The Head: We act on the basis of the best information and evidence available, and apply our collective intelligence to find better ways of living. 

The Heart: We work with compassion, valuing and paying attention to the emotional, psychological, relational and social aspects of the work we do.

The Hands: We turn our vision and ideas into a tangible reality, initiating practical projects and starting to build a new, healthy community in the place we live.

The urgent need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, greatly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and make wise use of precious resources is at the forefront of everything we do.

The most marginalized people in our societies are likely to be worst affected by climate change. We want to increase the chances of all groups in society to live healthy and sustainable lives. We know that learning how to increase the diversity of people and groups in our work will strengthen all of our efforts, and we commit to learning about and taking action on systemic racism and inequality.

(Subsidiarity: self-organisation and decision making at the appropriate level). Our intention is not to centralise or control decision making, but rather to make decisions at the most appropriate, practical and empowering level.

In responding to urgent, global challenges, individuals and groups can end up feeling stressed, closed or driven rather than open, connected and creative. We recognize that we cannot get everything accomplished all at once.

We work together as a community, unleashing our collective genius to have a greater impact together than we can as individuals. We will look for opportunities to build creative and powerful partnerships and develop a collaborative culture, finding links between projects, creating open decision-making processes and designing events and activities that help people make connections.

We seek to balance the times when we’re busily getting things done. We explore different ways of working which engage our heads, hands and hearts and enable us to develop collaborative and trusting relationships.

Transition is a real-life, real-time social experiment. Working collaboratively and across difference means we can create change more quickly and more effectively, drawing on each other’s experiences and insights. We want to acknowledge and learn from failure as well as success – if we’re going to be bold and find new ways of living and working, we won’t always get it right the first time. We will be flexible and remain open about our processes and will actively seek and respond positively to feedback.

Ideas can be taken up rapidly, widely and effectively because each part of the organization takes ownership of the process themselves.

Our primary focus is not on being against things, but on developing and promoting positive possibilities. We believe in using creative ways to engage and involve people, encouraging them to imagine the future they want to inhabit. The generation of new stories is central to this visioning work, as is having fun and celebrating success.