Administration

Transition North Cornwall (TransitionNC)
Minutes 1
Minutes of the first meeting of the Transition North Cornwall Steering Group held at Trelay Farm (near Wainhouse Corner, south of Bude) on Wednesday 13th February 2008 at 7pm.
Background
On 16th January 2008 there was a public meeting ‘Decline in Oil: Are you worried about the rising price of oil?’ in Wadebridge, with Rob Hopkins from Transition Culture and Anthony Gibson from the NFU as speakers. Approximately 140 people attended.
On 6th February 2008 there was a follow-up meeting in Wadebridge Town Hall, called by Tony Wainwright of the Climate Friendly Parish of St Endellion. Notes of this, including the list of attendees, are available (thanks to Traci and Lucy). At the end of that meeting, people were asked to volunteer to be on the steering group of Transition North Cornwall. The following six people volunteered.
These minutes are of the first meeting of the Steering Group.
Present: Paul Sousek (chair), Jackie Carpenter (minutes), Mark Norman, Peter McGregor, Traci Lewis, Jonathan Stocks.
Apologies: None, all present.
1 Chairman
It was proposed by Jackie that we have a revolving chair. At each meeting, someone will volunteer to take the minutes and produce an action list. This person will then be the chair of the next meeting. This was agreed by all. For this meeting, Paul Sousek volunteered to chair the meeting and this was accepted.
2 Introductions
We introduced ourselves and briefly described our backgrounds.
3 Aims and Objectives
We had a long discussion about the aims and objectives of the group. The following were agreed:
1. To increase awareness about Peak Oil, Climate Change and Transition solutions.
2. To support the development of local Transition groups in North Cornwall
3. To act as a communication network for Transition work in North Cornwall
We considered having a fourth aim: to link to people in positions of importance, but decided that this was included in Objective 1. We agreed that it is OK for any of us to talk to anyone we know who occupies a position of importance, to tell them that TransitionNC has been set up.
Our discussion included the following important points; in future we might choose to pick some of these out and make them our policies.
We shall follow the Transition Primer, published by Ben Brangwyn and Rob Hopkins.
We shall work bottom up. We shall aim to set an agenda for the Councils, unlike Agenda21 which was top-down from the Councils to the people.
We shall be non-party-political.
We shall focus on the positive aspects of going towards a new future. We discussed words such as “opportunities” and “solutions” and preferred the word “solutions”.
We discussed words such as “Peak Oil”, “Resource depletion”, “Ecological Footprint”, “Sustainability”. Are we concerned only with energy decline or also the decline of other resources such as clean water, fertile land and other species? Are we concerned with over-population? These issues were not resolved, but we decided to focus on “Peak Oil and Climate Change” for our awareness events. We need to make people aware that Peak Oil is not a theory but an observation.
We discussed a “Great Unleashing” but thought that would be for the local groups, not for this umbrella group.
We shall work with the TCN (Transition Cornwall Network). We may need to travel to other Districts of Cornwall for events with famous visiting speakers; North Cornwall has no large towns, just six small market towns.
We can inform, motivate and inspire people by putting on events ourselves and speaking ourselves.
We considered planning our own demise, focussing on setting up awareness-raising meetings for, say, a year and a half, then closing this group down and allowing local groups to carry on. We decided against that. We thought that discussing our own demise was healthy – better than aiming for power and control over everything in North Cornwall! However, we need to wait and see what the future brings.
· We might find that it is appropriate to close this group down at some point.
· We might find that we hand over the umbrella activities to TCN at some point.
· We might continue as a forum.
· We might become a representative body for all the Transition groups and Climate Friendly Parishes in North Cornwall, liaising with other bodies and holding conferences, for example.
We all agreed to wait and see how we evolve.
We agreed that, because this group is so small at the moment (only six people) we shall not offer to help new Transition groups through the 12 steps of the Transition Primer. We shall just point them in the direction of the primer.
We shall not aims to raise funds or to employ someone.
4 Name
We agreed that the name of this group will be “Transition North Cornwall” or TransitionNC for short (not TNC as that is too easily confused with TCN).
5 Geographical spread
We agreed that we shall cover the same area as is covered by North Cornwall District Council. Jackie has found a map of all the parishes in the area and a list of parishes with population details. She will make these available to the other members of the group.
We decided that this geographical area will be indicative but not prescriptive, and that we can welcome neighbours to our activities, including people from over the border in Devon.
6 Constitution
Jackie will propose a one-page constitution of an unincorporated society, which she will send round by email for consideration before the next meeting.
7 Resources for Awareness-Raising
We discussed DVDs and other resources that we own. Paul mentioned that he has a copy of “What a Way to Go” which is going to be shown at Trelay on 21st February at 7pm. Members of the Steering Group were invited.
Everyone agreed to make a list of the resources they have, including their own PowerPoint presentations, and to email it to Jon.
Peter mentioned that there are a few hundred DVDs left of the Environment Kernow Conference, which includes speeches by Colin Campbell and Rob Hopkins. These are free.
We have laptop computers and two video projectors. Traci said she can provide a projector and screen through the Soil Association (for whom she works). She will investigate whether she can obtain speakers for a video film for a large hall, when laptop speakers will be insufficient.
We discussed making a library of books but reached no conclusion.
We discussed linking to the Wadebridge Film Group.
We agreed to work towards getting one useable PowerPoint presentation that we can all use, then we can get ourselves onto visiting speakers lists.
We discussed the idea of holding a quiz night with questions about Peak Oil and our energy future. Then we had a better idea: to tap into existing pub quiz nights by giving them 10 questions for a round on this subject.
We discussed getting 700 trees planted by volunteers in order to raise funds but decided that we don’t have time to organise this.
8 Actions
8.1 Circulate list of parishes and parish map. Action: Jackie
8.2 One-page constitution. Action: Jackie
8.3 Email all who came to Wadebridge to ask for help with designing a logo and housestyle. Action: Jackie
8.4 Ask Mark Nunn if he will construct our website. We agreed we need to talk to other Transition groups to see if they have text and a template that we can use. Free software is available for a forum. We can allow the web designer to advertise their name on the site in exchange for free design. Action: Paul
8.5 Contact the Transition Network (Rob Hopkins etc) to tell them we exist. (We are not mullers.) Action: Peter
8.6 Collate resources list. Action: Jon
8.7 Find out about loud-speakers. Action: Traci
8.8 Ask the email list if there is a volunteer who can help up connect up speakers to lap-tops to projectors. Action: Jackie
8.9 Find out if we can hire projection equipment. Action: Jon
8.10 Find out how we can work with Hilary Gooch, the Sustainability Officer for North Cornwall District Council. Action: Mark
8.11 Find out about our own quiz night and about pubs with quiz nights. Action: Mark and Peter
8.12 Collate questions for pub quizzes. Action: All to send, Peter to collate
9 Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Monday 25th February at 7pm at Trelay Farm. The main aim of the meeting will be to watch fast run-throughs of presentations and clips of films.