Every year Transition Bournemouth has a review of what we’ve been up to with our various projects, each of which aims to promote sustainability to Bournemouth residents and helps make our community stronger and more resilient.
This year our celebration will be held on Wednesday 30th November from 7:00pm at Poole Hill Brewery (41-43 Poole Hill, Bournemouth BH2 5PW). Everyone is very welcome!
This is a relaxed and friendly gathering where we will look back over our achievements of the last year and make plans for the next. At the meeting, the existing trustees and officers will retire, and new ones must be appointed/re-appointed. After the necessary “formal” bit of the meeting is done we will have a bit of fun with a Green Quiz and some time for socialising.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Read the full Transition Bournemouth Annual Report 2020-21:
Transition Bournemouth started in 2009 as a small group of determined individuals who wanted to help our local community prepare for the potential effects of climate change. This aim is still at our core but we have evolved as an organisation, from a community group into a registered charity. With this evolution in mind we have also decided to update our logo to give a more modern and reputable feel to our communications.
Our trustees worked with Dani Ramos Designs, who very kindly offered her excellent design skill free of charge, to create our band new logo. We wanted include elements such as recycling, food growing, green energy, nature and community. We think Dani has done an amazing job and hope you love it as much as we do! Keep an eye out for it appearing across our channels very soon.
Do you want your local community to become cleaner and greener?
Can you spend a couple of hours a week to help make this happen?
Transition Bournemouth are recruiting for volunteers and for trustees.We have three great projects you can support:
Bournemouth Repair Café – helping reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, and sharing repairing know-how.
Film Screenings – showing inspiring films about positive changes for sustainable living.
Wildlife Gardening – developing and maintaining an urban wildlife garden within Slades Farm ParkWe are also very open to starting and supporting new projects that promote sustainable living in our community.
All our projects need volunteers to help organise, advertise, and do practical stuff, so there’s plenty of scope for using your skills, plus opportunities to learn new skills.Transition Bournemouth is a charity run by a group of trustees. We’d like to attract new trustees to help us do more to help our local community become more sustainable. For more information contact hello@transitionbournemouth.org.uk.
While the social restrictions we have all endured over the last year and a half have been well-meaning and have certainly saved lives, it has meant that we have all had to put on hold many of the interactions that we would normally take for granted. Transition Bournemouth decided to pause all public facing events until such time that they could be safely resumed. During the lockdown period we moved our monthly meetings online along with our green movie discussions, and in doing so we met with new faces in the local green community. We resumed our outdoor community garden workdays when it was safe to do so but were not able to run some of our other events such as the Bournemouth Repair Cafe.
As we head into late 2021, we can all hopefully begin to put the events of the past 18 months behind us and begin to safely reconnect with our friends, families, and the wider public. Transition Bournemouth will be resuming our indoor events including the Repair Cafe, Film Screenings, and will be continuing our timetable of community garden workdays. A full timetable of these event will be made available through our usual channels – our website and Facebook pages.
The task of re-imagining our lives to be less harmful to the natural world can seem a daunting one. There are many who may believe that any changes we could make to our own lifestyles cannot possibly have any impact on the wider world, and yet back in March of 2020 we saw a glimpse of just how powerful these collective changes can be. In many areas of the world there were clearer skies above our cities, and global emissions reached a low not seen since the mid-20th century. I am not suggesting of course that we live in permanent lockdown, and I doubt anyone else is either! But the point was made that changes to our behaviour do have an immediate and dramatic effect on the natural world around us, if taken collectively. Transition Bournemouth will continue to promote the changes we can all make in our lives to reduce our impact on the environment, and through our projects will help others to bring down their carbon footprint, produce less waste, and use less of our world’s precious resources.
Pete Allen, Chair of Trustees
Read the full Transition Bournemouth Annual Report 2020-21:
Join us to celebrate the years’ achivements and our plans for the future, as well as a Big Green Quiz!
Every year Transition Bournemouth has a review of what we’ve been up to with our various projects, each of which aims to promote sustainability to Bournemouth residents and helps make our community stronger and more resilient.
This year our celebration will be held on Thursday 21st October from 7:00pm at Poole Hill Brewery (41-43 Poole Hill, Bournemouth BH2 5PW). Everyone is very welcome!
This is a relaxed and friendly gathering where we will look back over our achievements of the last year and make plans for the next. At the meeting, the existing trustees and officers will retire, and new ones must be appointed/re-appointed. After the necessary “formal” bit of the meeting is done we will have a bit of fun with a Big Green Quiz and some time for socialising.
