Transition Town Tooting

Author: Transition Town Tooting

  • Pop-up Cinema in Furzedown on Fri 27th January: Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’

    Join the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone screening of Naomi Klein’s ‘This Changes Everything’ The film explores the global fight against climate change, the role of capitalism and what citizens can do.
    The film has been described as “purposely unsettling…ultimately encouraging”.
    When? Doors at 7:00 for film at 7:30 on Friday 27th January
    Where? The Furzedown Project, 93 Moyser Road SW16 6SJ
    Tickets cost £5 for waged and £2 for students / unemployed – including wine, soft drinks and our famous popcorn
      
    All welcome!
    Please reserve tickets by emailing us at furzedownlowcarbonzone@gmail.com 
    Your ticket entitles you to a 50% discount on the purchase of low-energy LED light bulbs for use in many parts of the home. 
    We’re making this LED offer available via our bulk purchase, to enable you to start saving money and reduce your home’s carbon footprint.

  • ‘Gardens of Refuge’ project wins 2017 funding from the Aviva Community Fund

    We are thrilled that Gardens of Refuge, the 2017 project working with Tooting refugees and asylum-seekers, has been awarded funding by Aviva. The project application was made by the local charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers) and TTT are the partners along with The Grange respite centre in Norfolk.

    Thank you for all your votes and support! 

    Here’s our vision for the Gardens of Refuge project: please click here to read

    This funding award lets us look forward to a fascinating 2017, developing and delivering the new project and building on our learning and experience from our previous project together.  

    We want to do some things that we know work well, and also some new things.

    Plus we’ll invite ideas (and resources) from the many well-wishers who voted for Gardens of Refuge last November.

    A new feature that will add value is the new CARAS Youth Council. This governance group will help provide a voice for project beneficiaries in the youth club.
    We’ll also be working with other members of the CARAS community.

    We all expect to learn and benefit. One of our first reactions, apart from joy at the award and making the project real, is that this award gives profile and visibility to the fact that refugees’ lives matter, and that they have much to contribute in our shared communities.

    We’ll post more information on project plans as they develop.
    Yes, we all worked hard to get to this stage, so it’s great to have the affirmation from the Aviva Fund judges.
    It took us a while to be sure on announcement day: students of communication will be interested that Aviva made the ‘Project Winner’ info available online and by twitter…and it was 24 hours before CARAS received a direct email saying ‘You’ve won!’. By then we’d taken the public messages at face value and trusted that it was all true.

    And there are some extra surprises – such as a reception at Parliament in late January where all the funded projects can meet each other and their constituency MPs.

    We’ve worked since early 2015 with CARAS – that was on the ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project, supported by the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Greening Grey Britain’ campaign and by Sir Walter St John’s Educational Charity – more info here. That project brought new volunteers to CARAS & TTT; we’re really delighted with that.

    Thanks again for all your interest and support – 
    this is a very motivating start to the New Year!

  • New Year, New start… an invitation to say hi in 2017!

    Zoom forward a year, what are you going to have started now to become part of your everyday in Jan ’18?? 

    Looking out onto a cool, crisp morning, layered in frost, I wonder how many of you are taking on New Year challenges? Perhaps you’re cutting back on the booze, getting fitter… or learning a new language, or perhaps you’d like to check out Transition Town Tooting?!?!? Maybe…

    So here’s an invitation, to come and say hi and peek behind the curtain of TTT, it’s magical! Local people coming together to re-imagine and rebuild our world – one Restart Party, one Community Garden session, one Green Drink at a time…

    Here’s what’s going on in January for you to get involved in, please do come & say hi:

    This Saturday, 7th January. Tooting Green Coffee Club, 4pm – 6.30pm, Tartine Artisanal Cafe, Tooting Bec.
    Families most welcome at this informal coffee at Tartine. It’s a great way to chat, agenda-free, about local green issues. We’ll be talking about 2017, sharing project ideas at very early stages – a perfect way to find out more about TTT and what’s going on in Tooting.

