Transition Leicester

Transition Leicester is a network of local people that aims to inspire action to make Leicester a thriving, low-carbon and resilient. It was created in 2008. It launch several projects promoting local food, renewable energy Permaculture design and more.

I joined Transition Leicester in 2012 after finishing my master degree and moving to Leicester. During my studies, I was introduced to the Transition movement as a model supporting the transition towards a sustainable system of production and consumption and after my master thesis and the clear disenchantment I experienced after my interviews, I wanted to understand the role of grassroots communities in supporting change. When I first joined, I worked on a project about the money system by creating a local group for Positive Money, organising events and discussion as well as workshops in collaboration with Footpaths Leicester (a project which also started under Transition Leicester). My conversation with Footpaths Leicester led to the organisation of the Green Festival of Making and Mending and the creation of Leicester Fixers, a project that still sit under Transition Leicester.

Joining Transition Leicester and meeting with like minded individuals was a great opportunity to build my confidence and self-esteem as a person especially after my master degree at Cranfield University and it was a lease of life while working as a customer insight officer at Melton Borough Council.

As of today, I am still a steering group member. I encourage people to join and ask for support people with new environmental projects to be delivered in Leicester. If you are interested in starting your own project, do not hesitate to get in touch.

Learn more about Transition Leicester

• Their website
• Facebook Group
• Transition Leicester on Marlefeed

Transition Leicester 2019

Transition Leicester is still here for anyone to come along and ask for support. You can, I can, we can.

We have a bank account, an insurance and a track record of experience we can share with starting initiatives. So if you happen to live in Leicester, have an idea our already started a project. Get in touch info (at) Transitionleicester. Org

This is a blog for you if

This is blog is for you if you are serving families, mother, father, children in Leicestershire to
- To take care of what we have in common: The planet
- To encourage them to be open and inclusive of others
- To support them in sharing their gifts for the local economy to be more resilient.

If you tick more than one of this boxes, i am inviting you
- To Get inspired by the stories of people who are in Leicestershire trying to enact change and empowered people to direct their lives
- To share those stories to people around you so they can get inspired
- To submit your story.

Why? Because the power of stories can change the world as long as they are shared widely.

So get sharing!

About me

My name is Marie. I live in Leicestershire since 2012. In my first year of arrival, i engaged with Transition Leicester, Positive Money and Footpaths Leicester. I ran the positive money leicester group.  I organised events, a discussion group and the Money workshop to help people reflect upon their relationship with money. I also train as a facilitator to run a Footpaths group to support group and families to reduce their carbon footprint. End of 2014, Zina Zelter from Footpaths and I, we decided to run a year of events culmutating into a day of festival: The Green Festival of Making and Mending. From the festival, Leicester Fixers emerged and has been running Restart Parties since May 2015. In 2018, The project received a grant from Leicestershire County Council to help set up 6 repair communities across Leicestershire. It is currently the main project I am working on.

Apart from those projects, I work and study. I freelance for The Crop Club a social enterprise which supports people to grow food. I have a certificate in Permaculture and teaches from time to time at the Permaculture course in Leicester. I am also a doctorate from Loughborough Design School. My thesis is on the factors influencing user repair propensity. I support students with their work.

Outside of it all, i am a keen dancer (salsa), a beginner violonist, i draw with wax crayons and garden. I live with my husband, embrace our mixed heritage and spend lot of time with our family.

in facilitating a Footpaths Leicester grouprun projects to engage family's members with different communities of knowledge and this mainly through events.

The blog provide an account of the progress of some of the projects and how you can get involved and it features different initiatives in Leicestershire that engage the public on enbironmental and social

Blacklist

It may be time to create a blacklist of companies to avoid and definitely refuse to  work for:
- Those which are more than 3 miles than my home
- Those which does not allow me to work from home
- Those which does not allow me to work fewer hours
- Those which pollute with no sorry
- Those with negative employee reviews
- Those which do not design products that are repairable
- Those which do not put the wellbeing of their staff first
what else, add to the list

Fashionably Compassionate Romantic - Fight against the elements and fracking

2pm - Leicester City Centre - Highcross - Saturday - It is a bit windy - I am wearing a hat, a coat, a scarve, a jean and some proper shoes. I am going to spend the next three hours outside, I better be warm. I am fighting against the elements and for a frack free world.

I am with Friends of the Earth in front of Barclays with a stand. Our banner says 'Frack Free Leicestershire Network. Our main purpose is to raise awareness on fracking, Barclays investment in a company planning to frack beautiful Ryedale in North Yorkshire and the other plan possibly being drawn for Leicestershire. I have a clip board in my hand to get passers to sign a petition to halt fracking in the UK. I am in good spirit. They will understand.

I notice that my dress code is at odd with saturday afternoon shopping spree. Most people wear a t-shirt, light jumper, jean or skirts, lipsticks and eyeshadows. The dress code has a purpose, they will be in and out of shops. They do not need to stand outside for long and they have to look as beautiful as the people in the pictures. I look different, maybe aggressive or like partner says 'too green'. I tell passers repeatedly 'Did you know that Barclays has investment to frack North Yorkshire'. I must make them feel guilty.

Yet, I want to work with anyone I meet, people of Leicester, to ensure that we are moving in a positive direction building our institutions like Rousseau would say on Compassion, protecting our beautiful land and people because we are terribly romantic. I promise that next time I will play dress up and look as good as some of the people in the street. The Fashionably Compassionate Romantic will probably get more attention and acceptance.

