Tooting certainly Can!
Whether it is cooking, growing, sewing, pickling, soldering or making : the community of Tooting has an abundance of skills and talents. On 15th March 2025 we came together for our third Tooting CAN! to share skills, meet our neighbours have some fun!
Dive into our blog below telling the story of the day (with ‘how to’ links and delicious recipes!)
Pickling and Fermenting
Ben showed us how to make kimchi, kombucha and beer pickles – we had a taste and took away some recipes to have a go for ourselves.
Gardening
Volunteers from our Community Garden joined us to be talk worms, compost and what keeps our soil healthy for growing. These images show the worm home hard at work in the garden!
We planted seeds to take it home.
Find out more about the garden and get involved here.
Mask Making
Great fun for children (and adults!) – Dora lead a team teaking us how to make fabulous cat masks using paints and textiles!
Soldering
Dermot of Repair Club led short taster sessions teaching people how to build and test a simple electronic kit, and pick up some basic soldering skills that can be used for a range of repair jobs.
Find out more about Repair Club here
Sewing
We were joined by the team at Sewing and Sanctuary to make bags from upcycled materials. Some of us made a plastic free, fabric shopping bag https://morsbags.com/) with Gloria on the sewing machines, others made hand stitched drawstring bags to be used as gift bags, lavender bags or storage.
Future food Tooting!
We were joined by Fast Familiar to celebrate our favourite Tooting food hotspots and build what we think is missing… with Lego!
Origami
Maggie from Tooting Scrapstore taught us the ancient art of paper folding – including boxes, butterflies, cups, and flowers!
Download the instructions and have a go…
Chicken keeping
Want to reduce your food miles and gain a new pet? Chicken keeping may be the answer. Laila shared tips and answered questions on how to keep chickens in your Tooting back garden. Top question – how do you keep them safe from foxes?
Fantastic local photographer, Phylisha Wisdom, shared I-phone photography tips and hints (and took lots of lovely pictures of the event which we’re sharing here – thanks Phylisha!)
You can follow her on instagrame here.
Mindfullness
Abby helped us explore an accessible mindfulness activity using your senses to help you stay in the moment – easy to use in almost any environment. Find out more about the exercise here
Cooking
Our team of cooks taught us how to make make alu tikki, rustle up a hearty vegetable soup and whip up a super easy two ingredient vegan chocolate mousse – then join us all in tasting the results!
Celebrating!
Finally we gathered together at a long table, shared the delicious food we had cooked. We celebrated all the wonderful things we had learnt and made together and our mask makers led us in a march of masks accompanied by Ranjit on the dhol!
We will run Tooting CAN again in 2026!
What skills do you have you could share?
Contact us to find out more at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com