Boom is not only about music. It is a way of life. Connectedness with our higher essence, tuning in with tolerance, activation of magic through art, mind expansion and respect for the Sacred Earth. We are one, We are all – the Boom spirit is activated until the August Full Moon in a celebration of free spirits.

TICKETS: FEW DAYS REMAIN TO GET CHEAPEST TICKETS

Getting there! The 2nd Phase tickets are almost finishing and not many tickets are left.
The ending date for getting your tickets is March 13th.

2nd Phase – 31 December until 13th March – 8.500 limited tickets

Boom Festival ticket – 150€ + 5€ fees = 155€
Boom Festival + After Boom – 150€ + 35€ + 6€ fees = 191€

3rd Phase – 14th March until 26th June – 8.500 limited tickets

Boom Festival ticket – 175€ + 5€ fees = 180€
Boom Festival + After Boom – 175€ + 40€ + 7€ fees – 222€

Pricing Info: For a ticket of 125€ the average daily price for Boom would be 15,6€; for 150€ the average daily price would be 18,75€; and if we consider the 3rd phase ticket each day would be priced at 21,08€.

 

GET YOUR TICKETS

Boom Festival website:
https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2010/wp-content/forms/etickets_2010/etickets_form.php

Boom Festival Ambassadors:
http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2010/tickets-boom-bus/boom-ambassadors

 

VIP Tickets

Are you crazy?! This is no pop festival! All Boomers are VIP!

 

ARTISTS, ACTIVISTS, VISIONARIES: LINE UPS ONLINE NEXT WEEK!

Next week we’re going to start announcing more artists that are invited to Boom 2010. From music to digital arts, visionary artists, thinkers, activists, designers or permaculture enthusiasts, the artist family is synchronized with the August full moon enabling magic to happen.

BOOM TWITTS…. TWITTS…TWITTS

Everyday we have plenty of action and updates on our projects and ideas. Days are long and fun, talks go from Portugal to California, Japan or South Africa, Boom and the whole world breath alike. We’ve been looking into new social technologies with some kind of independent ethos to give you updates on a daily basis and we are into Twitter. Here you have easy updates on what is happening in the Boomnoosphere. Follow and connect with us here: http://twitter.com/boomfestivalhq

Soundclouds of Amazing Music

The Boom Festival group on Soundcloud is a mirror of our music proposals. Artists were invited to put some of their tracks online for Boomers to start getting in the mood.
Some of the music that is going to be played at Boom here: http://soundcloud.com/groups/boom-festival.

BOOM ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAM

Our commitment to do a sustainable gathering fully started in 2006. Since then we’ve developed technologies for water treatment based on plants, reusing waste vegetable oil for generators, solar power, windmills, recycling, composting toilets and a wide program of turning Boom into a living example of an environmentally conscious gathering based on Permaculture principles.
The results have been recognized: we won the Greener Festival Award Outstanding Prize in 2008, we were featured in the first book ever published on ‘Sustainable Event Management’. Another book called ‘Cool Camping Guide to Festivals’ mentioned Boom as one of best practices for Enviromental Festival. Recently, Boom was invited by the United Nations to be part of the United Nations Music & Environmental Initiative that will be launched on March 22nd in Norway. Boom is the only no-logo, independent and participative festival to be invited by the UN to help people on environmental efforts through music and festivals.
Thanks Boomers for being conscious and making Boom a place where the Sacred Earth is respected. You make it all worthwhile!

Take your part on Green Footsteps at Boom 2010 here: http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2010/2010/02/green-footsteps-for-boomers

 

ABOUT BOOM PARTICIPATIVE TICKET FUNDING

Boom funding comes from ticket sales, plus revenues from bars and renting spaces. Boom never breaks-even from ticket sales. In fact, from the ticket office there are always losses. For instance, for this year’s edition 1st, 2nd and 3rd phase tickets are sold at below the cost per person to produce Boom 2010.
We reduced our capacity – to keep the spirit alive and kicking – plus we are an independent festival, with no-logos and zero official supports, the struggle for economic sustainability has been one of our main challenges.
However we have tickets reserved for lower income participants from economic developing countries and for the local community. Boomers are our reason of being and we are here to serve them with an unforgettable experience.
Boom is here to help the community and play its part in a new visionary culture of respect for Sacred Earth where art is the universal language for change.

