Wednesday 30 March 2011

Transition Crouch End AGM and Ideas Factory - less is more



Reminder of our AGM on Sunday 3 April  2-5 at Hornsey Vale Community Centre, Mayfield Road 

If you want some inspiration for our Ideas Factory, less is more...

Picture courtesy the street artist Slinkachu

Less is More
Can less be more, can more be less?
Well, yes and no, and no and yes
Well, more or less…

More bikes, fewer cars
Less haze, more stars

Less haste, more time
Less reason, more rhyme

More time, less stress
Fewer miles, more fresh (vegetables)

Fewer car parks, more acres of available urban soil
More farmers’ markets, less produce effectively marinated in crude oil

Less colouring, more taste
More mashing, less waste

Fewer couch potatoes, more spring greens
Fewer tired tomatoes, more runner beans

More stillness, less inertia
Less illness, more Echinacea

More community, less isolation
Less just sitting there, more participation!

More wells (not oil ones, obviously), fewer ills
Fewer clean fingernails, more skills

More co-operation, less compliancy
Less complacency, more self-reliancy

Less competition, more collaboration
Less passive listening, more participation!

Less attention defic…, more concentration
Less passive listening, more participation!

(Less repetition)

Less of a warm globe, more a chilly’un
More of a wise world, at least 34 fewer parts of C02 per million

Less stress-related cardio-vascular and pulmonary failure
More nurturing quality time in the company of a favourite clematis or dahlia

More craftsmanship, less built-in obsolescence
More political maturity, less apparently-consequence-free extended adolescence

More believed-to-be-beautiful, known-to-be-useful things
Less cheap, pointless, petroleum-steeped stuff

So Yes, less is more – and enough’s enough…

Matt Harvey is a poet and performer who lives in Totnes.  His poetry is much admired by Rob Hopkins and he wrote this poem after attending a Schumacher Conference where he promised to write a poem on the conference theme: "Less is More - Can we live better by consuming less?"

You can find more out about Matt here and more about Totnes in a very fair article published in the Observer.

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