    This Sunday 8th January and every Sunday. The first Garden session of the year, 11am – 1pm, Tooting Community Garden, Behind 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN. 
    If you are a complete gardening beginner or have lots of skills to share, if you fancy coming along and relaxing in a green oasis or want to use the garden as a green gym, all welcome on Sundays!

    Tuesday 10th January. TTT Open Meeting, 7 for a 7.30 start – 9pm. Mushkil Aasaan, 222 Upper Tooting Road. 

    This is our monthly activity and planning meeting – we’ll be looking more closely at resourcing our plans for the year – a great bird’s eye view if you’re interested in seeing the whole.


    Wednesday 18th January. Green Drinks! 7.30pm – 10pm The Selkirk Pub, 60 Selkirk Road, SW17 0ES.
    If you like a drink and a chat about local green issues, this is the one for you – what’s the one thing that you really want to take action on? Do you have an inspiring article or a breathtaking concern to share? Or just listen&relax in the lovely Selkirk.

    And one online…

    Vegetanuary! David blogged about this challenge below, would you like to join a growing group of people in trying out vegetarian cooking for a month? Could you give up meat & fish for the next 4 weeks? If you like a challenge and want to learn new recipes, this Facebook group is for you! Just request to join and see what & how & why everyone’s been cooking veggie – Veggies and Vegans welcome to add a tbsp of expertise.

    So, zoom forward a year, what are you going to have started now to become part of your everyday in Jan ’18??

    By the way… this is me, Richard, so you can recognise a face in a crowd… I’m the older one… the other two are Benji and Dominic…

  • We had a fun & creative seasonal session ReSparkling, Reducing and Re-using materials that would have gone to waste. And Happy New Year!

    Thanks loads to our partners in Tooting Library for hosting our fifth annual seasonal ReSparkle! workshop on the 17th December.
    Around 40 young people – from four-year olds to teenagers – joined in for two hours, solo or with parents and carers. Everyone learned how to do all kinds of imaginative things that can be repeated or adapted at home using everyday materials saved from going to waste.

    We used simple and practical methods and tools that are good for children and adults to learn how to handle confidently – folding, gluing, cutting-out with scissors, hole punching, stapling, decorating.

    What did we do? (If you look carefully you can see examples of the different things that participants made in the background of many of the pictures…can you work out how to make them?)

    Jane showed how to make angels using the pages of an old book destined for recycling.

    Rachel showed how to make snowmen and other figures from cardboard tubes – so simple!
    Plus, Hilary made cardboard boxes.

    Flora helped make present bags out of the Library’s out-of-date foreign-language newspapers.

    Below: look at the intense concentration when learning to use the hole puncher.  

    how did she keep her hat so straight?

    Jeni showed how to make your own lovely long ribbons – and then we stuck them on her papier- mache saxophone.

    Chuck showed how to make origami envelopes which we filled and labelled with seeds from Tooting Community Garden for planting in the spring. Beans, pumpkin or hollyhock – very different seeds, so all in the same packet.

    Thanks for the hats, Jenny!

    Here’s the giant saxophone. It’s still there in the children’s library, go and have a look.
    It was a very enjoyable session, and thanks to all. There’s lots more you can do at home re-using waste paper and card with familiar household tools.

    Look out for our Transition Town Tooting creative workshops: Happy New Year and see you in 2017!

    some made up their own activities !

  • Reduce, Re-Use, ReSparkle! Free seasonal crafts with Tooting Library on Saturday 17th December

    We’re running our fifth annual free ReSparkle! event at Tooting Library, 75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD on Sat 17th, from 2-4pm.

    All welcome, for all ages and all materials provided: the theme is learning how to make decorative and interesting things – perhaps presents for Christmas time – using re-purposed materials that would otherwise go to waste.
    No experience necessary…you can do all the activities, and take home what you make. And teach others at home how you did it!

    The venue is the beautiful Children’s Library on the first floor.
    We’re combining the fun workshop with artist Jeni Walker’s monthly Meet and Make sessions, so we can expect a really varied group.

