While austerity measures are now an everyday reality for most Greeks, for an increasing number of people resourcefulness, problem solving and action have replaced anger and frustration. Two years ago people were walking the streets of Athens with long faces and eyes full of despair. Today many are giving their time to help and support others in need, but most importantly to help themselves: to talk, to laugh, to feel useful and to live differently, focusing on what is most needed to make them happy instead of being seduced by corporations and advertisers who create desires rather than fulfilling needs.

There are many initiatives in Greece where you can now buy food directly from the producers at fair prices. You can use local currencies to exchange food or services. Park spaces that were unused and sites that were abandoned have been transformed into useful play areas and gardens. Roof and balcony vegetable gardens are appearing on blocks of flats.

Initiatives that support homeless people and others that offer food regularly to the most needy have flourished. People are giving space in their own houses to help people and families in need. For example, a group called There Is Love, which helps families in need, has been operating in the Moschato area of Athens since 2003, but, according to the organisation’s president, Eleni Manolaki: “We’ve done far more work in the last two years because there is so much need now.

“In 2012 we helped a number of single parent families that lost their homes and all their possessions to find clothes, food and a place to live,” she added. “Residents of the Moschato area offered their empty flats which were renovated with the help of  volunteers and the support of the local council. The bills of these houses are being paid by our members.” Mrs Manolaki acknowledges that this can not be done for all, or for a long time, but she’s happy that it has saved some families for now: “By changing these people’s lives for the better you gain more caring people; the people who have been helped in the past are the ones that come back to support the others that need help now.”

The Metropolitan Community Clinic in the Hellinikon district of Athens provides free medical assistance to the unemployed and those who have no social security or very little income. Seven pharmacists, 40 doctors and 150 volunteers have, over the last 10 months, taken care of more than 1,500 citizens in need.

The clinic is supported by volunteers from the Sotiria state hospital. But the work of the clinic doesn’t stop with the provision of care. Staff assess each case and will provide support to patients who have ended up ill due to a lack of medical care and who want to take legal action against the government. Clinic staff also seek to publicise the true current situation of the Greek health service so the world can understand how the austerity measures are affecting human life. Georgios Vihas, the chief cardiologist of the clinic, is also keen to stress that: “This clinic offers a way to deal with the health care problem at the current moment in Greece, but we are not by any means trying to replace a much needed national health service.”

New thinking is flourishing everywhere. Theodosis Boudisimo runs a not-for-profit organisation called  ‘i.d.e.a.’,  which uses volunteers to help anyone with an idea turn it into reality. “Corruption was a major defect of the Greek government and public sector,” says Theodosis, “so we set up i.d.e.a to be as clean as possible.” There are different code numbers to match each activity and different bank accounts to differentiate between the daily expenses of the organisation and the expenses of each activity; everything is publicly available for anyone who wishes to check. Regular actions by i.d.e.a. include: food handouts to the homeless every Friday and Sunday in the centre of Athens; clothing giveaways every second Saturday; and food support direct to the homes of families whose situation is particularly desperate.

Meanwhile, Transition Moschato Town is developing a reskilling service for the unemployed and for those who want to learn a new skill. The long term aim is to create a skills exchange or time bank.

At first glance all these groups seem to be offering temporary assistance rather than long-term transformation. As the crisis and the effects of it touch more and more people, the groups will need to find mechanisms to stay alive and working. At the same time, Greeks who previously were not strong at volunteering are now offering their time to support others. A new culture of volunteering is emerging in Greece which has already transformed our communities and which will hopefully transform the economy as well by finding new ways to exchange goods and skills that are good for the many rather than the few.

Lia Zorzou is an environmentalist and acadmic whose work includes flood river management and renewable energy projects. Lia is also a founder member of Transition Town Moschato in Athens and is working to promote Transition in Greece.

Images: young boy, old civilisation (Lia Zorzou); photowall of Mountain Heroes from Appalacian Mountain Top Removal protest, (Earth Justice)

As printed media struggles financially and the diversity of the world’s free press diminishes, small publications like the Transition Free Press make their way through the cracks. It’s key, we feel, that the presses keep rolling and our home-grown news is physical and visible and goes places that on-line media cannot reach. Here one of TFP’s founders, Mike Grenville, discusses why in an interview this week for International Permaculture Day.

Like CSAs and local businesses everywhere, small publishing ventures need the support and backing of regular customers. We are not mega-corporations with slick marketing operations and big budgets, we are a group of hard-working creative people starting from scratch on the kitchen table. So our community-supported media requires the same generosity and loyalty people show towards community gardens, people’s kitchens or food coops.

