“Houve silêncio. You could have heard a pin drop.

E, em seguida, um som, como uma espécie de pino de queda. Aí está novamente. E mais uma vez, muitas vezes em sucessão rápida. Depois, o silêncio. Nothing.

It’s the In Transition 2.0. noite filme de visualização, Moss Side Corpo de Bombeiros, Manchester. I’m sitting in a room with 23 pessoas. Estamos a meio caminho através da película, eo leitor de DVD está pulando. The picture is now motionless.

One of the stories in the documentary is about the door knocking I’ve done in Moss Side. There is footage of me knocking on the doors of people I don’t know, dizendo-lhes sobre Transição. Eu fiz um monte de presente “cold calling” durante os estágios iniciais de conseguir o nosso grupo Moss Side começou. Eu, literalmente, pegar uma rua, e trabalhar o meu caminho ao longo, batendo de porta em porta. Isto provou ser uma ótima maneira de lotes de reuniões de vizinhos, construção de uma lista de contatos, and I also met one of our core group members Ali Mohamed this way.

It’s not all fun and games of course. Some people are quite suspicious and won’t talk to me. Outros são muito preconceituosos e vontade. Mas, tendo construído uma lista de contatos ao mesmo tempo fazendo a chamada fria, my door knocking can now take on a whole new lease of life when we are promoting events.

Em vez de tentar a minha sorte bater em portas que poderiam ser respondidas por qualquer pessoa, I’m free to simply go back to the people who were interested in hearing more. Esta é uma experiência completamente diferente. Com este tipo de porta batendo, smiles and pleasant chats with positive people about community and food growing are the norm.

Um dos nossos principais membros do grupo e eu saímos para promover a transição na 2.0 visualizar um dia, quando ela começou lançando-se com chuva. Nós só conseguiu bater na 3 portas antes estávamos embebidos, but two of them were opened by people who had great chats with us about their food growing and said they’d come to the film night.

Dois anos atrás eu mal conhecia ninguém em Moss Side, modo a ser capaz de passear em volta do meu bairro, visiting loads of friendly people who recognise me and chat to them about our Transition events is an incredible experience.

A maioria do nosso trabalho em Moss Side até agora tem sido orientado para a sensibilização através de oficinas e noites de cinema, que temos realizado em vários locais de interesse turístico. Um local temos o prazer de ter encontrado é o nosso Corpo de Bombeiros local, que têm sido muito favoráveis ​​em deixar-nos usar a sua sala da comunidade, e decidimos que este seria o melhor lugar para o Em Transição 2.0 film preview as it’s a nice room with a projector and en suite kitchen.

Our core group is still quite small and only three of us were available to run the event, Ali Mohamed, Becca Kind and myself, but thankfully four other neighbours kindly agreed to get there early and help us set up.

The last time we’d used the Fire Station for a film night we’d had various problems getting the speakers working which delayed our start time. And we then ended up having to call someone from the fire service in every ten minutes to enter a password into the computer, as it kept going into sleep mode while playing the film.

Determined to avoid such problems this time, I had double checked that we could use their DVD player instead of the computer. I had made two visits to the Fire station specifically to check that I knew exactly how the equipment needed to be wired up and operated. And I’d played the first few minutes of the In Transition 2.0 DVD on their system twice. Everything worked fine.

Flick, jump, pause, click, click, whir.

What I hadn’t realised is that the Fire service always use the computer to play DVDs. Their separate DVD player hardly gets used at all. We’d made it half way through the documentary, but now here we were, sitting in the dark, in silence, with the entire success of our event firmly in the hands of this neglected gadget.

It could start playing fine again at any moment. But will it? Or do I need to do something? Should I tap it, pause it briefly, skip it back or forward a bit, take the disc out and polish it? Maybe it will sort itself out in a second. Then something breaks the tension. A loud voice. It’s a fireman, talking to another fireman. They are both driving round Manchester and a speaker in the room is broadcasting their conversation to us. And now the film is playing again… but the firemen are still talking. One of them asks the other a question. The film plays on. Then the answer comes back. He’s not quite sure. Everyone laughs. The fireman’s conversation stops. Thank goodness… but so does the DVD.

“I’ll just try wiping it”, I announce to the room, and then realise I can’t see the eject button in the dark so I turn the lights on. Everyone blinks. Becca suggests people take a break, get a drink etc. No one moves. Instead the room erupts into conversation, as people enthusiastically share their thoughts with each other about the film so far.

Having polished the DVD we realise it doesn’t have chapters on it, so a couple of minutes are spent skipping from the start of the DVD back to where we had got to. And this time… it’s working!

Except for a little bit more skipping near the end, we got through most of the second half of the DVD without further interruption, and made it to the end, at which point the room erupted once again, this time into applause. Ali then started capturing some people’s thoughts on camera, whilst others chatted. There were loads of positive comments. Someone from Transition City Manchester said they thought that Moss Side’s appearance in the documentary could really help to get more Transition groups started in other parts of the city. And a woman I’d met door knocking who’d not been to any of our events before came over to tell me that her and her 6 year old daughter who was with her had both really enjoyed the film and she’ll definitely come to our next event.

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get all these comments on camera. It would have been nice to keep talking with everyone longer, but we were on a tight time schedule, so it was great when everyone pulled together to help clear up, and move tables and chairs back to where they needed to be, in time for when we had to leave the room. Thanks to everyone who was there, and to everyone involved in making the film. It’s been a really exciting experience.

Joel Prittie Transição Moss Side

Open Yardens event: gathering in the reclaimed square; Joel and Becca of Transition Moss Side. All photographs by Hannah Beatrice.

Margaret Jefferies do Projeto Lyttelton também enviou um curto escrever refletindo sobre como a seleção foi: “Sobre 20 pessoas lotaram o escritório Lyttelton Projeto na manhã de quinta-feira para assistir "Em transição 2.0 'simultaneamente com muitas comunidades ao redor do mundo. Era bom estar fazendo isso juntos. Ainda no verão, para nós era quase inacreditável pensar que o grupo Transição italiano estava tendo -15 °. We missed them even though we couldn’t tell who was watching in.

Lyttelton desde os terremotos (agora temos alcançado ao longo 10,000 uma vez que o evento Setembro '10) não tem muitos lugares deixados para que as pessoas se reúnem. Daí fomos neste pequeno espaço. There were babes in arms up to grannies in attendance.

O filme é excelente. Rob e Sophy definir a estrutura, em seguida vários exemplos de todo o mundo em transição foram intercaladas. Após o rastreio, conversa fluiu. O filme provocou a nossa imaginação. É ótimo saber que não estamos sozinhos, que as comunidades em todo o mundo estão famintos por uma mudança e estão fazendo algo sobre ele. Since it was a morning screening, as pessoas tinham que sair para ir ao trabalho após a visualização e uma conversa. Mas temos muito o que pensar. Estamos ansiosos para ver o filme novamente, como há muito lá para aprender. Para mim, alguns dos destaques foram a libra Brixton via telefone celular, a construção de relacionamento com o seu município italiano, a loja de co-op, a batida da porta e os líderes nas ruas desenhando os seus vizinhos em, e os painéis solares”.