 

Last Word – HELP Haiti Through PERMACULTURE

Boom supports a Permaculture network that is developing projects to Haiti. Please connect here and help humankind:

http://www.permacultureguild.org/donations

 

Get your Boom tickets till March 13th. The Countdown to Boom 2010 is ON!

 

Boom Festival 2010 – 18th to the 26th of August
Idanha-a-Nova lake, Portugal

ADOPT ZERO WASTE. LEAVE NO TRACE AT BOOM FESTIVAL 2010

Artworks by Android Jones

The run after Boom tickets is getting exciting. The number of tickets is going down and not many tickets are available both on the website and at the Boom ambassadors.

Tickets are limited as a way for us to keep the Boom spirit as cosy as possible. Get your Boom ticket at a cheaper price! 2nd Phase tickets ends on the 13th of March.

BOOM TICKETS PHASES AND PRICES

2nd Phase – 31 December until 13th March – 8.500 limited tickets

Boom Festival ticket – 150€ + 5€ fees = 155€
Boom Festival + After Boom – 150€ + 35€ + 6€ fees = 191€

3rd Phase – 14th March until 26th June – 8.500 limited tickets

Boom Festival ticket – 175€ + 5€ fees = 180€
Boom Festival + After Boom – 175€ + 40€ + 7€ fees – 222€

As a matter of curiosity: for a ticket of 125€ the average daily price for Boom would be 15,6€; for 150€ the average daily price would be 18,75€; and if we consider the 3rd phase ticket each day would be priced at 21,08€.

WHERE TO BUY BOOM TICKETS

Tickets should always be bought from a reliable source, below are the options for you.

Boom Festival website:
https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2010/wp-content/forms/etickets_2010/etickets_form.php

Boom Festival Ambassadors:
http://www.boomfestival.org/boom2010/tickets-boom-bus/boom-ambassadors

THE FOLLOWING HAVE NOT BEEN SUPPLIED WITH TICKETS BY BOOM FESTIVAL:

These websites are not authorised, do not purchase tickets here:

www.boomfestivalportugal.com
www.euroteam.net

WHAT IS NEW IN BOOM 2010?

• A new location! Expect much more trees and a stunning lake for a better experience.
• Better accesses for you to avoid traffic jams.
• An amazing shaded camping area for all Boomers.
• We are expanding our program by one more day. We are now a 7-day long worldwide gathering.
• We present 4 music stages and smaller sound systems to spread sound vibes all over the venue. The freshest music around is showcased at Boom!
• The Drop Area: A new area where we are putting together Theatroom and the Liminal Village. Knowledge and visionary art meets performing arts!
• Sustainability: We are keeping up the tradition of presenting pioneering projects in energy, waste, recycling, composting toilets and materials.
• New concepts and new ideas: We are presenting new concepts at Boom. Find them at Boom 2010.

TICKET SALES AT THE GATES

We are changing to a new location in order to solve some problems, like the entrance traffic and to offer more comfort to Boomers.
We don’t want you to have more traffic jams. For that reason we want to avoid having box offices and tickets sales on site. Get your ticket in advance to facilitate the entrance of the new site.

BOOM BUS: AVOIDING CARBON FOOTPRINT

We all want to reduce the environmental impact of the festival and one of the main ways we can do this is to reduce the amount of cars turning up.
This year Boom Bus, our public transport service, has an extended service of entrance one day before the event, on August 17th.

Get your ticket here:
https://www.boomfestival.org/boom2010/wp-content/forms/etickets_2010/etickets_form.php

FREE OF CHARGE

Boom Festival provides free of charge services: car park and caravan park, water, toilets and showers.

BOOM MUSIC IN SOUNDCLOUD

Boom Festival created a group where you can listen some tunes from the artists that are going to play during the full moon of August. This is a taster of Boom’s music to be listened at http://soundcloud.com/groups/boom-festival. Stay tuned!!!!!

