It would be
great to share a couple of lines, or paragraphs, or pages, about ourselves
and/or our Transition groups. At the risk of sounding like a school assignment,
some questions that might get you started are:
Ø
Where
are you from? Your “country” – your environment – your surroundings, both physical
and cultural….
Ø
How
did your group get started? What ignited the flame – how others got involved –
how long have you been around….
I thought it also might be helpful to read the following excerpt from the
Social Reporters blog at www.transitionnetwork.org.
It was written in September, 2011, by Charlotte DuCann, the blog’s editor.
Thanks Charlotte!
The term
social reporting was first coined by David Wilcox, one of the media crew at
this year’s Transition
Conference. He defines it thus:
“Social reporting is an emerging role, a
set of skills, and a philosophy around how to mix journalism, facilitation and
social media to help people develop conversations and stories for
collaboration. While mainstream reporting is usually about capturing surprise,
conflict, crisis, and entertainment, and in projecting or broadcasting stories
to audiences, social reporters aim to work collaboratively with other people,
producing words, pictures and movies together. They may challenge and even
provoke, but social reporters are sensitive to the resources and parameters of
the group, community or organisation they reporting for. They are insiders
rather than outsiders.”
As social reporters we'll be writing as
ourselves and also as reporters from our initiatives. So we are communicating
both as individuals and as social beings, as part of a collective that includes
other people (and creatures and plants!).
……………………………………………..
Last
spring we put out a call for 12 bloggers in the UK to tell their initiative's
story from the front-line, on line, over a three month period:
“The project brings
together a group of social reporters to find and collate stories that otherwise
might not be heard or seen: personal reflections, community events, regional
patterns, shifting cultural values, big issues of the day, the spirit of the
times. The lighthearted and the deep; the challenging and the practical. Most
of all it aims to capture the story of a people navigating their way through
Transition and creating a new community culture: a new narrative for the ‘down
curve’ of consumption and energy use. To show and record what is really
happening in Transition towns across the country, in the neighbourhood, inside
ourselves.”
………………………………………………….
We’re busy people in Transition. As Shane
Hughes from Transition Bedford once said: “we’re holding two worlds at once in our hands,
an old and a new one”. Both of which make demands on our attention
and our time. But if we can make time and space to speak in a language that
allows us to see what we are really doing together with our woodpiles and
shared meals, with our vegetable gardens and community events, Ingredients and
Tools, with our meetings and struggles to understand, it brings a nobility and
depth of meaning into all our actions. It gives us courage as we confront a
future that is uncertain and a civilisation that is at a breaking point.
Again, we are going for
the less formal version of social reporting here in Australia…..but this line
definitely rings true: that we are looking to share stories that otherwise might not be heard or seen: personal
reflections, community events, regional patterns, shifting cultural values, big
issues of the day, the spirit of the times.
Happy writing!
Lisa
Transition Bellingen
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