id: transition-town-open-space
title: Transition Town Open Space
description: >-
  A practice from the Transition Towns movement — founded in Totnes, UK, by
  Rob Hopkins — where a community uses open space to launch working groups
  around energy, food, and local resilience. Combines open space
  technology with a resilience framing.
source: Transition Network / Rob Hopkins, "The Transition Handbook"
source_url: https://transitionnetwork.org/
tags: [transition-towns, open-space, climate, community, resilience]
forked_from: null
image: null
steps:
  - headline: Frame the resilience question
    description: >-
      The convenor frames the gathering around the community's resilience
      — how it will fare with less energy and a changing climate — and
      invites participants to propose working groups.
  - headline: Propose working groups
    description: >-
      Anyone proposes a working group — food, energy, transport, local
      economy — and posts it. Participants sign up for the groups they
      will join.
  - headline: Groups meet and plan
    description: >-
      Working groups meet in corners of the venue, naming their first
      practical project and the next meeting date. The groups are
      self-organising from this point.
  - headline: Report back
    description: >-
      Each working group reports its first project and meeting date to the
      whole gathering. Public commitment strengthens follow-through.
  - headline: Convene a coordinating hub
    description: >-
      A coordinating hub is named to convene the working groups periodically
      and hold the whole transition initiative.
outcome: >-
  Self-organising working groups form around practical resilience
  projects, with a coordinating hub to hold the whole.
practice: >-
  The framing matters — resilience, not apocalypse. People act on what
  they can build, not on what they fear. The working groups must be free
  to choose their own projects.