Tackling the cost of living and climate crisis

Why support Transition Streets?

Transition Streets is a tried and tested project, created in Devon by Transition Town Totnes to empower groups of neighbours to tackle the climate and cost of living crises by taking practical action together.  It creates more caring, sharing streets and helps people build resilience, friendships and connections at the same time as reducing carbon footprints and living costs. 

This year community groups from all across the country have asked us to support them to run Transition Streets in their areas. Our vision is to develop a network of Transition Streets across the UK, including more streets in Totnes and Devon, so participating communities can learn from and inspire each other . With your donations we aim to help 20+ new communities in the next year as we scale up this amazing project.

We are passionate about Transition Streets, it has made a huge impact in the neighbourhoods we have run it in and we know that it has massive potential everywhere.

What is the need?

Many people feel powerless and hopeless when faced with the climate crisis, coupled with the rising cost of living. Even before Covid hit the UK was suffering with a loneliness crisis of epidemic proportions. 

These issues are too much of a challenge to face on our own. Transition Streets supports people to feel empowered to act collectively with their neighbours to re-imagine their homes, streets and communities and put into action positive and practical changes. Neighbours come together to support each other, to be there for each other, helping to reduce the epidemic levels of loneliness and improving mental health and wellbeing.

What makes Transition Streets special?

Financial: In the first round of the project we worked with 550 households who saved an average of £570 off their energy and water bills.

Environmental: Households saved an average of 1.3 tonnes of carbon a year, which is almost the equivalent of each family taking a small car off the road.

Practical: Participants make a wide range of practical and lifestyle changes including; insulating their homes, installing solar photovoltaics, growing more food, car sharing and swapping more car journeys for cycling, introducing water saving measures and behaviours, sharing, swapping and composting.

Social: What excites us most about the project is the amazing things that happen when you bring a group of neighbours together to explore how to improve life on their street. A big theme is sharing and looking after each other. Streets have shared cars, meals, gardens, shopping, tools and equipment, one group set up a community cinema and another an orchard. Many find friendship and support, sometimes when they were previously very isolated.

How does Transition Streets work exactly?

Groups of around 6 - 8 households meet together over 7 sessions. With some early group support from a trained facilitator, an easy-to-read Transition Streets toolkit, the groups are enabled to guide themselves through topics including Energy, Resource Use, Transport, Food and Water. Everyone taking part tracks their carbon footprint with a simple 5 minute carbon calculator from Carbon Savvy and receives personalised carbon footprint advice.

After some initial support, the streets are left to themselves to explore the topics and focus on the areas that are most relevant or exciting to them. As well as personal actions to cut carbon, participants are also given potential ideas for projects they could implement at a street level, such as street-wide draughtproofing, car and bike share schemes, communal sharing spaces and street closures for play and parties. We are currently working with our sister project, Incredible Edible Totnes to offer support to streets that want to coordinate and share food growing.

Who are we?

We are Transition Town Totnes, a community-led and run local charity. We are part of what is now a national and global network of Transition groups coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world. We exist to strengthen the local economy, reduce our environmental impact, and build our resilience for a future with less cheap energy and a changing climate. We are a grassroots organisation with a small staff team, working to support a wide range of mainly volunteer-led projects, in partnership with other local organisations. Our work ranges from increasing low impact affordable housing, sharing skills, creating livelihoods, reducing energy costs and carbon emissions and growing our local food economy.

Why do we want to roll out the project?

This year we have received interest from places including Suffolk, Scotland, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Bolton, London and Birmingham as well as many towns and villages near us in Devon. We know there is demand and we want to make it happen. We have support from the national Transition Together umbrella organisation who are going to help us promote the project to the network of 300+ groups.

With the right resources and training Transition Streets can be run anywhere at very little cost to the participating communities. This funding will help us with the next phase of scaling up the project.

What will we use the money for?

Your donation will help our project team to:

• Train and support  20+ local community groups from anywhere in the UK 
• Develop a network of participating groups and support peer-to-peer learning so they can share knowledge, experience and inspiration
• Develop a standardized digital handbook (also suitable for print) that communities can use or adapt to their individual needs and circumstances
• Adapt facilitation guides and the Transition Streets ‘Starter Pack’ (to help streets recruit neighbours to form groups) 
• Hold online workshops - including group facilitation 
• Hold an online national Transition Streets conference for participating communities
• Work with Carbon Savvy to develop and rollout the carbon measurement tool
• Hold in-person local events for Devon communities who want to run Transition Streets
• Develop the website to better suit the needs of the network
• Adapt our evaluation toolkit and work with partners to monitor the difference the project is making
• Develop partnerships to expand the project reach and impact

‘If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, and it might just be in time’. Rob Hopkins, co-creator of Transition Streets and co-founder of the International Transition Movement.