Transition Towns and Theatre 

Dear all,

Thanks so much for making it such a brilliant and productive conversation today. I really hope some of these ideas are triggers for action. I certainly want to take on board some of the ideas for Transition Finsbury Park. Here's the flipchart photo and a summary of our discussion.

TRANSITION THEATRE

The Transition Town movement is global, although it started off in Totnes Devon. There are almost 300 official initiatives and loads more in the making. It would be great to create a web-based portal for sharing resources, best practice and ideas for linking transition towns to theatre.

Ideas

Sharing info about existing initiatives, e.g. scenerysalvage.com, using LED lights in shows; promote new shows that have a transition theme; share info held by theatre outreach groups/officers; making physical theatres available for transition groups; facilitating web-based communications between geographically diverse transition towns.

ART ACTIVISTS

Climate Camp; Tipping Point; John Jordan - Lab of I.I.; Platform arts; Show of Strength (Bristol) 'Trading Local' ~ roving show that promotes local shops and celebrates local history, experiences, creativity along local high streets, using a range of venues. Makes a kind of arts festival inspired for and aimed at the local community.

COMMUNITY

Transition Towns want to communicate the issues of peak oil and climate change to the public and also promote their local groups /events /sustainability agenda.

Ideas

Have free workshops / 'pay what you think it's worth' events;  experiment with different public venues (pubs, supermarkets, stations, streets); engage with people by having good quality 1:1 conversations (as in Lewisham's usherette example) 

FUTURE VISIONS

Transition Towns seek to create an enticing vision of the future which comes from the collective genius of the community. How can theatre draw out people's creativity as well as presenting inspiring visions.

Ideas

Use walks around physical space, use historical pictures to show how area has already changed; use theatre games to think through / demonstrate behaviour change / model the vision; divide up goals into those that are easy to achieve right now, those that are desirable but take some effort and those that are harder to achieve and more long term; use performance artists / theatre to ask the right questions and collect ideas.

CREATIVITY

Use recycling theme to generate visual art pieces, e.g. puppets out of scrap cloth. Use excess TT produce to generate art.

 

Cheers,

Jo