MAYDAY!

2nd Phase Boom Tickets are getting less, find your place in the next Boom.

Boom Festival 2010 – 18th to the 26th of August
Idanha-a-Nova lake, Portugal

ADOPT ZERO WASTE. LEAVE NO TRACE AT BOOM FESTIVAL 2010

The concept of ‘ancient futurism’ has always been present in Boom philosophy. Take dance floor experience as an example: surrounded by high-tech sound stimuli often our collective unconscious leads us into a century-old mystical experience.
We are inviting social scientists to write about the missing links that art and music bring back into our modern life.

Ecstatic visions of intense bliss, clarifying revelations upon the ultimate meaning of life, deep connection with the Whole, feelings of profound unity with the others and with Nature, a surprising premonition of doing “something sacred”… these are just some of the “mystical experiences” which can quite commonly (and often unexpectedly) originate, with various degrees of intensity, on a good dancefloor. Such experiences create what we might call the “religiosity” of raving. But how can this “religiosity” be interpreted, understood and integrated into this modern and apparently de-sacralised world?

From the study of comparative religions we know that dancing to repetitive beats over a long period of time and use of mind-altering substances have long been included in religious celebrations by many different cultures. For thousands of years in all corners of the planet, men and women realised that through ritual dancing and ingestion of sacred plants, they could have the most mysterious and magic of experiences: they could abandon the profane world of daily routine and journey into an Other reality, which they saw as the world of the mysterious forces governing the whole universe, the realm of the super-human, the Divine.

What we now call ecstatic trance dancing and use of entheogens (a term recently coined to refer to substances able to manifest the “god within”) are in fact two “techniques of ecstasy” able to induce a trance or ecstatic state (from Latin transire: “to go over or across”, and from Greek ek-stasis: “to exit from a certain status”). This temporary change in perception, or altered state of consciousness, has always been considered a sacred moment for it provides the experience of dissolution of one’s usual identity, as if a superhuman entity – a spirit or a god – took possession of the body. This way, the Other reality was lived “from the inside”, by becoming the Other reality.

Such profound moments not only hold life-changing potentials, for they can affect the entire world view of those who experience them, but they are also recognised by anthropologists as the possible beginning of the religious idea itself: the moment in which our ancestors became aware of the distinction between the profane world of daily life and the mysterious world of “the sacred”.

As a result, through the millennia, people’s visions and revelations developed into many different belief-systems and mythologies, which provided a meaning for such ineffable and unspeakable experiences and the possibility to integrate them into ordinary life.

For example, for our ancestors of the Palaeolithic Age, to enter in a trance probably resulted in feeling pervaded by pure animal instincts, as it could be the case of the amazing “Dancing shaman” (see image at the end of this text), painted 15.000 years ago in the cave of Le Trois Frères in South of France, depicting a man impersonating many different animals. For him to become the Other might have meant to have a personal experience of the super-human powers of the animals as a way to increase his own hunting skills necessary for his survival.

Thousands of years later, as humans developed a more articulated spiritual imaginary, the techniques of ecstasy were integrated into a more structured reality, evolving an incredible variety of visions and interpretations of the Other that were re-arranged into more complex belief-systems.

For example, in the many possession rituals of African origin (like the Haitian voodoo, or the Moroccan Gnawa, still performed today) participants could become the “horses” to be ridden by the different spirits populating their imaginary (including, for the Songhay tribe of Niger, the spirits of the white European colonisers, which were invoked as a way to “steal” their secret powers). While in Asia and America the trance state was mainly used by one specific person in the community, the shaman, a healer or “master of spirits” who would use various techniques of ecstasy to journey into the realm of the spirits of nature and put them into contact with the rest of the community.

Also in Europe, we have a very strong tradition of religious use of the techniques of ecstasy. For example we know of the ritual use of various entheogens by the Northern peoples, while in the south, during the Hellenistic period, flourished the so-called Mystery Religions. They included the sacred dances in honour of Dionysus, the “God of Wine and Ecstasy”, and the Mystery of Eleusis, which were rituals reputed to involve the ingestion of the same active principle as LSD, as argued by Albert Hoffman. The Mystery Religions were Hellenised versions of more ancient rituals and they became so popular and widespread that their practice was exported and kept alive also by the Roman Empire.