    Click on the year to see what we made at Resparkle 2015 and Resparkle 2014 – the theme that year was ‘I never knew you could do so much with paper!’

    Here are two highlights, and we look forward to seeing you:

  • Team London’s International Volunteering Conference, December 5th at London’s City Hall

    Egle, Jenny and Chuck were honoured to be able to present our shared experience from the joint CARAS + TTT ‘Rooting in Tooting’ project at this free conference yesterday. It was run by Team London to celebrate the end of London’s tenure as International City of Volunteering for 2016. Over 300 people attended.

    We tried to tell the story visually with pictures of participants and activities over 2015 and 2016. Here’s a snapshot of our presentation:

    You can look at the slides in the normal way by clicking here on the conference website. Our session was shared with Alkisti Macrynikola from Ethelon, an NGO in Greece who also work with refugees.

    We emphasised the project benefits for the young people, for CARAS, for the community, and for TTT. A graphic facilitator captured the day’s learning and stories, and Rooting in Tooting features in the top right of the image:

    We’re glad that some of the key points have come through – including achieving a ‘Sense of Belonging’ with the young people from the CARAS Youth Club. You can see the graphic full size by clicking here.
    There’s a lot of detail to explore!

    The main hall – wow!

    It was inspiring and too much to summarise in a few sentences – have a look at all the session presentations by clicking here. (Scroll right to the bottom of the page). One debate was whether ‘volunteering’ could be called ‘social action’ to make it sound more focused or more attractive to a different audience -‘to be continued!’

    London’s City Hall is a great venue, and the whole event was very welcoming. Thank you for inviting us!

    Tower Bridge, Chuck & Egle

    The garden at Potter’s Fields

  • TTT 2016 Gardening Celebration tonight!

    Tonight is the TTT 2016 Gardening Celebration – plus we’re looking forward to exciting things in 2017. The event is at The Selkirk near Tooting Broadway from 7:00 pm.

    To celebrate the celebration:
    here are five current growing, gardening and sustainability events and ideas to follow up even if you can’t make it tonight:

    1 TTT attended the bi-annual Wildlife Gardening Forum last week at the Natural History Museum. This is always an amazing and cross-cutting event with around 100 participants – private gardeners, schools, local authorities, biodiversity and growing charities, researchers, enterprises.

    The theme this time was learning from European experience in Germany, Belgium, Austria the Netherlands, Ireland (oh, and Scotland).
    Why learn from Europe? Click on the photo…

    We learned a German word – schwammstadt  – meaning ‘sponge city’. A sponge city is redesigned to be responsive and adaptive to climate change impact and allow for more natural rainfall retention, reducing runoff. (See the event on December 8th in para 4 below).
    Anyone can attend the Forum; it’s a great day when you can meet experts and work out what ideas you can use yourself. And all the presentations appear for free on the WLGF website in due course.

    2 TTT joined Capital Growth’s ‘Roots to Growth’ workshop.
    We looked at the experience and potential of farming as an enterprise within London.

    There’s tons of good info on the Capital Growth site – all these reports are free downloads.

    While the pleasure and impact of growing together is not only about saving money and managing our budgets, what do you think is the annual value of the crops grown by 2000 London gardens linked to Capital Growth? Include crops for sharing, not only veg which are sold, so you can include Tooting Community Garden’s pumpkins in the calculation. Have a guess – the answer is at the end of this blog.
    We could take up the challenge of recording our crops – see the Harvest-ometer from Sustain.  
    This kind of data is very valuable in order to be able to make our case for more growing in London!
    TTT’s friend Mark at Vertical Veg has documented the equivalent value of what he grows – click here to read about it.

    Plus here’s a great idea: three new projects each pitched their idea for two minutes – and we voted during the day so that one project won £50, one £100 and one £150.
    You really can make your point in two minutes – it was very impressive!

