A Transition Assembly community welcome… welcoming difference as our strength and power

A Transition Assembly community welcome… welcoming difference as our strength and power

The Just Transition circle formed in December 2024, coming together around themes of justice, equity and care in the Transition movement and beyond, each person bringing their unique life experiences and insights to the collective.

My focus in the team is around Just Transition, and late last year I put the call out for a circle to form around this focus. I was joined by seven others who stepped towards this collective project to share lived experiences, skills and wisdom to support the Transition Assembly’s orientation in Just Transition practices and principles. There’s so much I cannot know as one person with one life experience. A great joy and honour in this process has been the opportunity to learn so much from others, connect and share across difference, and to feel the power and richness of the circle in making valuable contributions to the work of Just Transition.

In our circle meetings, we shared in the barriers and challenges that have been experienced in relationship to the Transition Network; hearing and honouring one another’s experiences of exclusion, many of the things that need to be transformed and cared for, as well as moments of connection and possibility. A challenge that came up in the circle from multiple perspectives, was a pattern of not seeing ourselves acknowledged or visible in the dominant culture, and thus not totally welcome or included in our “differences”.

Mapping these experiences allowed us then to collaborate on some specific contributions at the Transition Assembly, to try to tend to some of those identified barriers. This act of

acknowledging and naming differences as a way of celebrating the diversity of life, human and beyond-human, that is so key to our flourishing, for the circle became an important part of how the Assembly began. The circle adapted a community welcome that Suzie Cahn from Carraig Dulra shared with me and invited us to share, which comes originally from Canticle Farm - an urban community garden that brings intention, faith and nonviolence to social justice and Earth-based activism.

From the Just Transition circle, Liba and Amanda read the community welcome on Saturday morning. The room began the first day of Assembly together with open arms and a shared **“We say welcome”…. **

We would like to welcome, and invite you to welcome with us.

We would like to welcome…

Your presence here as full human beings. We welcome bodies of all shapes and sizes, of all abilities and sensory perceptions. Those living with a chronic medical condition, visible or invisible, labeled or unlabeled those with a dis-ease or other health and well-being challenges. Those with neurodiverse and neurotypical, creative, patterning, visual, linear, logical, heart and gut intelligences, and other diversities of human minds. **We say “WELCOME.” **

We would like to welcome…

Those that have come and gone and left their gifts to those that remain, those that are yet to come, bringing inspiration and those that have passed. Those who are not present here today. We would like to welcome your families, genetic and otherwise. Those dear to us who have died; the presence of absence. Our ancestors and the future ones. The ancestors who lived in this land in this place where these buildings are now. We would like to welcome all the different peoples to arrive on these shores. The ancient peoples, the Travelers, the Celtic nations, the Welsh, the Manx, the Irish, the Scottish, those from Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. Those from Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbean, Australasia and Oceania, and the Middle East and all that are coming to these Islands. We would like to welcome all of the languages spoken here. **We say “WELCOME.” **

We would like to welcome…

People on all parts of the continuum of gender identity and sexuality and all forms of expression. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, heterosexual, transgender, gender fluid and non-binary,

gender queer and two spirit people, all other queer folks; the sexually active and the celibate,and everyone for whom these labels don’t apply. **We say “WELCOME.” **

We would like to welcome…

People of all ages, those about to be born, the voices of small children. All elder bodies, all pregnant bodies, all menstruating bodies, transitioning bodies; your cycles are honored here. We say “WELCOME.”

We would like to welcome…

People who identify as activists and those who don’t. Believers, non-believers, mystics and seekers of all kinds. Those who practice a spiritual path and those who don't, those who remember the Old Ways, all ancient and enduring Earth-honoring traditions, those who are wild creatures who listen to the earth and other-than-human world. Those we are connected to or who support us to be here. **We say “WELCOME.” **

We would like to welcome…

Your emotions: joy, fear, grief, contentment, disappointment, surprise, outrage, anger and all else that flows through you. We welcome our embodied wisdom and ways to really sit with discomfort as a means of doing the work of collective liberation. We welcome the unique wisdom of your lived-experience, and the stories of the lands and communities that you are joining us from. **We say “WELCOME.” **

We would like to welcome…

The land that is holding us this weekend and is facilitating our gathering. The River Dean and the River Bollin. All the plants, the fungi, the soil, the rocks, minerals, metals and elements that form the land and islands that hold us and all the materials that make our shelters, ways to move to be here and the tools that help us. We say “WELCOME.”

We would like to welcome…

All beings that inhabit Earth, human or otherwise, those that walk, fly, crawl, wiggle and float above the ground and below, in air and in water. The non-beings, the spirits, those who have gone into the compost. The wind, sun, rain, the essences of forests, lakes, rivers, bogs, fens,the seas and oceans, the waterfalls, the high mountains, the stars, the moon, the galaxies and sky. **We say “WELCOME.” **

We have adapted and share this welcome with generous invitation from Suzie Cahn at Carraig Dulra, who adapted this community welcome from its origin at Canticle Farm.

We invite you to share anything that hasn’t yet been welcomed, so that we can welcome these together too …..

We say “WELCOME.”

Many people shared that the welcome supported them in their arrival and created afeeling that the event really welcomed them. Jeni from Transition Tooting shared after the event some of the aspects of the Assembly that supported her to feel welcome:

“At the welcome table, as well as name and pronoun stickers there were a selection of hand made, and therefore highly visible, badges that we were encouraged to add any extra info to ‘what ever we would like people to know ‘ some examples had been given including ‘I am nurodivergent’ which I scooped up and proudly pinned on! I have ADHD, and I added that info to the badge. I would not have thought to do this had the badges not been there, and it allowed me to feel seen and operate all without fear that the way my brain works might not be welcomed.

The shared welcome was the widest and deepest I have ever been part of and set a framework to build on for our time together. It reminded me why we do what we do - in the Transition Town Movement and in Life.”

For more on welcoming events, myself, Network Weaver Jo and the Just Transition circle have co-created a toolkit to support others creating events - to share some of what worked well and the learnings that came from the Assembly.