education
Skills mastery One Year in Transition (1YT) is a self-led learning programme that includes apprenticeship and involvement in local Transition Initiatives, as well as finding ‘skills masters’ and organising a community project. Now half way through the first year, Kerry Lane caught up with participant Richard Toogood to see how he is getting on. There are not many young people involved in Transition. I have been pretty much the youngest person in each of the three Transition Initiatives I have been in. Noone knows why exactly, but one suggestion made at the Transition Youth Symposium last year in Battersea was that our transient lifestyles don’t easily fit with the essentially place-based nature of Transition Initiatives. So it was interesting to find that Richard Toogood is at the same ‘transition-point’ as I am: the time when you’re ready to stop travelling and start to settle down. Richard is one of the participants in the new 1YT programme, developed by
“It’s amazing come and do it next year!” the Transition Network. It’s a way to engage more young people in Transition, and to breach the gap between the world the current ‘businessas-usual’ education trains people for and the low energy future that is coming. Richard returned from three years travelling with a desire to get involved in Transition and to become a rural craftsman. His infectious enthusiasm and energy make him a great ambassador and role model for getting more young people involved. He is also engaged with Earth Inheritors, a new dynamic co-operative based near Totnes who are “dedicated to inspiring deep behavioural change for the sake of all children and the Earth”. They plan to take part in several festivals this summer and are working on a proposal for the Transition Network to become official collaborators for engagement and
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outreach with young people (watch this space!) Finding your community is really important when you are at this exploratory stage of life. This has obviously been one of the major benefits of 1YT for Richard so far. “I don’t think many of the friends I’ve grown up with really get what I’m doing, so to find friends who really do is great. One of the best things so far has got to be the friendships I have formed with Lisa and Hannah (the other participants). We hear so much about each other’s initiatives and what they get up to because we talk every month, so it was really nice to actually visit and talk face to face recently, too.” As well as finding your peers, finding your elders forms an important part of building resilience for a low energy future. As Richard wants to become a rural craftsman he is taking an apprenticeship with Devon Rural Skills Trust, “a group of volunteers who specialise in traditional rural crafts, such as dry stone walling and coppicing”. Although his placement with a carpenter fell through, he has found a potential mentor in another area: “I have been talking with Caspar ter Kuile, who helped initiate UK Youth Climate Coalition. Hopefully I can do a skills mentoring with him, around my work with Earth Inheritors.” Richard admits that he is already quite proactive and would probably have been doing many of these activities anyway, but the 1YT programme has clearly had a very positive effect. “Doing a course gives me a purpose and creates structure in my life, and it makes me continue to think about my journey. It also puts me in touch with people who talk the same language.” Would he recommend the One Year in Transition course to other young people? “Yes. It’s amazing – come and do it next year!” Kerry Lane is a Transition Social Reporter, permaculture education apprentice and an environmental educator, currently settling in to her new initiative in Shrewsbury.
Richard Toogood (Sustainable South Brent) pole-lathing at the Hillyfield woodland Olympics. Photo by Yancy Hilton
Let the river answer by Steph Bradley
Summer holidays this year in and around Totnes will see both young and old engaging in active learning together, as they combine physical activity with narrative on a story walk along the River Dart.
Weaving the folklore of the Dart valley with tales of their adventures and discoveries made en route, a group of schoolchildren, teenagers, parents, teachers, researchers, elders and storytellers will set out from the mouth of the Dart, listening to and creating stories inspired by the people and places they meet, as they walk to the river’s source high up on Dartmoor. In Transition there is growing awareness of our intrinsic connection to the natural world, of the need to rebuild a sense of community, and of our collective longing to belong: to place, to community, to self. The intent behind the walk is to create a new
story for the future - visioning what our relationship with our hinterland and its people can be. Transition Town Totnes (TTT) is very aware of the river that inspired local poet Alice Oswald’s epic, Dart, created from her conversations with elders, river workers and schoolchildren who live, work and play along its banks. When the TTT Education Group showcased some of their work, following on from a river clean-up organised by outdoor education organisation WildWise, local secondary school students told them: “Take all this to the river, and work there.” So when the Rivers and Education Project took shape, they were invited to work as consultants. Isabel Carlisle, Transition Network’s education coordinator, explains: “As well as connecting everyone working with young people and communities to steward their watershed we will be forming an engagement project as the linking thread.” The project planning group includes pupils from a local
primary school, people who make their living on the river and elders whose lives have been connected to it, representatives from the Environment Agency, local university researchers, geographers, storytellers, outdoor education providers, and the secondary school age consultants. The story walk along the Dart in July will be their starting point, with teenage advisor Georgia Brady recommending that there be “more of the doing, less of the talking.” The challenge that arises within Transition is not only to say we value diversity but to actively value the contributions of everyone in our communities. What better way to do that than to learn together from our rivers? Steph Bradley is the author of the upcoming Tales of Our Times, based on a six month story walk around Transition Initiatives in 2010, and an active member of Transition Town Totnes Education Group. www.storyweaving.co.uk
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