    3 We hosted a meeting with the RHS
    The Royal Horticultural Society supported our 2015-16 Rooting in Tooting project via their Greening Grey Britain campaign. Ten days ago we met Brid O’Dwyer from the RHS for a ‘walk and talk’ around Tooting to discuss our own experience of urban growing and what gardens like ours look for in terms of support. At the same time the RHS is refining its own approaches to supporting community projects. We had a short chat with Sarah Bailes at Share Community gardens in Springfield Hospital:

    There the conversation included making the RHS certification schemes accessible to a wider audience, for example people with a range of learning difficulties.

    4 Looking forward, TTT is a partner in a 2017 hot-composting project originated by our friend Martin (who ran most of Growing Tooting earlier this year). This project has received support from Wandsworth Borough Council, and will ask individuals, families and schools to compare experience of using hot composting bins. Please contact TTT for information.

    5 Also looking forwards, on 8th December Joanna Ecclestone from London Wildlife Trust will be speaking at the Wandsworth Environment Forum about the benefits of replacing areas of paving with planting to create rain gardens. Free to join in, details here.

    Early in 2016 TTT also helped build a green roof at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses, a project funded from the London Wildlife Trust. Green roofs have exactly that purpose of allowing downpours to slow down and soak into soil rather than being trapped by paving. That’s urgent, and not just a ‘nice to do’ in areas prone to flooding.
    Plus on December 8th there will a special TTT prize for anyone who uses the word schwammstadt.

    Good Growing and enjoy the celebration this evening!
    PS the value of crops grown in London in spaces linked to Capital Growth is over £2 million – see the Reaping Rewards report

  • Restart and Sew-vember

    An afternoon of fixing and mending!

    On Saturday 12th November Transition Town Tooting and Restart held an event to get people reusing their broken things. Local connecting hub Mushkil Aasaan hall was a hive of activity with many people so keen they turned up early!


      The Restart project is a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer in order to reduce waste.





    And so for 3 hours on a very wet afternoon tooting residents brought their broken electronics to be fixed. Around 30 items were brought in to the event and the Restarters worked hard to get things up and running again or identify the problem and give advice on how the residents themselves could solve the problem if it needed parts.
    A very lively corner of the room was the Sewvember tables. Set up by local maker Jeni, as part of the TTT Meet & Make workshop series, the aim was to assist people who had clothing, curtains and soft toys that need mending to repair them. Right from the outset there were people wanting assistance and taking advantage of the sewing machine. 

    The day started out with one sewing machine but at one point two more had been brought in and there was a whole crowd mending things.

     The rain didn’t deter anyone from turning up, it was busy all day right until closing, good thing there were plenty of refreshments to keep people going at the TTT cafe.


     With both restart and Sewvember the great things is that the people bringing the items are an integral part of solving the issues so they learned new skills and hopefully they will be able to be applied to other items they own that could be reused.

    Can’t wait till the next one. Look out for more Restart parties here https://therestartproject. org/parties/ and more crafty events here https://www.facebook.com/meetmakeswl/

  • Gardens of Refuge: yes we are through to the finals of the Aviva Community Fund!

    Brilliant success at the voting stage: Aviva Community Fund has just confirmed that we’re through to the finals for the Gardens of Refuge project! 
     
    We now do some further application steps by December 7th, and then there’s judging and then the results are announced January 10th ’17.
    Great news & thanks for all the support!
     

    To see the project description, click here: https://goo.gl/y6b66Y

  • First feedback after voting closed Friday 18th on Gardens of Refuge via Aviva Community Fund

    We’re proud to share where we reached when voting closed yesterday on the Gardens of Refuge campaign with CARAS.   
    Over 600 people supported the project online.
    We believe we came THIRD, with over 6200 votes. 
    WHICH IS WONDERFUL!

    Our formal ranking will be confirmed on 22nd Nov by Aviva & we’ll communicate wider after then. 

    If we’re in the top 4 in our project category, we go through to the next round – to a more familiar bid process.

    By the way votes went from 3400 on Weds morning to 6200 by lunchtime yesterday!

    Thanks for your votes, patience and energy in this period of repeated messages and nudges in every medium possible, dominating the TTT airwaves.

    Normal service can soon be resumed on communicating the rest of TTT’s rolling projects.

    Every vote really did count!