Back at  end of March we ran an all important day to look at inner transition and how our  group could function a little bit better.  What did we want to work on in the future?  How could we care for the well-being of our transition core group here in Taunton. Now if you are not too familiar with how transition works then you might not know about where exactly transition diverges from other green or sustainable groups.  An important aspect is:

1. How we help people deal with emotional crisis that might hit them on dealing with problems of climate change, dwindling resources and economic crisis whilst trying to create a better future. (Hmm, some big powerful stuff there to contemplate…).

As individuals, we may experience a wide range of emotions as we imagine and work to build the future we want – or fear a future much worse. For many, the scale of the problems is simply overwhelming and distraction or denial feel safer. Inner Transition is designed to help support us face a world that is changing faster than most can imagine or absorb.

From the Transition Network website

2. How we can work better in our groups to achieve our vision and aims.

Coming together to take action, support each other, share skills, knowledge and resources is fundamental to Transition. Inner Transition offers tools to help us work together, bridge differences and depend on each other more as the resource intensive systems give way to more local lives and a greater need to share what we have.

From the Transition Network website

To help facilitate the day we recruited Sophy Banks from the Transition Network team to guide us through a day of reconnection and energizing  groupwork .

One of the important aspects of the day was to give our core group a diagnostic test or rather a dognostic.  Using the image of a dog we were able to work out as a group what we needed to work on.  So the eyes of the dog is the group’s vision, the ears the listening capacity. The legs split between projects, the core group, public engagement and networking with other groups both in and out of Transition.  Heart represented the drive and values of the group and lastly the wagging dog’s tail was the celebration.

We successfully ‘dognosed’ that we needed to work on our collective vision as a group and really actively listen.  We had to communicate vision and focus on how people ‘join’ Transition Taunton.  Lastly we would look to see what our appetite for for ‘doing stuff’ was and come up with some ‘star’ projects.

Another important aspect of this day was to re-connect with what we as a group considered to be important.  It was astonishing to see the convergence of thought on what was concerning us as individuals; of course climate change and erratic weather patterns were up there along with dwindling resources but also was the concern about the divide between rich and poor and the unstable economic situation.

So now we have got a lot to do and sort out…. come along next time and be part of the action!