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.