Can you take a few minutes to help us reflect on our progress so far and plan for the future?
Transition Bournemouth has been promoting sustainability in Bournemouth for over 10 years. In that time we have run many community projects, worked with some amazing volunteers, hosted and taken part in a wide variety of public events, built a strong network of connections and helped saved many tonnes of carbon. You may recognise us indirectly via one of our current or fairly recent projects:
Count on Me
Bournemouth Repair Café
Energy Monitor loan scheme
Green Film Screenings
Slades Farm Community Garden
We were recently given an opportunity to work with Bournemouth University to run a research project to identify how we are doing so far in relation to our objectives. Our aim is to help bring the people of Bournemouth together and to create a better, more sustainable, resilient and environmentally friendly place for us all to live.
This research will initially be done by collecting information via an online survey. As Transition Bournemouth is part of the global Transition Network, we have decided to use a standard format for this survey, which has been used by other Transition groups.
The survey will take 5 – 10 minutes to complete and the feedback will be used to help us plan our activities going forwards. Please help us by taking part, even if you are no longer involved with our projects or if your interaction with us was brief. All views are welcome and useful.
As a thank you for your help participants will have a chance to be entered into a prize draw to win a £25 Cherry Tree Nursery voucher!
Thank you for your support and for being involved in our mission to help steer Bournemouth to a sustainable, low-carbon future where our community and wildlife thrives without costing the earth.
Blog by Apurva Munjal, Transition Bournemouth volunteer
The hugely popular hill resort town known by the name Shimla in India where I was born and had lived in since childhood has always been beautiful and charming. Unfortunately, over the years it has been drawn into the vortex of deleterious climate change. The sure-fire and predictable event of snowfall in my town on Christmas every year- a regular feature for scores of years- unfortunately, turned into a guessing game for the townsmen. I gradually woke up to the fact that the worsening climate situation elsewhere had impinged on my beautiful town.
I saw my town moving from a place of naturally occurring water sources to water shortage. This led me to lead a campaign and raise awareness and literacy regarding rainwater harvesting structures at home. I also learnt that haphazard urbanisation and development in my town had led to rampant deforestation which led to the loss of naturally occurring carbon sinks. It led me to participate in a seven-day tree plantations camp as a member of the National Social Service.
My curiosity and my sensitive concern with the changing climatic conditions continued as I moved on in life and shifted to the UK. I felt increasingly concerned about climate hazards and their far-reaching effects. I thus made some practical lifestyle changes by making use of local schemes in Bournemouth; like cycle to work, plastic free refill stations, eating locally produced fruits and vegetables to reduce environmental impact and to contribute to the robust economic development of the local economy.
However, I still felt despair and the need to connect with like-minded people for inspiration and interaction to build a community of hope and positive long-term change. This is when I found a group of Champions and Volunteers running the Transition Bournemouth group. I sent an email expressing my willingness to join the group and I was welcomed with open arms by an upbeat and enthusiastic team working together to re-build the local community, here in Bournemouth.
As I was trying to find my feet within the group, I was introduced to “Transition Leadership Training” for current and aspiring leaders who can act as catalysts to shape the future of their communities through a coherent networking model. A model which has previously and significantly aided the human quest to meet the SDGs. This is the Transition Model which focuses on the local and city scale as a central focal point with a forward-looking pathway for local sustainability and environmentalism, adopted by many diverse groups in the world to act now and act collectively.
During the Transition Leadership Training, I became aware of some leading examples of Transition Towns like Totnes who started by creating a small, collaborative group to help guide Transition in the town but also other cities like Lewes and Bristol that began to copy Transition Town Totnes approach.
Interestingly, this training did not expect you to be or become an expert on every aspect of our global effort to lead positive social change. Also, it clearly identified that most challenges we face today are interconnected and there’s no one right way to describe or deal with these challenges. Instead, it encouraged a new paradigm through community involvement, information flow, feedback, and a power shift to deal with the challenges we face today.
To build self-reliant and resilient communities and develop a roadmap for an alternative and abundant future, concepts like IKIGAI, and the Imagination Sundial were discussed and suggested. It was also highlighted how these concepts can be used to rekindle our imagination and connect with a purpose. Another process discussed and highlighted as a success is to establish a baseline vision forward in time, and backcast to the present.