A Social Enterprise

Alongside many Transition projects within a REconomic frame, TFP is a social enterprise, so the paper needs to pay for the work that goes into creating it, as well as printing costs. If our paper were a loaf of bread, you might not question giving £1 for an honest, artisan loaf. So maybe a good way to look at this kind of home-grown comms is to see it as real crafted editorial. You can’t exactly eat our words, but one thing we are sure of: grassroots news is good food for the mind and heart!

While mainstream media are forced to squeeze staff, cut freelance rates and often push a hostile and corporate agenda, we look resiliently and in an earth-friendly way at what is happening in the fields of energy and food, transport and education. We look for the big untold narrative under the radar and report on how local action is changing the world as the strapline for Rob Hopkins’ new book, The Power of Just Doing Stuff, goes. How we can turn the ship around in our individual and community lives.

Our distributors – individuals, Transition Initiatives and local businesses – undertake to buy a bundle, so they can sell the papers and recoup their costs, as well as make some profit to plough back into their own publications. TIs in Lewes, Bristol, Bungay and other places all create their own newsletters this way and sell alongside the national edition in farmers markets, local shops, cafes, at Transition events and summer festivals.

We are not alone in our against-the-flow comms either. Last month also saw the launch of the printed version of the excellent on-line magazine STIR. TFP’s Jay Tompt writes about REconomy in a Transition Network column in this latest issue and editor, Charlotte Du Cann reviews Barbara Kingsolver’s novel about climate change and poverty in the Appalachian mountains, Flight Behaviour. You can find STIR in selected outlets and also, like our TFP, by subscription.

So dear reader, do support us all where you can. If you see a copy do buy one and pass on the news to a place or a person who might benefit from a liberating read! Leave one in your library or local cafe, or give to a friend or colleague. Or if you are not near a TFP hub, we’d love you to be one of our subscribers. Let’s grow and cook up this emergent culture together!

Images: community baked bread baked at Can Piella, photograph by Phillip Evans; cover of summer issue of STIR

We’re 24 pages of full-on, full colour news and views. Great photographs, great articles, contributed by Transitioners and community activists working in the field. Ordinary people doing extraordinary stuff in all kinds of places: in the city, in the wild, in books, housing co-ops, small businesses, allotments, in the park, down the pub, on the (solar- panelled) roof, underwater, even on the netball court. We’re in Greece, Spain, France and Portugal; we’re in Sheffield, Louth,  Crystal Palace and Lostwithiel.

Our on-line version, of course, goes everywhere and anywhere, but we feel there is nothing quite like the real thing and with luck, if you live or work near one of our 50 plus distributing hubs, you will find a stack at your local Transition event, neighbourhood bookstore or community cafe, and be able to put your hands on a copy. If not, you can always subscribe for a year and receive one through the post.

During the next few weeks we will be publishing some of our highlights on this blog. Meanwhile here is the Ed’s introduction to give you a taste.

Welcome to issue two

Energy underpins everything we do in our industrialised societies. The high demand for gas, oil, coal or bio-fuels, as our front page story shows, is now costing the earth on which we depend for life. How we face this dilemma and reduce our need for power is the work of the Transition movement and thousands of community activists around the world.

Most of us are invisible. But, like mycorrhizzal fungi in the living soil, we are connecting and communicating across the globe, working to bring about a future where people can live fairly within ecological limits. In our summer edition we publish stories you might not ordinarily see – actions communities undertake to bring back life into neighbourhoods, to activate soils that have been deadened and contaminated, to create new networks that can hold us together in challenging times. An infrastructure you can feel but not always see.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline threatens to bring toxic crude oil through the heartland of America. Ancient trees fall to make a by-pass in a peaceful valley in Sussex. In response people rise up and take on mighty corporations and rapacious stakeholders. Sometimes that might is challenged. We won! wrote TFP columnist, Shaun Chamberlin, as the Ecological Land Co-operative finally secured planning permission for a smallholding in Devon. For a Goliath culture whose top-down business-as-usual worldview requires everyone’s assent, this may appear a small victory. But  each time we voice our dissent, each time we reclaim our fields, we realise we are not alone in our task.

Why to do we tell these stories? Because they are sparks that light a great fire inside us. Because another culture is being forged under our feet. In an abandoned warehouse in Doncaster people gather on a freezing night by a furnace to listen to a new narrative being told, along the River Dart  a group of children and elders go on a story walk in search of the future. A sunflower garden appears in a neighbourhood in Portalegre. An artist plants 100 fruit trees in a university in Loughborough. In the cities everywhere, leaves appear through the cracks and are gathered by foragers. A dominant worldview does not mean we do not have agency.

