Rob Hopkins

Today I want to tell you about a change to my role, and to what I will be doing for the next 12 months. As we celebrate 10 years of Transition Network, I am fortunate to have been offered the opportunity to take a part-time sabbatical (3 days per week) in order to research and write a new book.

I’m at the London Toy Fair at the Kensington Olympia. It’s my first time at such a vast trade show, the biggest event in the annual calendar for those in the toy industry. I’ve travelled up to London on a day of freezing mist, and arrive into the Hall wrapped up in a thick coat and scarf. I soon warm up as I walk the endless rows of booths. My every step feels watched by suited and coiffured sales people waiting for me to pause by their stall so they can engage me in conversation. My initial thought is that most of what I’m seeing on show will end up in landfill within about 8 months from purchase.

Scott Barry Kaufman is Scientific Director at the Imagination Institute and a researcher in the Positive Psychology Centre of the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches their course on Positive Psychology for undergraduates. He is one of the leading thinkers on the topic of imagination. A few weeks ago I was fortunate to speak to him by Skype, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump!

Michael Rosen is a writer of books, for children and adults, is a broadcaster on Radio 4 and elsewhere, and is a performer, who goes to schools performing his poems and telling his stories. We met one lunchtime in a crowded busy cafe just round the corner from the BBC in London.

I first came across this book when I became one of the 202 people who supported the crowdfunder that enabled it to be published, purely on the basis that any book with that particular title deserves to be published. But why, you may be wondering, would I be reviewing a book about advertising on a website about Transition?