Tower and Town, November 2026 (view the full edition)Editorial: Marlborough Community ResilienceResilience is not bouncing back to how things were. It is a community’s ability to withstand a shock and then adapt, so the next one lands less hard. It starts with personal resilience: mental, emotional and practical flexibility. Storm Henk flooding our town in 2024 was a shock, groundwater coming up from a full aquifer with sewage welling up through hatches. Two record-breaking summers have followed. Now the aquifer that feeds the River Kennet is well down and will need many months of rain to recover, as the dry riverbed in its upper reaches shows. Yet this landscape has supported continuous settlement for over 4,000 years precisely because people adapted. Adaptation is Transition Marlborough’s work. I helped set it up in 2011 and it has been adapting ever since: a community-led group finding local answers to climate change, ecological decline and rising living costs. TM is the umbrella for the Community Fridge and Garden, a permaculture group, and our emerging Social Fabrics and BioRegion projects. I hope this edition shows community resilience at work and I thank my contributors. Dr Barney Rosedale looks squarely at an uncertain world. Our Mayor, Mark Luson, writes on the Stonebridge allotments community and the joys of “growing your own veg”. Milly Carmichael reports on Source of Inspiration, where five artists turned unsold charity-shop textiles into a statement. Rachel Rosedale and Sophie Lowe trace fifteen years of our Town in an Orchard. Erika Peklanska and I share how Waters of Change gave the River Kennet a community voice, with Dr Pete Jeffs explaining BioRegions. Finally, we are continuing our partnership with our awesome independent cinema. The Parade will be screening a special showing of the film about intensive versus rewilding farming, Derek vs Derek, at 17:00 on November 18th as part of our celebration of 15 years of Transition Marlborough. I remain positive about the future. As Erika told me, “Communities have agency - they can shape their own future.” Richard Pitts |