Such beliefs and practices from all over the world are generally referred to as Ecstatic Religions, for the centrality of the “techniques of ecstasy” in their rituals. But they are not “religions” in the modern, institutional sense of the word, but rather cults that, because of the radicality of the experience they provided, were often pushed to the margins of more official and institutionalised religious practise.

The common trait linking all of these cultic practices is the sacredness granted to the vital and instinctual energies, drawn from the deepest layers of the psyche, which manifest during the altered states. Therefore, as humans developed more complex structures of civilisation and had to learn to keep their instincts under control, the Ecstatic Religions, were true liberation rituals with therapeutic potentials, both at individual and collective levels, providing a ritualised and periodical release of all those impulses that were otherwise un-manifestable during everyday life.

But there was a “problem”: such practices required a social context able to grant a very high degree of religious and spiritual freedom, since the beliefs obtained “from the inside”, the truths coming from the “god within”, hold over the believer a power which represent a challenge to institutional authorities. And this, later on, became a huge problem.

As Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and the clergy imposed their absolute control over people’s religious beliefs, the techniques of trance and ecstasy of pagan origins began to be regarded as unacceptable forms of freedom and were conveniently identified as encounters with the Devil. This is how the Other eventually became Satan, the techniques of ecstasy were demonised and prohibited, natural instincts were repressed and hundreds of thousands of people devoted to trance dancing and use of entheogens (all ingredients of the famous “Witches’ Sabbath”) were brutally tortured and burnt, in the name of a god who had lost all contacts with the vital forces of nature.

The resulting trauma was so devastating that the concept of the sacredness of the altered state of consciousness virtually disappeared from the western world.

From this perspective, the phenomenon of the psychedelic movement of the 1960s and its subsequent evolution into Psytrance and Electronic Dance Music Cultures in general, could appear as spontaneous re-enactments of the ancient techniques of ecstasy in a post-modern, cross-cultural context. So this could create the possibility of regaining possession of one of the most powerful tools that humans have to acquire a more fundamental and complete vision of themselves and the universe. In other words we might be witness to the opportunity to re-sacralise life and nature.

But if spirituality is to be judged by its fruits and if Terence McKenna is right in stating that “a planet brings forth an opportunity like this only once in its lifetime”, the successful seizing of such an occasion largely depends on the ability of modern trancers to formulate and act upon a set of shared beliefs and thus become aware of which game they are playing.

Chiara Baldini

For more info:

Eliade, Mircea: “Shamanism and the techniques of ecstasy”

De Heusch, Luc: “La transe et sous entours”

Durkheim, Emile: “Elementary forms of religious life”

Lapassade, Georges: “Essai sur la transe”

St. John, Graham: “Neotrance and the psychedelic festival”
http://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/journal/article/view/11/3

St. John, Graham (edited by): “Rave culture and religion”

Six full moons remain to Boom 2010. Our teams are now putting all efforts in the engineering behind the design of all structures. Artists are delivering cutting-edge artworks that will send Boom 2010 into the next level of aesthetics. Prepare for a feast of eye blowing optical-wizardry!

The new location have been pushing our sensations to high levels. Flowers are now starting to pop up and the majestic settings of the venue assure us you will have better conditions to camp and party than in the previous venue.

Boom has been taking many environmental actions towards sustainability. This includes waste management, recycling, composting, energy management to source renewable energy options and water treatment based on plants. The Sacred Earth need Boomers to be even more involved – let’s all do the change.

Adopt Zero Waste

We are going to share a beautiful natural place with the opportunity to call it our communal home. Together we can show we can make a difference in the world. Keep the Boom clean. Leave no trace. Adopt the ethics of Zero Waste!

