Apollo Bay Officially in Transition!
8 May 2018
More than 60 permanent and part-time residents of Apollo Bay gave up their Sunday afternoons last week to attend Transition Apollo Bay’s Transition Forum, a meeting of the minds designed to identify and map ideas and actions towards a collective sustainable future for the town.
Hosted by the U3A thanks to a grant application to assist with positioning Apollo Bay as a Transition Town, the Forum was a pivotal stage in the process of advancing community projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of peak oil, climate destruction, and economic instability.
The session adopted an “open space” method and kicked-off with a thought-provoking, hypothetical workshop around how our community would survive should it be cut off from the outside world. Libby Riches, Chair of the Transition Apollo Bay Steering Committee facilitated and lead the floor in a discussion focused around the life-sustaining pillars of energy, water, housing, food, transport and waste. What emerged was a clear pattern of what the town is already doing well, and where there is scope for further development.
After being fed and watered thanks to the generosity of the U3A committee, Nattie Murray and the good people at Hello Coffee, the room was well-primed to get into the guts of what the day was really about – that is, to discuss ideas, create momentum and take the first real steps towards getting at least one project in motion.
Several ideas were raised, discussed and built-upon in break-out groups, and after a final and very enthusiastic group discussion, were broadly grouped into three main areas to progress:
- The creation of a community skills register to better understand what assets exist within the community and how best to utilise these resources;
- Prioritise some form of community social enterprise to fund and sustain a wider-range of future projects; and
- To forge ahead with “closed-loop” projects relating to waste reduction, waste transformation and food to ensure that these issues are dealt with in less-impactful ways.
But what comes next you might ask, and how do these ideas translate into real projects? The Committee has committed to making the first step in creating some logical community partnership to help projects come to fruition and the group in attendance has agreed it will reconvene in 6 months to revisit progress. If any of these projects interest you, or if you were unable to attend and keen to find out more, it’s not too late.
Thanks to everyone for what was by all accounts, an outstanding day!
To keep in touch with what’s happening with Transition Apollo Bay or to find out how you can be involved, send your details to