We were delighted to be invited at the REconomy day of the Transition Town Conference 2012. We were lucky to be able to present the inspiration for Restart and a call for action and collaboration to multiply the idea across the UK and beyond.
Here are the slides from our presentation, mostly pictures describing what happens during one of our Restart Parties:
The REconomy project is all about re-imagining the future of our local economies, creating new enterprises and livelihoods all the way from our dreams to the high streets of the future. It is about empowering us to recreate community and provide local ownership and accountability for businesses that embrace the environmental and social change we need to create.
We were inspired by a lot of the talks and the conversations that took place during the conference. As we wrote previously, we are inspired by the passion around food projects, and it was a wonderful coincidence to present about Restart in between talks by the inspiring founders of Incredible Edible and Growing Communities .
The green movements have succeeded in bringing food at the centre of attention: food growing in urban spaces, community-supported agriculture and independent veg box schemes are thriving more and more. With Restart we want to help bring to the attention of the general public the massive amount of electronic “stuff” we are more and more unable to fix. During our presentation we asked the 150 attendants whether they had something at home, broken, that they didn’t know how or where to repair. Almost everyone raised their hands. There is a sense of frustration about this, and a lot more people than one might think are ready to do something about it, if we create opportunities and an enabling environment. An environment where – for example – it’s easier to find out where to repair a kettle for a fair price, than to find out where to dispose of it “responsibly”.
The enthusiasm at the event was palpable: REconomy shapes up to become a supportive environment where projects help each other in reaching economic models to be replicated across our local economies. We are looking forward to the collaborations envisioned during the event!
Update: listen to audio from the first session of the REconomy day