Use Public Transport

Instead of taking your car into Boom why not use the local bus service to get to and from the festival?  Boom Bus is our contribution to make your life easy while being environmentally conscious. To avoid carbon emissions, an increased carbon footprint, and at the same time help you in finding the best place in the camping area, Boom Bus users have special entrance on August 17th, one day before gates officially open.
More info here.

Don’t Waste Water…

When you are showering, please make sure you use minimal water and turn the tap off whilst shampooing. Bring organic shampoos and soaps. If you’re using one of the drinkable water standpipes around the site to fill bottles please don’t leave water running.

…And Respect The Lake

Reading Masaru Emoto’s amazing books we get to know water as a living being that accumulates our vibrations. A stunning lake that needs to be taken care of and cleaned surrounds Boom. Please don’t make the lake dirty. Don´t leave a dark trace on this physical dimension.

Get On A Bike!

There is a lot of walking to do at Boom. That is a good thing. It is a weeklong gathering, so why bother with time? Time is art… So if you are a campervan fan, the best and greener way to get around the festival, besides walking, is biking. Even better, you can travel to Boom by bike as our friends Stan and Joost, from Belgium, did in 2008. Check their noble achievement here.

No Glass

No glass is allowed on site. Two reasons for this: litter and the fact that with sunlight lost glass can increase the risks of fire on the land. Please decant your drinks into reusable cans before you arrive. If you can’t avoid plastic, please use the recycling bins.

Hey, Where Is Your Tent?

Taking down all of the tents left behind after the festival is a hard task. All garbage left behind and hundreds of tents make the best screenplay for the dark side of Boom (soon we’ll reveal photos from 2008). Most of the tents are not in proper conditions after being used by the Boomers therefore we have no choice in most cases except to send them to garbage containers. Please take all your personal waste away with you, including used tents. 

Buy Less, Use Less: Simple Living, High Thinking

Do you really need to bring so much packaging to Boom? Look at what the enlightened Mahatma Gandhi wrote back in 1931: “The incessant search for material comforts and their multiplication is such an evil, and I make bold to say that the humans themselves will have to remodel their outlook, if they are not to perish under the weight of the comforts to which they are becoming slaves”. Need we say more?

We Are No-Corporate Logo Area

Boom is a no-corporate logo area to encourage a culture of cognitive liberty, conscious consumption and change. Our mind is limitless and we are one with the universe. Find the way, but find your own way – support independence.

What About the Boom Tickets?

Boom tickets are having a buzz that resonates throughout Saturn rings. Tickets are limited and there’s a contagious enthusiasm throughout both the tribes of the conventional reality and the astral worlds. Not much 2nd phase tickets are left – get yours on a cheap price.
You can get your ticket to Boom Festival through the website or via Boom Ambassadors. Beware of counterfeit tickets. Buy your tickets only through authorized Boom Ambassadors mentioned on our website.
Just six full moons remain and the tribes are getting prepared…
Click here to get your electronic ticket!

It might be common to cross paths with Danish Michael Banel, and his moniker Behind Blue Eyes. He’s delivered a constant stream of progressive trance atmospheres across all styles. Catch the mans live act in the mix at Lisbon in January 2010, while reading his cult tastes!

The Cults Of Behind Blue Eyes

Your cult hobby?
Music making. A pure creative playground!

Your cult movie?
‘Avatar’, an instant classic!

Your cult book?
‘The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the frontiers of human
consciousness’, by Stanislav Grof. A source of inspiration!

Your cult record shop?
Loud Music in Copenhagen. I “grew up” there!

Your cult website?
www.somniasound.com, dreamy sounds!

Your cult record?
‘Skintrade’, Shapeshifter (Soma). It is a classic from the mid
nineties.

Your cult DJ?
Oolor. An inspiration in the early days!

Your cult band?
Led Zeppelin

Your cult daily routine?
Checking the news online!

Your cult country?
Mexico – Countless adventures there!

Your cult beach?
Tulum, it is an awesome place!

Your cult holiday destination?
Riviera Maya. Many classic adventures there!