What we are not told is that there is an emergent world inside us. You can find it everywhere where there is warmth and generosity and a co-operative spirit: in community cafes, park libraries, pop-up shops, trade schools, abundance projects, repair cafes, people’s kitchens. It comes in all the colours of the rainbow, it sounds like the nightingale singing in the dark in May. For all people who sing in the dark, who stand by the land, the bird and the tree, who hold the fire until the dawn comes, this paper is for you.

Charlotte Du Cann, Editor

To order a bundle of Transition Free Press contact mark@transitionfreepress.org.uk

To subscribe for a year click here

Images: artist and activist, Anne-Marie Culhane (People); Bee-friendly plants from the Honeyscribe project by Amy Shelton (Living Earth); Oil Change International poster (News); sunflower from neighbourhood garden in Portalegre  (Profile); TFP button by Trucie Mitchell and Chris Wells

“Why another newspaper; and why not online?”‏ 

So when an email came through today from carbon coach, Dave Hampton, addressing this very issue (sic), we immediately wanted to share it with all our distributors and subscribers.

It consists of a short interchange between TFP business manager, Jay Tompt, who distributes the paper in and around Totnes, and Dave himself, who organises the distribution hub for Marlow, Maidenhead, Amersham, Chesham and High Wycombe.

Jay says:
“From my point of view, the importance of a physical newspaper is that it reaches people who are not online; it’s public and shareable in a way online content can never be; newspapers as a form are bound up with ideas of liberty, justice, and change, (as well as propaganda and commercial excess, I grant you); it’s a form that also signifies legitimacy and credibility for many; it’s an enduring medium for conveying the “slow news” that mainstream media has no time for. Hope that helps!”

Dave (the carbon coach) says:
“From a carbon “maths” point of view the impact of a newspaper that lasts 3 months is (comparatively) microscopic.

It’s more visible and tangible, sure, but we are talking visible grams- a millionth of the invisible intangible lifestyle tons.

Hopefully it also plants the seed of the idea that a “newspaper” could be a thing of value – for slow enjoyment – that lasts – something that can be kept and passed around – for months!

I can evidence this – I have managed to “train” the team at Marlow FM – NOT to throw away the one (well-thumbed) copy of Transition Free Press that still sits on our reception desk 3 months on! (Marlow FM gets a big stack of nearly all the daily papers delivered daily – (I know, I know – I am working on it) – all of which go into the bin at the end of the day. But not the TFP!

Transition Free Press is printed on 100% recycled, non-chlorine bleached paper using non-toxic inks.

Image: Summer bundles arrive and distribution manager Mark Watson  takes them through the door, April 2013, Suffolk

This issue we are welcoming new distributors from Transition initiatives, community groups and local businesses all over the UK: Bideford (Peter Yeo), Blaenau Ffestiniog, Snowdonia; Keig, Aberdeenshire (Sue Norris), Lampeter (Organic Cafe), Malvern Hills (SIGHT designs), Penwith (Community Development Trust); Suffolk Climate Change Partnership; Torphins, Aberdeenshire (Platform 22 pottery and coffeehouse); Wordsley, West Midlands (John Hazlewood); Transition Bro Gwaun, Fishguard; Transition Chichester; Transition Llandrindod; Transition Richmond, N Yorks; Transition Tynedale; Wordsley, West Midlands (John Hazlewood). Good luck everyone with selling the paper!

. .. have you got yours yet?

To order a bundle contact mark@transitionfreepress.org.uk (right)

To subscribe for a year click here

On-line edition will be available on publication day,  May 1

As well as giving a unique Transition twist on news and comments upfront in the paper, we have a strong features section at the back of each issue, including articles on arts, community, media, food, foraging, wellbeing, practical projects, book reviews, interviews and new pages on housing and the living earth.

We like to report back on events and projects you might never have come across before. On our arts pages you’ll find a creative gathering, inspired by the Dark Mountain Project, a grassroots network of writers, artists, thinkers and activists. Normally a publisher of an annual anthology of words and images, the picture above is from their first album, From the Mourning of the World. The cover is painted by Dark Mountain artist, Rima Staines and the compilation curated by singer-songwriter Marmeduke Dando.

It promises to be a great set, including an alternate version of Caesar, recorded specially by Chris Wood (right) as well as wild and uncivilised music by Jon Boden, Chris T-T and Bethia Beadman (a duet with REM’s Mike Mills).

They are in the last two weeks of crowdfunding, so do check them out here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/from-the-mourning-of-the-world.

