event, held last year, which our richardm attended.
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