It is almost 5pm, we had approximately 90 signatures. We were at least 9 at any hour trying to get people signed. In other world, we had approximately 3 signatures per person per hour, 20 minutes of anguish in between. My spirit went up and down. They do not all understand.

What is fracking some ask me? Others smile but do not want to talk to me. They do not have time. Their hands are too full. It is difficult to hold a pen to sign if you are holding the world in your hands or too many shopping bags.

Revised on 14th March - we had 90 signatures as opposed to 40 - so much better!

The New Mobile Phone Dilemma PART 1

Every 6 Weeks, I organised a Restart Party at Leicester Hackspace along with a number of amateur/professional repairers.

My first trial at repairing an item was a mobile phone.

The poor thing painfully fell in the middle of the street as I was cycling home after a gorgeous meal with friends in an Indian restaurant. The screen was cracked and my belly was full.

I was paired up with a bald head man quite tall. He is related to one of my acquaintance who is really involved in environmental campaigning in Leicester. He is warm and a very good pedagogue. He never repaired a mobile phone like mine before. We know that there are plenty of guides online. Together we decide to give it a go.

I am smiling and cheering as we are trying to open the piece of equipments. How wonderful those green and copper pieces are assembled together. It looks beautiful, a real piece of art. We take off all the parts to reach the front screen. We replace it. We put all the pieces back together. Turn the phone on. It is not working. We are scratching our head asking ourselves what went wrong.
We reopen it, take all the piece out. Here it is, we damaged the LCD screen as we were trying to take out the front screen.

He is very sorry and feels that he is fault. I reassure him that it is ok and it was one of the greatest experience I had. I truly enjoyed it.

I have to buy a new spare part.

Festive Season with Transition Leicester - Wishing Leicester's cyclists A 'Wheelie' good Xmas

One of Transition Leicester's vision for Leicester in 2030 is to have the necessary infrastructures to encourage people to leave their cars and use other means of transports.  

 In this beautiful festive season, a small action to meet this vision was to thank the existing cyclists for riding their bicycle amongst the roaring cars and humming pedestrians. 

Random acts of kindness can be simple as making some tags with some recycled christmas cards, paper cards, repurposed wool' strings and a bit of writing inspirations and some smiling volunteers. 

 30 bicycles were tagged.Good things! 

Have a 'Wheelie' good Christmas and Ride Happily within the New Year.

Drop some comments

Random discussion about broken stuff

Random Interview with individuals

I was talking with the friend of my dad and he was telling me that his toaster broke down and he looked at some other ones to replace it but it got him so upset that he decided to repair it by himself

my brother have an xbox which give him trouble to read blu ray. he explained to me that he was becasue he bought one of the first one which tend to have some issue for customers to find out and report in order to make the next version a lot better. he said that he has a warranty to send it back but for the moment he does with it because it is a little bit of an hassle to send it back

Site I fix it

Ilivier spoke to me about some high quality sounding system which have been thought to be able to upgrade themselves overtime when new digital configuration are being designed

there is a 5 year warranty on all product

Various groups

I spent a night with Sarah friends who were very much attached to aesthetic stuff on one stide , material needs, the pleasure given by eating good food, alcohol. the discussion were mainly on ideas to improve the surrounding environment.

i asked myself

are they really those who will have some difficulty to change and start repairing stuff. maybe not, there are actually a lot more able to use their hands that someone like me an intellectual

Green Festival of Making and Mending

Send us pictures of your broken stuff that wish to be repaired.

How does Transition Leicester engage with communities?

I recently participated in  a focus group for a master dissertation. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the strategies implemented by Transition groups to encourage the spread of low carbon communities.

One of the question asked was how does Transition Leicester engage with communities?

The truth of the matter is that Transition do not engage with communities.

Transition engage with individuals who want to use our platform to express their vision for the future as well as their own identities. Communities only emerge out from individuals desires' for cohesion and belonging. It is within frame of reference or gathering of voices that connecions are created.

As Seth Godin put it, we are not crowdsourcing energy, we are bobsourcing.

Keeping up with the team energy

The freedom in being your own free agent is thrilling.
The togetherness of a team is wonderful with a positive flow which direct what and where we are going next.

The steering group I am part of, Transition Leicester was bound to structure at some point in time. It depleted our energy. We were doing things because we had to do them rather than doing them because we wanted to. It affected the groups: some left, some did not feel they had the capacity to support others and favoured their own projects.

We had lost some degree of flexibility.

After an open discussion, sharing our feelings on the situation, we recognised that we needed something semi-structured, less formal, in flow with ourselves and what was happening around us.

We are still meeting once month but we have a formal meeting every three.
Other times, we treat our gatherings as social where other people, from outside the team, can join in to find out what we do, how they can contribute and how we can support them.

Interestingly, this format sparked opportunities for new ventures: social enterprise, events, festivals, connections with others voluntary groups. The team does not condition anymore the free agent inside of his members. When we get together it is only an opportunity to share our successes and find out how we can support each others.  It is all love

Riverside Festival - aftermath

It was the second year I was participating in the Riverside Festival as a volunteer under Transition Leicester tent. It was a different but very satisfying experience compared to last year.

The festival appeared to have grown in size. There were wonderful display of collective efforts both musical and colourful! 

Some Pictures