Finally, what are you expecting for 2010 summer festival season?
Loads of fun and adventures

www.myspace.com/michaelbanel

The end of cheap energy and climate change are two of the main challenges humankind is facing today and will probably mark the end of life as we know it. The Transition Towns Movement is spreading fast and is convinced that if we wait for governments to act, it will be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it will be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

The Transition Towns movement is a global social experiment aimed at helping societies tackle the double issue of Peak Oil and Climate Change. It all started in 2005 with the Kinsale Energy Descent Plan and stemmed from the growing need to look at the issues of climate change and peak oil straight in the face. Instead of paralyzing in fear then doing nothing (the typical “doom and gloom” reaction) the Transition attitude is one of preparing in a positive and proactive way for a lifestyle where communities are more resilient and have found ways of living happily without depending on fossil fuels and with dramatically lower levels of carbon emissions.

The purpose of Transition is “to support community‐led responses to peak oil and climate change, building resilience and happiness” and transition movements worldwide can range all the way from isolated transition projects, promoted by a group of people or a business, to whole towns adopting the transition model and becoming Transition Towns.

The Transition Network was set up in spring 2007 to support Transition Initiatives around the world. We got in touch with Transition Network co-founder Ben Brangwyn and learnt a lot more…

Q. Hello Ben! We know you are extremely busy these days so thank you very much for your time!
In what ways do you think that climate change and the end of cheap oil will affect our day to day lives? What kind of things do we now take for granted that we might start missing in the future?
I’ll start with a little quote by Rob Hopkins (founder of the Transition Movement):
“It takes a lot of cheap energy to maintain the levels of social inequality we see today, the levels of obesity, the record levels of indebtedness, the high levels of car use and alienating urban landscapes. Only a culture awash with cheap oil could become de-skilled on the monumental scale we have.”
All activities that significantly depend directly or indirectly on fossil fuels will be affected by the end of cheap oil. That includes not just the obvious areas such as personal travel and transportation of goods. We’ll see disruptions to our food, our energy, manufacturing, health and economic systems as price rises and a decline in availability of fossil fuels make themselves felt. Now some of these effects will be most welcomed by a lot of people – if I can’t get lousy plastic toys from a polluting factory in China, I’m not going to be in mourning. But it goes further – the system that catches prawns in Scotland and shells them in China, gathers cockles in Wales, bottles them in Holland and then ships them back here for sale, that system won’t work as it’s currently designed.
The global economic system appears to march in lockstep with fossil fuel consumption, particularly oil. This system is founded on debt and interest, and that cycle is utterly dependent on growth to fund repayments. We saw in the last oil shocks of the 1970s and in the last couple of years that high prices of oil have massive economic impacts. In each of the earlier cases, oil supplies picked up, prices went down and stayed down, and everything continued on the growth path. Now, and in the coming decade, we won’t be able to repeat that trick. What happens to a financial system that can only operate in growth mode when net energy (the prerequisite for growth) is inexorably declining? We don’t know, but it’s likely to be a rough ride.

Q. When will we really begin to notice these changes?
That depends on where we live and what access we have to scarce resources. If I’m a campesino in Mexico, I’ve already seen food become dramatically more expensive because of agro-fuels driving up the price of corn on world markets. If I’m a doctor in a hospital in Africa that can’t afford the diesel to run the generators to power the medical equipment, I’m seeing the impacts now. If I’m extremely rich, then I probably won’t feel a thing. And from a climate change perspective, if I’m a farmer in mid Australia, or I live in Tuvalu, then the impacts have already hit me hard.
Transition Initiatives – community responses to the twin pressures of climate change and energy depletion – recognise 4 things. Firstly, that life with dramatically lower energy consumption is inevitable, and that it’s better to plan for it rather than be taken by surprise. Second, that our communities currently lack the resilience to handle the severe energy shocks that Peak Oil will bring. Third, that we have to act for ourselves and we have to act now. And lastly, that by unleashing the genius of the local community to creatively design our energy descent, we can build ways of living that are more connected, more enriching and that recognise the biological limits of our planet.

