How to change the world, one street at a time

Transition Streets is a grassroots initiative that empowers local community around the issues of sustainability, giving real meaning to the phrase, “think globally; act locally”.

Transition Streets are for renters and home owners. They are for linking up with our neighbours to make our homes and even our streets more energy efficient, less resources dependent (oil, coal, gas and other resources), more self-reliant with food, less wasteful, healthier and more enjoyable places to live.

Let’s turn our streets into neighbourhoods.

Transition Streets is what YOU make it.
Measure, and take meaningful action to reduce your environmental footprint.
Increase your self-reliance and resilience.
Share tips and techniques for saving energy, water AND money.
It should be creative, supportive and fun!

To begin, contact the local co-ordinator Penelope Grose on 9459 4209 (or text 0492 988 325) to get together and chat about what to do next. We have strategies to help you find interested neighbours fast. Once you have approximately 6-10 households within easy walking distance, you can decide when to meet, and using the book as a guide, take on small or large challenges you can make each month.

Transition Streets poem by Annabel Mounsey, Transition Warringal – click to read PDF

Annabel Mounsey, a participant in 2015, wrote this poem about the Transition Streets project, performing it at the end of year celebration following the first year of Transition Streets in Banyule.

Start your own Transition Streets group

It’s easy to create your own group, simply invite enough people to form a group of approximately 6-10 households within easy walking distance. Your group then decides when to meet (e.g. once a month), and what to talk about; although a handy resource book is provided as a guide, with small actions you can make each month.

Everyone in the group accesses the amazing and free ‘Transition Streets’ guide that supplies information, things you can do that both adults and children can take on, links to videos and other useful tips and even options about how to run the group. It assists neighbours to look at their use of Water, Energy, Food, Transport and Waste & Consumption together to reduce our ecological footprint in all these areas. It is for renters, home owners, young and old, single person households and families.

Use the initial meeting to get to know each other, and fill out the ‘Footprint Calculator’ as a starting point.

Meetings should of course be respectful, inclusive and certainly fun! Meet over a shared meal; cup of tea. You can of course invite people you already know, but sometimes great neighbours you ‘never knew were there’ get involved and often have a lot in common with each other… The conversation just needs to get started!

Resource book

Access all the resources here on the Transition Australia website.

NB: The resource book was created initially by Transition Newcastle, and edited / refined for national use by the Transition Streets National working group. We thank them for their work and vision; and for distributing the book under the ‘creative commons licence’ for non-commercial use.

History

“Transition Streets” originally came from the Transition Streets program based in Totnes, England. You can read much more about the ‘Transition’ concepts and themes on http://transitionnetwork.org/