As we got to the most difficult part in the training; identifying stakeholders and keeping them engaged, almost all of us agreed how important it was to involve the local community and place trust and confidence in the public for decision making.
What was difficult however was coming to a consensus on how to nurture these relationships, and establish shared understanding and interests for longer term collaboration. The key takeaway from this session for all of us trying to establish or successfully run/be a part of a Transition Group was that we must start with a vision, a set of values and goals, and then look for those who share the same vision, values, and goals. To reach out to our wider community, nurture diversity, difference and expect disagreement. Next up, identify and focus on the wisdom or skills people can bring, align your effort, and catalyse the ongoing development of supportive targets, policies, and programs in the town/city. Finally engage in shared adaptive learning practices and action.
Now, after all this, each of us had different viewpoints but it turned out we agreed on a list of solutions, including providing information to people about problems that are explained through casual and interesting talks and discussions. As we went on to discuss prospective solutions in the breakout rooms, many of us agreed on identifying problems that are relevant to people and show them new ways of doing things. We also agreed in the power of social media and to use it as a platform to reach out to people.
There is so much more I’d like to share, but my intention here is not to go on but to reach out to as many of you as possible, who are worried and concerned about the future of their local communities and the world at large, to encourage you to join your local transition groups and lend your skills and expertise for a positive long-term change.
For eight weeks, my passion and concern for a better planet and future was nourished, my ideas and beliefs were supported by many, and contested by a few. However, every support or challenge I received along the way helped me learn, evolve, and believe that change is possible.
I hope to see my passion for a better community outgrow the gamut of this training, paving way for combining both vocation and avocation in the field and a life of fulfilling experience. I wish for those of you who feel the same about their local communities to come forward and join the Transition Bournemouth Team and help us achieve the organizational specific mandate moving towards the broader greater good- a sustainable future.
Since March of 2020 we have had to work around the well-known and much-lamented challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to all of us. As our projects are all public facing, we have had to pause them for now until it is safe to resume. In the meantime, plans are being made for how we will return with our strongest line-up of activities ever as we continue to promote the conservation, protection and improvement of the natural environment and the prudent use of natural resources for the benefit of the public of Bournemouth and environs.
Since becoming a Charity (Charitable Incorporated Organisation – CIO) in May 2019, Transition Bournemouth, run by seven Trustees and a group of dedicated volunteers, has continued to act upon our guiding principles through the suite of projects we offer in the BH area. We have pivoted our monthly meetings to be less operations-focussed and more welcoming to members of the general public, and although recently we have had to move these meetings online we have been able to reach more people than before and start some great conversations around subjects that are in line our aims and objectives.
Pete Allen, Chair of Trustees
Read the full Transition Bournemouth Annual Report 2019-20:
Join us on Zoom to celebrate the years’ achivements and our plans for the future, as well as a Big Green Quiz!
Every year Transition Bournemouth has a review of what we’ve been up to with our various projects, each of which aims to promote sustainability to Bournemouth residents and helps make our community stronger and more resilient.
This year our celebration will be a bit different, we’re going virtual! We will be meeting via Zoom on Wednesday 21th October, from 6:45pm. Everyone is very welcome!
This is a relaxed and friendly gathering where we will look back over our achievements of the last year and make plans for the next. At the meeting, the existing trustees will retire, and new ones must be appointed/re-appointed. After the necessary “formal” bit of the meeting is done we will have a bit of fun with a Big Green Quiz and some time for socialising.
We just wanted to let you all know that Transition Bournemouth has taken the decision to pause our face-to-face projects and meetings for the time being due to the quickly changing coronavirus situation and the sensible advice about social distancing by avoiding unnecessary public gatherings.
Although our usual activities, such as Repair Café, Slades Farm community wildlife garden, and our green film screenings, have unfortunately had to be put on hold, the message of resilience and sustainability at the heart of the Transition Town Movement has never been more important.
In the absence of our usual meetings which are held in a pub once a month, Transition Bournemouth intend to hold live meetings online, using Zoom, for at least the duration of physical distancing measures being in place. Each time we get together, we’ll focus on a topic, using Sustianable Dorset’s Dorset Green Living Project handbook as a starting point, and host a discussion about what changes people can make to be more sustainable in these areas of life. Visit our Gatherings page for more information.
Thank you so much for all your help and enthusiasm with our events so far this year. We’ll keep you updated when we decide it’s okay to start getting back to normal again.
Take care of yourselves and each other, Transition Bournemouth
Transition Bournemouth 