High Street Reimagined ‘We didn’t know anybody who had ever tried it before,’ said Transition Network’s Ben Brangwyn, ‘and we had an inkling that it might work.’
A youth symposium, organized around the theme “What Kind of Future Do We Want?,” was designed for high-school- and college-age attendees, and featured Open-Space educa- tional sessions, mini workshops on Transition topics, and what Transition Network’s website calls an “exploration of the whole economic spectrum.” And Transition Thrive work- shops, which took place directly before the start of the main conference program, helped attendees learn how they could increase the success of their own transition initiatives — for example, by inspiring more people to get involved, effectively communicating about their initiatives, and learning about funding avenues available in many communities. One of the most innovative portions of the conference
was the REconomy Project Day, which consisted of a number of how-to workshops on topics such as setting up food and energy companies and developing local currencies. In the afternoon, the New Economics Foundation’s Elizabeth Cox led attendees in creating “The High Street,” an imagined, self-sustaining community, where High Street represents the symbolic economic center. Participants gathered in the Grand Hall and set up a mock High Street, where some peo- ple developed the community bank, others set up the local bakery, and others created space for community members to
swap gifts and skills. Everything on the “street” was actually created out of cardboard, with signs written in chalk, but the point was for attendees to come away with ideas by which they might create this type of alternative economy in their own communities. Speaker selection was an important aspect of the plan-
ning process. Transition Network UK Conference organiz- ers have always felt that it’s important to get away from the traditional paradigm of assembling an audience to have wisdom delivered to them by an expert. Instead, they looked for “presenter/facilitators who were capable of talking about their area of expertise for about a third of the session and then facilitating a group discussion or process that would deepen people’s understanding of that area and inform how they might use that knowledge in the future,” Brangwyn said. Because, the whole point of the conference, he said, was for attendees to “see new possibilities for their own local initia- tive, to make contact with other like-minded people, and to find renewed vigor for the whole Transition project.”