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The Scottish Communities Climate Action Network (SCCAN) now serves as the Transition Scotland Hub. To get involved and to connect with the wider community-led climate action movement in Scotland please visit the SCCAN website: https://www.scottishcommunitiescan.org.uk

The What Next? Summit will take place online March 3rd-20th, and promises to build community power across the UK by bringing together and connecting hundreds of community activists, who are already making change happen. It will be a space to empower us to create our own future, tap into our imagination, make new connections and share knowledge to build a stronger movement. The event is free and co-hosted by Transition Network's Bounce Forward Project and CTRLshift.

Over the course of the three weeks there will be a wide range of events and workshops. From a blizzard of inspiring stories of change happening across the world, to mapping the plethora of community groups and projects already making change happen in the UK. From workshop series on the new economy, participatory democracy and community organising, to inspiring speakers such as Kate Raworth, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan and Carne Ross helping us explore how the power of imagination can transform our current practice.

There will be a whole day to imagine and co-create our ideal UK in our ‘Pop up 2030’ event, as well as finishing the Summit with a weekend of practically planning next steps and ways to work together more effectively as a movement over the coming months and years.

There will also be a Summit Fringe throughout the whole conference to enable you to connect and chat with other participants and host your own conversations and events. This will all be taking place on an exciting new Nudj platform, where you can find the live events calendar, connect with other summit participants and explore existing and new ways to work together.

Register for free to sign up for the summit and events here.

In these rapidly changing times, we thought it would be interesting to hear what is happening across Transition groups in Scotland, what challenges and opportunities they are facing, what has collapsed and what has emerged, and what potential they see for the future. Below is a summary of interviews conducted with 7 different Transition groups in October 2020, giving a snapshot, rather than a comprehensive overview, of the state of Transition in Scotland.
 
Do the interviews resonate with your experience, or do you have a different perspective? Join the Transition Scotland online gathering to discuss more, on January 9th, 9.30-12.30, on zoom. Sign up at https://ts9jan.eventbrite.co.uk.
 
What is happening locally?
As could be expected from groups set in different contexts across Scotland, they had vastly different stories of what has been happening locally. Some groups who had funding have continued to thrive despite Covid-19 and ensuing lockdowns, being able to channel resources and paid staff time into running online workshops, as well as urgent and rapidly budding community projects, such as redistributing supermarket waste food to food banks. The availability of experienced staff with time, resources, and community networks at their hands proved invaluable to respond to the sudden change in need from community projects.
 
Other groups have seen an increase in the so-called “Doughnut Effect”, where energy gravitates away from the core to specific practical projects, who take on a life of their own and the Transition group is left without a core strategic vision or coordination. With lockdown and furlough, an increase in interest in volunteering and getting outside to “get your hands dirty” seems to have encouraged this trend. This has even led to some Transition groups discontinuing or deciding simply to merge their still functioning practical projects with other organisations.
 
Others still have managed to embrace this time for reflection, increased strategic thinking and collaboration. A sudden surge in demand for local food and veg boxes led to one group realising the lack of local food growers and food growing land, leading to the organisation of the Highland Good Food Conversation. Others have, inspired by the recent Bounce Forward project, started their own local What if-network. ​