Transition Culture

One of the most fascinating craft breweries in the UK can be found nestled in a series of arches beneath a railway bridge in Bermondsey in London. For the last 9 years, The Kernel, under the guidance of its founder Evin O’Rourke, have pioneered not just amazing and distinctive beers, but also an approach rooted in connection to place, to a different way of doing business. http://www.thekernelbrewery.com/

John McCarthy on the captive imagination by Rob Hopkins

Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk.  After completing his PhD in cell genetics in 1972, he has lived for 50 years in the Himalayas and studied with many of the great Tibetan masters, including Kangyur Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama.  He is a translator of Tibetan texts, an author of several books, and has done some long retreats.  He started Karuna-Sechen, which has helped more than 200,000 people in Northern India, Nepal and Tibet.  He is an accomplished photographer, and his photos of the Himalayan region and its culture have been collected in several books.  He is a member of the Mind and Life Institute which explores the intersection between contemplative traditions and contemporary scientific inquiry.  We met while he was recently in Lon

Manish Jain is deeply committed to regenerating our diverse knowledge systems and cultural imaginations. He has served for the past 17 years as Coordinator and Co-Founder of Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development based in Udaipur, India and is co-founder of the Swaraj University, Creativity Adda, Learning Societies Unconference, Walkouts-Walkon network, and Udaipur as a Learning City in India. He is a featured speaker/advisory member of the Economics of Happiness network for localization. He recently helped to launch the Ecoversities Network. He has edited several books on Vimukt Shiksha (liberating learning) on themes such as learning societies, unlearning, gift culture, community media, and tools for deep dialogue.

Dr Larry Rosen is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California State University. He has been a teacher for 45 years and has been studying the impact of technology for 33 years, and has written 7 books on the subject. He does a lot of research which explores the psychological impact of technology. He is co-author, with Adam Gazzaley of the brilliant ‘Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World’.

Sven Birkerts is an American essayist and literary critic of Latvian ancestry. He is best known for his book 'The Gutenberg Elegies', which posits a decline in reading due to the overwhelming advances of the Internet and other technologies of the "electronic culture." More recently he wrote the brilliant 'Changing the Subject'. Both books are utterly brilliant, and I can't recommend them highly enough. As a result, I was so thrilled when I got the opportunity to speak to him... here is our conversation.

Alex Schlegel is a cognitive neuroscientist, which he describes as being about “trying to understand how the structure and function of the brain creates the mind and the consciousness we experience and everything that makes us human, like imagination”.  He recently co-published fascinating research which identified what the authors called “the mental workspace”, which they identify as the network that fires in the brain when we are being imaginative.  I spoke to Alex via Skype, and started by asking him to explain what the mental workspace is.

Deborah Frances-White is a comedian and writer who also delivers seminars to women in business on subjects including charisma, diversity and inclusion. She is co-author of 'The Improv Handbook', produces 'The Guilty Feminist' podcast, and is co-founder of The Spontaneity Shop. She chatted on Skype.

Felix Beltran is a translator, a festival organiser, and a member of Barcelona en Comu, the remarkable bottom up movement that is bringing new democracy to the city, part of the wider municipalist movement across Spain and elsewhere.

Josiah Meldrum is one of three founders of Hodmedods British Grains and Pulses (https://hodmedods.co.uk/), founded in 2012 to source and supply beans and other products from British farms. They are brilliant, and have somehow harnessed the imagination of British people to start eating again beans and pulses that had almost been consigned to history. How did they do that, and how did they appeal the imagination? Speaking to Rob Hopkins, Josiah here explores how they did it.

In September 2017 I attended a weekend workshop run by the Spontaneity Shop, their Level 1A Improvisation training. It was taught by Jeremy Finch, and so in this short podcast, I talk to Jeremy and to some of my fellow improvisers, to get a sense of what improv is, and how people found a weekend of learning to play. http://www.the-spontaneity-shop.com/workshops/

What would you do if you were appointed to run a museum, with very little budget, a very small team, and a sense that the place had run out of direction and vision?  If you’re Hannah Fox, and you’ve just been asked to come up with ideas for the future of the Silk Mill Museum in Derby, you turn to the imagination, in particular, to how best to enable the people of the city to apply their imaginations to the museum’s future.  It’s a fascinating story.  I visited the Museum in July, and Hannah kindly showed me around, and made time for the interview that follows.  Their approach was implications for how many different organisations might approach change in a way that releases, rather than sidelines, the imagination.

The Proper Ornaments brought our New Lion Brewery Sessions at Sea Change Festival to a close. Their brilliant short set is recorded here in full. What a great way to bring a perfect day to a close! https://theproperornaments.bandcamp.com/

Our second New Lion Brewery Session was Jim Ghedi. Here is his brilliant set in full. Jim Ghedi is a 6 & 12 string guitarist and folk singer from the outskirts of Sheffield, England. He spent a good proportion of the last 2 years touring the UK & Europe in support of his debut album ‘Home is where I exist, now to live & die’ (Cambrian Records, 2015), gaining radio play in the US, Australia, Belgium and UK. His current solo work explores connections to the natural environments and heritage of rural communities and landscapes across the British Isles, including the village in which he grew up along the Yorkshire/Derbyshire borders. Drawing musically from some interesting genre-crossing ideas combining finger-style guitar composition, orchestral arrangments and traditional Folk Song.. Jim Ghedi is busy touring and in the process of releasing his next solo record planned with Basin Rock record label for late 2017 alongside a duo project with guitarist Toby Hay in the following year.

Our 2017 New Lion Brewery Sessions, part of Drift Records' brilliant Sea Change Festival, brought 4 very different artists in to play in the Brewery. The first was Seamus Fogarty and his band. Here is the full audio of their brilliant set. Seamus' new album, 'The Curious Hand', is out on October 6th.

As part of the Sea Change Festival in Totnes, New Lion Brewery hosted 4 performances. Ryley Walker packed the brewery out for his set, which was, as we will hear, celebrated with the launch of a new beer, a rye NEPA called 'Ryeley Walker'. Here is the lightly edited recording of his set in full.

On Sunday 16th July 2017, Transition Town Tooting held their 'Tooting Twirl' event, and rather wonderful it was too. I popped along to see what was happening, and spoke to some of the key people involved, including Lucy Neal, Hilary Jennings, Richard Couldrey, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (MP for Tooting), Jeni Walker as well as some of those visiting the Twirl.

Julian Dobson is a writer and facilitator specialising in regeneration, placemaking and social change. He is author of 'How to Save Town Centres'.

JR calls himself “an artist until I find a real job”. His work, around the world, is amazing. I was fortunate to get to speak to him, as somehow, on the phone, he cycled across Paris to get to a meeting without sounding even slightly out of breath. At least, that's what he told me he was doing. With artists you can never be too sure... http://www.jr-art.net

Bruce Alexander has spent his whole career as a psychologist working on the topic of addiction, and wrote the seminal ‘The Globalisation of Addiction: a study in the poverty of the spirit’, one of the most remarkable books I’ve ever read.  He lives in Pender Island, British Columbia, in Canada.  I wanted to explore with him any overlaps between his work and the imagination. It was a fascinating conversation.