And keep an eye out for your TFP arriving in over 50 initiatives, related groups and local businesses from Tuesday. Expect more posts about that soon!

To order a bundle contact mark@transitionfreepress.org.uk

We like to keep our content under wraps, so it’s a surprise for all our readers, but here, as a teaser, is Sam, our man in Cardiff, holding one of the plants that stars in two of our pages this summer (a free paper to the first person to guess what it is – answer in comment section below!) We’ll be following our dynamic formula of news, reviews and interviews on all Transition subjects under the sun – food, arts, education, wellbeing and sport, plus new pages on Housing and Planet.

In the run up to production, several new distributors have joined the network. So here’s  a warm welcome to: Suffolk Climate Change Partnership, Peter Yeo in Bideford, TIs in Cuckmere Valley, Malvern Hills, Llandrindod, Keig/Alford, Bro Gwaun, Tynedale and Chichester! Any last minute takers? Do get in touch with Mark Watson, our distribution manager (bundles of 250 and 125 still available) mark@transitionfreepress.org,uk. Deadline:  Monday 8th April, 5pm

We’ve found new printers for this issue too, so the paper is as eco-friendly as possible. This means 100% recycled paper and non-toxic vegetable-based inks. Your TFP2 may have a slightly different look at and feel as a result, so do let us know what you think. We are also issuing 5000 copies through Permaculture Magazine next month. Word is getting out there this summer!

Meanwhile don’t forget, if you are not near a distributing hub and would like to receive a paper and support us at the same time, why not take out a subscription? £15 will buy you four issues of TFP and lots of good wishes from us. This grassroots publication can’t happen without you. Thank you everyone for travelling with us in this pilot year.

Transition Free Press. Reading life from a different perspective.

Photo: COMMUNITY: Sam Holt from Transition Cardiff; WORLD Fish drawing by Sheffield-based artist, Phlegm  from a mural painted in Scarborough

Is Transition Free Press circulating in your area?

Would you, your group or initiative like to sign up for a bundle of the only newspaper in print dedicated to reporting on all things transition?

We’re still taking orders for the summer issue, as well as for the autumn and winter editions (next winter, that is, not that this one is over yet!).

As well as the standard bundle of 250 copies @ £75.00 (30p per copy), new distributors can now choose to buy a smaller bundle of 125 copies @ £50.00 (40p per copy), including postage and packing (UK).

Many people are sharing their bundles with transition and related groups in neighbouring towns. Apart from saving on costs, sharing bundles is a great way of connecting with transition in your region. Belsize, Marlow, Reading and Walthamstow are home to just four of the hubs for Transition Free Press.

To secure your bundle, whether big  (250 copies and increments of 125) or small (125 copies), for distributing yourself, through your initiative or with other groups, contact Mark by 5pm on Monday 8th April at mark@transitionfreepress.org.uk

NB:
(i) For individual subscriptions please click here.

(ii) Our distribution page has the current list of all TFP distributors – plus drop-down post with some hints and tips on how to get those TFPs out there!

Thanks to everyone who has sent their experiences and suggestions in!

TFP Fivers Club of Lewes Transition Town Lewes activists have been buying five copies for £5 and selling them or giving them away with over 70 sold in the first part of February alone.

Sustainable Bungay The profits from TFP sales have paid for the group’s printed quarterly newsletter insert. Copies sold at meetings, Happy Mondays monthly community kitchen and Edible Garden library events. People happy to support both newspaper and newsletter.

From Paul Gasson of Transition Walthamstow here is a great tip for anyone selling the papers in a local shop/cafe/outlet where sales may not always be overseen by the people working there:

If you have a friendly retail outlet which is prepared to stock TFP (in Walthamstow we are fortunate to have the Hornbeam Cafe), a newspaper holder is quick to make from scrap wood. It minimises counter space requirements, and keeps the papers tidy – see photo above

Always have a couple of copies with you when visiting public places, such as local cafes & pubs (but put them in a folder so they don’t get too wrecked, even if you do!). TFP can act as a great conversation starter, even if you don’t make a sale.

That newspaper holder is just great! And the sales sign underneath prevents any confusion about the ‘free’ in the ‘Free Press’, which refers to TFP’s editorial stance (no advertorial in the paper, though there are adverts and you can buy advertising space), and the fact we are not funded or owned by any large organisation or corporation.

If you are reading this and you are a distributor, do keep in mind this paper provides an invaluable communications tool for anyone involved in transition at any level, a publication which backs up all the work being done by so many people, often invisibly. Its being in physical print also means the paper can then reach people and places other media won’t necessarily reach. And who may not even have heard of transition.

