Living Well for All in Changing Times - Exploring ways of working towards greater resilience with isolated communities

Hi, my name is Luci Ransome and this is my first blog for Transition Scotland Support. For the last 20 months or so my job with TSS has been to explore, try out and share the learning from - in collaboration with some communities here in Glasgow and the west coast of Scotland - different approaches to resilient and low carbon living. 

Now entering the last 3 months of our Climate Challenge Funding I would like to share some of the experiences, reflections and learning gained through working with 3 community groups in Glasgow, and 1 in Port Glasgow. All 4 are in areas near the top of the Scottish Index of Multiply Deprivation [Find the SIMD here or at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/SIMD], communities not readily associated with embracing the Transition approach. And this is why if we are to make a fair low carbon transition as whole communities and regions with culturally and socio economic diverse people and families we will need a range of different approaches and tools in order to succeed. So what does an isolated and low income community look and feel like thats transitioning towards ways and means of living well for all its community? In this blog, myself and others will tell some of the stories of how the people and communities have changed in the process of this exploration, and indeed how I have too.

These blogs will be by no means the definitive answers to the "how to" questions about this kind of collaboration but ideas, suggestions and more often than not I suspect lead to even more questions.

So why a blog?

1. Because it feels like a really creative space to start to download from my head, heart and hands the ways of working, ideas, reflections and learning, into one place

2. To show what has and hasn't worked, and the learning gained from myself and others

3. To use these blogs as a way to develop a resource pack that may be useful to anyone wanting to work developmentally in similar communities whether community development workers and agencies, community activists or Transitioners themselves

4. To open out the work to more responses and learn more about what works or doesn't within similar communities

5. To feel the fear of trying to articulate what I mean and then realise 10 minutes later that my writing didn't precisely reflect what I meant, but knowing I can go back and add another blog if I want to, or just leave it and see what happens [or to put it another way - to enjoy the creative process of something being formed in public that feels rather scary but also liberating]

6. And actually, it looks like alot of fun to do so here I am

So, I would really like to hear your reflections and ideas to this blog. Please read away and perhaps I may just hear from you soon, best wishes, Luci