Celebration - if it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable
What is nice about a university environment is that there is plenty of space for celebration.
There are most likely plenty of parties, festivals, and other creatively crazy events that you can be part of. Having fun and celebrating your friendships and everything great you do together is
of course one of the most important factors of engagement, motivation, and overall success. You should definitely take time to celebrate the work that you carry out as a Transition University. Think about all the things you do and how you can celebrate, for example:
• Got a community garden? Then celebrate the changes of the season.
• Hold green drinks regularly then have a Christmas get-together.
• In St Andrews the Transition university group has been part of music and art festivals
where people volunteering get free tickets to the event - very popular!
• Your energy project has halved student energy consumption then promote this, through
an energy free party, and so on.
One thing Local Transition Initiatives do is to hold an Annual Celebration where they showcase all the work they have done in the community. They often hold a party and invite all the people who have been involved as well as decision makers. This can be a great way to have fun and build more support for your project.
Perhaps there are external structures that will do this celebration for you, such as awards schemes. Transition universities have participated in the People and Planet University League and the Green Gown Awards, being important achievements that the university can understand, boast with, and potentially use to recruit new students, making your group even more important to the university.
Transition Network Resources
You might find the Guide to putting on an Annual celebration useful. You'll find it here.
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