As Viv Manning from Kings Lynn, wrote:

A great read – maybe I’m a bit of an old fashioned girl, but I get on much better with printed matter than online reading.

Finally if you or your Transition initiative would like to become a distributor for the Transition Free Press, please take a look at the distribution page and contact Mark Watson: mark@transitionfreepress.org.uk

Images: TFP and scrap wood newspaper holder by Paul Gasson; Pound sign by Jay Tompt; TFP at the Waveney Greenpeace Fair by Charlotte Du Cann

A really great paper – a good balance between wide-reaching articles about climate change, general topics about renewables etc., and case studies of local projects and achievements.

Most of us got involved in green groups because we thought governments would make real changes and we would need to be prepared for them. In fact, there’s a lot of persuading to do to get people to recognise that we’re in trouble… (Debbie Reed – Transition Tynedale)

Our first issue of TFP has been out on the streets for a month now and great feedback has been coming through the network in the UK and elsewhere. People are offering stories, sending congratulations, giving us suggestions. We’ve also had 4696 reads of our on-line version. Best of all our distributors have been busy selling 11,000 copies of the paper (here in the depot before dispatch) and hopefully making a bit of a profit for their TIs too).

People have been really responsive and happy to part with a £1 for their copy. MJ who works in our local grocers (and TFP outlet right) said that 6 members of the family she lives with read it and thought it was great – one of them is a local pig farmer and he took it to work with him! Josiah from our local TI group, Sustainable Bungay, took out an ad for his Great British Peas and Beans business, Hodemedod’s, and has already received quite a few requests and inquiries. (Mark Watson – distribution manager)

We’ve had reports of brisk sales of TFP Issue 1 in fairs, festivals, farmer’s markets and film showings in towns and bio-regions everywhere. We’ve been outside tube stations in London, on remote Scottish islands, snapped up by the Suffolk Climate Change Partnership and at Vandana Shiva’s talk in Totnes, and demanding attention in local news agents in Sussex:

It’s been great to see and hear the reaction to TFP – almost all of it incredibly positive. The one heated discussion I had with someone in a shop in Lewes led to him buying a copy and the shop where we had the discussion selling 10 more TFPs straight afterwards. TFP – makes you think, makes you act!  (Alexis Rowell – news ed)

Here is Paul, a local farmer, famous for growing long straw for thatching (hat not model’s own!) at a  stall which ed, Charlotte Du Cann, shared with Greenpeace at their Waveney Valley Winter Fair in February. The benefit of having a comms tool in your hands really allows for good conversations – and sales (50 copies flew out of the door).

If any wonderful Transition distributors have pictures or reports of sales pitches, please send them in and we will be happy to publish. (charlotte@transitionfreepress.org.uk).

Great funding news

Supporting TFP’s crowdfunding campaign made me feel connected to a whole bunch of people who really care what’s happening out there, just like me. (Louise Stirling, Muir of Ord, Scotland)

Our other great news is our crowdfunding appeal with BuzzBnk reached its first target of £10,000 and we also won a £4000 award from the Network of Social Change. So a Big Thank You to everyone who took part in making this a success. We are now officially a social enterprise and Issue 2 is now happening. News and features are commissioned and we are looking forward to editing, designing and producing our summer edition (out May 1).

Meanwhile we welcome all continued support. We are a fledgling paper and though these start-up funds are a vital bridge and very happily received, to be truly sustainable we’ll need further bundle sales, regular ads and LOTS of subscriptions. Unlike mainstream media we have no big corporate advertisers or oligarchs behind us! Sales and subscriptions are key to our funding and also to our distributing TIs. If you are not part of a distributing hub, or you or your household would like to contribute anyway, we now have a subscriptions page on our website, with PayPal, or you can send a cheque directly to Jay, our business manager (jay@transitionfreepress.org.uk). £15 per year, or more of course if you wish.

The TFP crew are working hard to create a new media that speaks to people about and in tough times, and we know we can’t do any of this without you, dear readers. Thank you for travelling alongside us. Because we never know who we are reaching . . .

Someone told me that working in the corporate world TFP gave them hope and encouragement that there were like-minded people out there doing great things (Mike Grenville – co-founder, Forest Row)

Other latest stories about Transition Free Press

Introducing Local Broadsheets
http://transitionfreepress.org/2013/02/22/introducing-local-broadsheets/

TFP gets into the groove on the Transition (radio) Show
http://transitionfreepress.org/2013/02/18/with-a-little-help-from-my-friends-tfp-ed-on-transition-show/

We’re SO out there!
http://transitionfreepress.org/2013/02/07/were-so-out-there/