Nick Osborne

I am involved in Transition Glastonbury, since July 2007, and am a member of the Transition Training pool in the UK.

My background is that I spent years as a social activist campaigning on social and environmental issues and eventually became disillusioned with campaigning. Instead I decided to promote constructive alternatives by developing Ecovillages in the late 1990s. I was involved in setting up a few projects, I visited and researched about 30 projects around the world and helped set up the Ecovillage Network in the UK.

Through these experiences in collective sustainable living, I learnt that the biggest obstacle to humans living sustainably on this planet is probably to do with the quality of our relationships, how well we can work together in groups to achieve common goals, learn together, think together and communicate effectively and resolve conflicts, even use conflict creatively. Compared to other aspects of our civilsation, it seems to me that for many of us, these social skills and technologies are pretty primitive, yet they are essential to achieving positive social change.

Since then I have dedicated myself to developing and learning such skills and equipping myself to share these by training others in them. So my passion and expertise in this work is about building the capacity of activist groups, who are working towards positive social change, to work really effectively. I now work independently as a Trainer & Consultant under the name Response-Ability, enhancing people's abiliy to respond creatively and flexibly to change and uncertainty, mostly in the Education and Civil sectors and love being involved in the transition movement.

I have 3 kids and am passionate about my family, social change for social justice and surfing!