Q. Do you see a pattern in the way that people or communities evolve from beginning to think about change to actually doing something?
We can see people go through the classic stages of grief/trauma as they take on board the realities of climate change and energy depletion. In Denial they believe that unending growth will continue ad infinitum; in Anger – the only alternative they can imagine is a Mad Max future; in Bargaining – they ponder on keeping everything going somehow with green energy and technofixes; in Depression – they envisage the die-off of the human race; and in Acceptance – they figure that maybe there’s another way involving a collective reimagining of what our far more re-localised futures could look like and how we might work together to achieve them. How can we help people through those stages? For instance there’s no point arguing with someone in the “anger” stage, far better to give them space to vent their feelings and eventually they’ll come out the other side. And in truth, most of us move fairly fluidly around these five stages, affected by the latest news and the natural tides of hope and despair that are part of the human condition.
The final point on the emotional facet of transition is that taking positive action is probably the most effective mechanism for overcoming the powerlessness that gets people stuck in the “depression” phase. And that’s what Transition offers – a positive vision, collectively imagined with your neighbours, and a set of tools to help implement that vision alongside the people who’ll live with the consequences through the next generations.

Q. As co-founder of Transition Network, what’s your perception of the way Transition is spreading around the globe?
Spending my days supporting the growth of Transition around the world, the way it has been spreading has been something of a roller-coaster ride. Every couple of days something extraordinary crops up – a major UK university becoming a Transition University and advertising for 6 full time carbon officers, a second official Transition Initiative in Japan, the Italian version of the Transition Handbook arriving on our desks. We find that the level of engagement people are experiencing is dramatically high. Here’s a quote received in February 2010 from a new ‘official’ initiative in North America:
“It’s been a long road for me to come to this point. From my lonely time in 2008 when I was scared and frustrated about everything I had learned about peak oil, climate change and economic meltdown, to meeting up with wonderful, energetic and selfless people and forming a core group to take on a huge and honourable task of building community resilience. It’s great to know we are a part of the growing network of such dedicated and resourceful individuals and communities. I thank you for giving us the Transition Town framework to make this happen!”

Q. What’s one of the most innovative transition initiatives that springs to your mind?
Regarding innovation, I think of Edinburgh University as being particularly pioneering. They’ve taken the Transition model and are applying it to an institution, trailblazing a path that other institutions like hospitals or city councils will be able to emulate. They’ve said “we’re going to embark on an enterprise to pull the community together to produce an Energy Descent Action plan that will be based on science and reality” – sidelining the ridiculous notions of endless economic growth, cheap energy and complacency over climate change that seem to be the basis of most of the rest of government planning. That takes innovation and a lot of nerve. In truth, however, all the initiatives are astonishingly innovative.

Q. Finally, what changes have you undergone personally since the early transition days? What would you say are the three key driving forces that get you out of bed in the morning?
My personal journey is an interesting mix – it’s extraordinarily humbling for me to see the type of people who are drawn into these initiatives from all walks of life, all different ages and from different ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, I’m seeing our early efforts create significant waves in far-flung places across the globe, and that’s heartening and very affirming. We stepped right out into the unknown setting up Transition Network – there was no money, no office, just a bunch of unstoppable ideas – and now we’re a reasonably well-funded charity with offices, staff and a global reach, including national Transition Hubs in several countries around the world, and that number is growing all the time.
I’ve never had trouble getting up in the morning. It’s always a new day and there’s no telling what wonderful things it’ll bring!

Some important definitions:
Peak oil: the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.
Resilience: “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganise while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks”. In Transition, the concept is applied to settlements and their need to be able to withstand shock.
Carbon cutting: endeavours which lead to reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases.
Energy Descent Plan (EDP): one of the main projects that a Transition initiative sets out to achieve, the creation of a 20 year ‘Plan B’ for their community, looking at how it might transition away from its current oil dependency, and towards a low carbon, resilient way of working.

More info:
http://www.transitiontowns.org/
http://transitiontowns.org/TransitionNetwork/
http://transitionculture.org/
http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_hopkins_transition_to_a_world_without_oil.html

Recently we chat with the artists that brought their magic onto Boom graphic design. After some weeks of work and hours of joy, Boom 2010 image get into life from the dreamscape of The Studio.