MiT Pilot Training

These are:

• Ecobairro in Villa Mariana, Sao Paulo, Brazil
• Telheiras in Lisbon, Portugal
• La Garrotxa in Catalunya, Spain
• Santorso in Vicenza, Italy
• Valsamoggia in Emilia Romagna, Italy
• Wekerle in Budapest, Hungary

The training took place in Santorso, one of the pilots, where Giulio Pesenti from the local transition initiative, with support from the municipality, arranged a space for us to meet for 4 consecutive days.

The training had three distinctive parts. The Municipalities in Transition project has been designed to create collaborative relationships between civil society and local administrations to create sustainable change together, and this kind of collaboration is what we intend to contribute toward systemic change. Therefore, the first part of the training was devoted to looking at what systemic change means and how we can integrate it in our way of doing transition.

Here we drew inspiration from systemic thinkers such as Donella Meadows, Robert Pirsig or George Lakoff, and the work of organisations such as SmartCSOs and movements like Transition and Permaculture.

The second part was dedicated to looking at the MiT Framework together and try to understand how the proposed tools (The Grid and the Database) can be used to create sustainable change in a synergetic way between municipalities and civil society. The hypothesis (assumption) we presented is that, by using an appropriate framework and tools based on co-creation, innovation and mutual support, local institutions can effectively create an enhanced combined effect that promotes sustainability and social justice. Through its use, actors should be able to better respond to the great challenges of this historical period, adopting the systemic view and sharing new methodologies and principles.

Through a series of exercises and thought-provoking exercises, participants in the training were able to begin using the framework to, firstly, analyse their current context, and then to begin planning actions that would bring different actors together from their territory. This served as a first step in joining forces to think systemically and begin imagining a different future for the municipality; the final baseline analysis and detailed plan is currently being designed locally by participants and the rest of the activation circle in each municipality.

The final part was dedicated to looking at the MiT Community of Practice. This community is envisaged to ultimately become the guardian of the MiT project, holding spaces for practitioners of systemic change and users of the framework to come together and share their experiences. A strong community, led by its members, and able to respond to the common challenges that arise, is the kind of structure we are hoping to see become more and more common as we continue to shift the current paradigm.

A crucial part of the training was around setting a common foundational understanding of Transition and the processes we aim to catalyse. The ultimate purpose of the MiT framework is to create cultural change through the implementation of the Transition Principles, namely:

• Respect resource limits and create resilience
• Promote inclusivity and social justice
• Adopt subsidiarity (self-organisation and decision making at the appropriate level)
• Pay attention to balance
• Be part of an experimental, learning network
• Freely share ideas and power
• Collaborate and look for synergies
• Foster positive visioning and creativity

Results were already palpable after the first three days of the training. We need to appreciate the extraordinary meeting space that was created during the training, where representatives of civil society and each municipality came together to explore how best to work together.

It was often the case at the beginning that each person came with a specific expectation of what the training and the framework should allow them to do: to push forward their own vision, political agenda or project, and find a way to get support from the other party. We were ready for this to happen, since it is the usual way we approach partnerships in the current paradigm.

However, through deeper conversations and the use of the framework, several participants were able to shift their understanding of what we are aiming to do through the MiT project: create spaces where we come as individuals, taking off our “organisational hats”, looking at the context of our territory with new eyes, and work together to design the best possible course of action to promote a change in the system.

Of course, after the training we will, as a community, face several challenges when bringing the framework back home and trying to get people who didn’t attend the training to join us in our vision and way of working. However, we trust in the capacity of the framework to inspire deeper discussions and to design activities and spaces for connection that are able to respond to the needs of the different actors within the municipal territory.

It was deeply inspiring to see how, especially for those pilots whose representatives did not know each other very well before, trust began to deepen and new possibilities opened before them. The greatest success of the training was the creation of these safe spaces for conversation, with the support of a facilitator, to begin wading into unknown territory.

The territory of relationships based on trust, shared power and lasting commitment to positive change.